The American Forest & Paper Association recently released a report entitle “Documenting the Value of Paper.” As more and more once-printed items move into the digital space, the future of printed materials remains in question. This report addresses that question by offering five distinct ways that paper enriches lives which will likely not diminish in the future. It got me thinking – maybe there is still a market for paper, and therefore and market for print… what do YOU think?

Five Dimensions presented by AF&PA (and some interesting highlights from the report):

1. Paper informs as a learning tool. Studies show that elementary aged students actually perform better at reading comprehension when reading from paper-based books compared to e-books. Students find it easier and more helpful to employ “active” reading habits (skimming, reading subtitles first, highlighting, underlining, annotating, etc.) in paper-based books.
2. 2.       Paper reaches customers. Direct mail is still cited as the communication channel with the highest ROI for customer contact and retention in B2C marketing, followed by email. A Nielson survey found that respondent’s top three preferences for receiving advertising were paper-based – direct mail, newspapers, and in-store printed displays. Consumers who receive a printed catalog in the mail are more likely to shop online than those who do not receive the catalog. More and more people are “opting out” of email marketing lists.  
3. Paper is a permanent record for milestones in life. Paper is still used for official documents (birth certificates, graduation diplomas, titles to cars, etc.) Paper also preserves many of life’s meaningful personal moments – think family photos, baby books, childhood artwork, handwritten letters, greeting cards, etc.
4. Paper is a secure form of documentation and communication. Information stored on paper is easily accessible over a long period of time and does not need to be continuously migrated to newer technologies. Online privacy of personal information and documents is a growing concern. Electronic forms of communicating are less secure than printed forms and are open to hacking, data breaches, identity theft and fraud. In many polls, people generally prefer to have a paper version of important documents.
5. Paper is a sustainable choice. The paper industry supports sustainable forestry practices and is increasing its recovery of paper and use of recycled fiber. Recent lifecycle assessment studies show that environmental impact of paper and electronic text and communication are relatively similar.

Of course this report naturally favors supporting the role of paper and printed materials in society (it is posted on AF&PA’s website after all). Nonetheless, the information presented is based on legitimate resources and verified studies which provide an interesting literature review and summary of information that already exists. So don’t just take it from me… see for yourself!

When it comes to marketing blogs, there is always a flavor de jour. Currently, it’s big data. If not “big data,” then at least more data. So it was interesting when Thorin McGee, editor of Target Marketing, asked the question, “Can you ever have too much data?”

The question was asked on a LinkedIn board, along with an online poll, and the responses so far are limited and not yet useful, but there were two comments to the post that are worth thinking about.

The line is to stop collecting data, when the cost of collecting it exceeds your ability to use it to improve your profitability. — David Himes (Direct Commerce Advisors)

You can never have enough of the “right” data. Data that is collected should provide insights and [be] collected for the purpose of answering questions that are important for the future health, development and achieving the marketing objectives of the business. Too much data is collected because it can be collected and not because it is useful or needed. And, often or not, not understood or acted upon in any case! — Rob Wilcox (WebMedia Inbound Marketing)

Print businesses are frequently talking about helping their customers collect data, but what kind of data? You append your database and set up PURL surveys to collect all sorts of information, but is that data actually going to help your customers market better? What questions are being asekd to determine which data is the right data to improve marketing results? After all, you can personalize something without making it relevant.

How do you know what questions to ask to make sure you’re gathering the right data to help your customers?

I just received a complimentary copy of Cross Media Marketing 101 (for 2013) by James Michelson, president of JFM Concepts and VDP Web. Right upfront, I had to give James props for his dismantling of a favored email stat that has been making its rounds in the blogs, Webinars, and PowerPoint presentations. It’s from “Why Email Marketing Is King” in the Harvard Business Review.  Most Digital Nirvana readers have probably seen it.

HBR cites response rates and average order values for direct mail + email, direct mail only, and email only that are on par. When you consider the extremely low cost to produce an email campaign, the report says, email turns out to be king — ROI that blows everything else away.

But listen to what James has to say about these numbers:

1. The stats are impossible without outside manipulation.

The respondents [to this study] were cherry picked from a much larger pool in order to get a 25% response rate. How do I know? Given one client’s data of 650,000 prospects with detailed sales and contact history, I can universally pick a slice and get a fantastic response with targeted offers and specific channels. With realistic constraints (such as not giving each respondent $100 gift card for simply visiting a link), the same cannot be said for 35,000 cold records. . . Not going to happen.

2. ROI has to be calculated using, not just the cost to implement the campaigns, but the costs to acquire the names.

How did the firm in question get that many opted-in email leads? . . . It is almost impossible to exponentially grow an email list from an email campaign, regardless how good the referral spiff is. For email to be king, something else, such as social media, direct mail, experiential events, paid search, point of sale, or a mix of many methods is required, and usually at substantial cost.

3. The report ignores other costs related to email, such as the cost of maintaining the database, accessing enterprise level email software (not cheap!), preparing collateral materials, and so on.

For the ROI calculations in the article to be of any use, the cost of gathering the email opt-ins must be calculated. . . Throw those figures into the mix and what happens to that massive ROI advantage claimed by email? Chance are the savings cited in the chart rapidly evaporate.

This analysis shows why it is so important to use the full costs of any marketing effort in calculating ROI for your clients’ campaigns (and your own) — and when evaluating the truth and accuracy of claims by reports such as these.

Kudos, James!

I recently had a very interesting conversation with James Michelson, president and founder of JFM Concepts, about text messaging in the printing industry. We were talking about multichannel marketing and how text messaging fits in.

Michelson wanted to talk about the use of text messaging in a way we rarely hear it being talked about—to gather email addresses. It went something like this:

1. Pick a venue (Jumbotron, direct mail, poster).
2. Offer a great incentive.
3. Ask people to respond by short code.
4. As your reply, send a link where they can sign up for the offer.
5. On the landing page, ask them to provide an email address to receive notification of their prize and opt-in to additional communications from your client.
6. Include content on the landing page that reflects the value of the content to the respondent so that they want to opt in and continue to receive email communications beyond notification of their prize.

This isn’t going to be the approach you use for all SMS short codes (QR Codes can be used to do the same thing), but it’s one that works in an unusual way — text messaging to gather emails!

Kudos (again) to James Michelson for his willingness to share great ideas with the industry!

In the world of personalization, we rely on data on individual recipients to target and personalize content to be relevant and meaningful to them. But in the world of B2B, decision-making has been more collaborative. In fact, according to IDC, the number of stakeholders for each purchase decision has grown by 40% — from five in 2010 to seven in 2012.

Tom Pisello, also known as “the ROI guy,” has written two very interesting blog posts on this topic from the sales perspective that are worth the read (“More Stakeholders = More Sales & Marketing Complexity in 2013” and “Are Buyer Personas Dead?“).

From a digital printing and personalization perspective, the impact of the expanding number of stakeholders could be significant.

As the number of stakeholders in any B2B decision grows, this will impact the ability of marketers to use personalization to promote their products and services. But for the better or the worse?

On one hand, we could say that it makes personalization to the individual less relevant. Stakeholders can range from IT to product management to finance, all of whom have differing agendas and motivations. Even the best, most sophisticated personalization efforts cannot span them all. The higher the number of stakeholders grows, the more watered down the impact of any individual marketing effort to any individual person on that team becomes.

On the other hand, every project often has one individual champion within the organization who advocates for the decision and propels it forward. We never know which of those 5–7 stakeholders on the team it’s going to be.  Sometimes all it takes is one. The recipient of that 1:1 marketing piece could be the person who makes the difference.

What is your experience? How do you think the expanding number of stakeholders affects personalization in marketing?

I have a new reason to love Instagram . . . it has provided me with my latest example of personalization gone wrong. It’s an image posted by Jim David on his Instagram account.  Clearly, the emails were intended to be personalized but the marketer didn’t have a business name to insert into the name field. So Jim’s email was personalized with the default.

This is another example of how important it is to consider your default settings when you are personalizing anything. When the variable field is empty, what will go in there? How will it read once it does?

This issue is relevant to print, too, not just email. Don’t just include a default — make sure that, when it’s used, it doesn’t undermine your efforts to develop a positive relationship with your customer.

If you haven’t connected with me on Instagram, I invite you to do so, as well.

I have just finished reading a very interesting case study in the December 2012 issue of Target Marketing magazine.

It’s for Red Tie Insurance Services, which revealed how it works all the angles to squeeze every drop out its rented lists. Although the company relies on cold calling as its initial point of contact, its approach would work for print and mail, as well.

Here is the nutshell:

1. Once or twice a month, Red Tie purchases a homeowners list based on ZIP Code radius.

2. It imports the list into its CRM system to glean all the phone numbers, address, and names associated with those homeowners.

3. It cold calls all homeowners on the list. For those it cannot contact by phone, it contacts by email if available.

4. Using its CRM system, Red Tie finds Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts for the leads it cannot contact by phone or email and invites them to connect through the company’s Facebook page.

Red Tie has a 22% conversion rate among prospects with whom it speaks, and outside lists comprise 65% of its marketing mix. I have a call in to the owner, Reginald Hawkins, to find out what percentage of those email contacts and social media invitations convert to actual phone calls. As soon as I hear back, I’ll update this post.

[Update: Hawkins indicates that his email contacts generate about a 3% conversion-to-phone call rate. Social media is marginal, but it's just an important "catch all." You never know what leads it will generate.]

For clients who serve business and professional services providers who target homeowners, renters, new movers, and similar audiences, a  similar approach could be used with print, as well. Instead of cold calling, use personalized print as the first contact.  If possible, prime the pump with personalized email or use email to follow up (“Did you receive our postcard?”). Connect with nonrespondents using social media. It’s a simple repeatable approach that has paid off for this marketer.

As a side note, if you go to Red Tie’s Facebook page, it’s interesting that they have a huge QR Code in the upper righthand corner that says, “Scan Me!” The code takes you to a mobile version of its site. We might say, “Why would someone scan a QR Code to go to the mobile site when they are sitting at a computer right then and there?” The answer is, I don’t know, but what I know is that people do it — all the time.

As with the coming of every new year, we all look forward with anticipation of what the new year will bring. For marketing service providers, 2013 seems like it could be an exceptionally exciting year with new advances in technology and the ever growing integration of marketing communications across multiple platforms.

It’s not uncommon to see various blog posts predicting what will be big in 2013. But in my opinion, one of the best compilations of forthcoming trends was blogged by Matt Graham on the SourceLink blog. While I cannot take credit for any of these thoughts, I was so interested by all of the posts that I thought it best to share his insights instead of creating my own (with permission from SourceLink, of course). It is my guess that these trends will resonate especially with print and marketing services providers. These trends will not only challenge marketers, but will provide new opportunities to incorporate some creativity and take advantage of marketing channels, variable data, and emerging technology. So here are the trends, according to Matt Graham, to be on the lookout for and to take advantage of in 2013!

1. Display becomes addressable - New targeting tools allow for online display targeting that is closer to direct mail.
2. Direct marketing becomes conversation – Direct marketing is no longer one-way advertising but now must be able to respond to interested consumers and support two-way conversation.
3. Smartphones and tablets pass PCs – As more and more people begin to own and use tablets and PCs to access online information, websites and mobile content will become optimized for various screen sizes to increase the viewing experience.
4. Social becomes measurable – This is a big advantage for any Social Media Manager! New tools allow for a better measurement of ROI from social media marketing.
5. Hyperpersonalization: the use of big data – The options here are overwhelming when you consider the amount of data being collected and the number of channels available for communication.
6. Digital Mailboxes take root – the digital mailbox replaces email in-boxes while direct marketing and advertising quickly follow suit.
7. Channel convergence becomes real – Marketing channel crossover continues and increases as users expect to have seamless conversations across multiple platforms.
8. Digital couponing and payments sway consumer decisions – Direct marketing allows for marketers to target coupons to relevant prospects and stimulate purchase decisions.
9. Direct mail survives, but not standalone – Direct mail will still be utilized. However, volume and expenditures will continue to decrease as integration of direct mail and online initiatives becomes more prevalent.
10. Big Data – Big Data is everywhere and the topic of many a white paper in 2012. The trend increases in 2013 as marketers learn how to organize and capitalize from data.

If you clicked through to all of the articles, this is certainly more than enough reading to get you excited for 2013! May the new year bring you success… Happy Marketing!

Last week, I wrote about how the success of trigger-based email continues to support the value of trigger-based mail. After all, the importance is not in the medium. It’s in the timing and relevance.

Chuck Gehman, vice president of product platforms at Mimeo.com, disagreed. He commented on my post, saying,

It’s a real stretch to suggest that it would be possible to emulate what is going on in the digital world. It is possible that a few years ago, before digital marketing started to “run over” personalized print, this would have been a good idea. Now, though, why on earth would you want to? I mean, I get letters from my Honda dealer telling me my car is about to need a service. My BMW/Mini Cooper dealer, on the other hand, has an email platform. I honestly don’t have a preference as to which one I prefer… but I do know that the Honda dealer is spending way more money, and I believe I’m paying for it, which makes me a little unhappy.

I had to read this twice. Was Chuck really saying trigger-based print is passe? So I asked, and this is what he said.

Yes, unfortunately. The time has past for “that kind” of transactional/transpromo direct mail. In fact, I went to the Honda dealer yesterday– and I brought the letter with me (it’s a black and white letter in an envelope with two coupons at the bottom). I didn’t need it, because its content was all in their computer. The first thing the service adviser said was, “I have a coupon for you.”

One thing I might add is that my car was also telling me I needed service every time I turned it on, and it told me what kind of service it needed with a little code on the display– I looked up the code by typing “Honda Pilot B12″ into Google, and voila, I found out I needed an Oil Change.

So, Heidi, what’s the point?

There may still be room for the “print as a luxury” crowd, where some super-high end transactional/triggered direct mail piece is a good move, but generally, I think it’s a quickly and dramatically shrinking category.

I mean, I love print as much (and probably a lot more) than the next guy, but we can’t keep fooling ourselves. Some applications are just done.

I would agree with Chuck for some target audiences, but not everyone lives in the world that he is describing.

My car doesn’t talk to me. I have a neighbor without Internet access. Both my husband’s parents and mine are highly educated, with disposable incomes, but neither has an iPad or a smartphone. My husband’s parents don’t even watch television.

I have a close friend whose husband runs a research lab at Penn State. They don’t have smartphones, and their computer has so many filters on it I’m surprised email gets through. Another set of close friends is still smartphone-free, as well, despite the fact that she’s a teacher and her husband works in the world of computers.

My husband has a director-level job at a private school, but he doesn’t have a smartphone, receives no marketing email, and only looks at his home email once a week.

I think we forget that there is still a whole world out there that is not plugged into this world of e-everything, and unless we don’t need revenue from their wallets, I think print is still very much worthy of their attention.

Chuck was ready for me. He volleyed back:

That’s a very dramatically shrinking world, though Heidi, you’ve published a lot of the statistics to prove what I’m saying in previous posts you have made here!

[Yes, that's true, I would interject, but I've also posted a lot of data showing the continued effectiveness of direct mail, too.]

People who have Smartphones are the people marketers want to spend money trying to reach… not people who don’t consume any media, which is increasingly the demo for the people you are describing.

Um, I responded, does this mean that people without smartphones don’t spend any money? That’s not the case among non-smartphone owners I know. They just spend money on things other than electronics. (Although one is an avid iPad user.)

The other point is that while as an industry, we’ve been watching with great interest as the percentage of smartphone owners has grown, and there was great excitement when smartphone owners hit 50% if the market. But that still leaves the other 50%. Are we going to say they don’t spend money or consume media?

Then the irony of what I was writing back to Chuck hit me. I added,

By the way, just for fun, it’s worth noting that I’m posting my defense of the legitimacy of trigger-based print from my iPhone while at the gym…

In the final volley in this exchange (until I continued it here), Chuck posted:

Uh oh! That is fun, Heidi! Hey, check out the statistics embedded in this post I just stumbled upon.

Okay, Chuck. Good stuff. But growth in one medium doesn’t mean a corresponding decline in the effectiveness in the other. When did media become mutually exclusive? I thought multi-channel marketing meant multiple channels, including a mix of media.  That means that print stays relevant, even when other channels are growing in popularity.

In fact, according to last year’s USPS Household Survey, eight out of 10 U.S. households still scan or read advertising mail that comes to their homes. That sure beats average click rates. And the percentage of U.S. households that “usually read” advertising mail increases as the volume of mail they receive decreases. This is more evidence that, as U.S. mail volumes decline, advertising mail becomes that much more effective. Plus, we know that personalization increases effectiveness even further.

So I agree with Chuck’s comments, but only on a non-exclusive basis. I think that’s where we can easily become myopic. Growth in one medium doesn’t necessarily mean lack of effectiveness of another.

Please chime in . . . what is your response to this exchange?

It’s fair to say that the business model for health insurance is in the process of being completely redefined by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or ACA). Health insurers can expect to spend the bulk of 2013 getting ready for the new post-ACA marketplace. How far reaching are these changes? Well, they impact critical factors like:

• Who insurers can sell to: individuals in addition to groups.
• Who insurers must sell to: no ability to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.
• Where they sell their products: new Health Insurance Exchanges (HIE) in addition to the usual channels plus new retail branches.
• How they can sell their products: products offered through exchanges must conform to one of 5 standardized options.
• How they can price their products: they must devote 80% (in some cases 85%) of premiums to actual customer medical expenses leaving only 15% to 20% for all administration and overhead.

In addition to the changes that are mandated by the plan, there are many changes that just naturally flow from adapting to a consumer-driven market. In 2011 approximately 50 million people – or about 16% of the US population – had no health insurance coverage or eligibility for government sponsored health programs. In 2014 approximately 60% of that population is expected to purchase private health insurance coverage – that’s about 30 million new customers. In addition, another 17 million customers may come on the books as states expand Medicaid eligibility to more low-income Americans since most states contract Medicaid coverage to private insurers.

Insurers are trying to turn their marketing and sales organizations into retail operations to tap the consumer market. Like retailers, they are trying to leverage data on their customer base to drive effective marketing and communications programs. Since, other than marketing Medicare supplement programs, most insurers have had little or no consumer marketing experience they need help in this area. Compounding the problem, according to PWC, this new insurance market is made up of consumers who are likely to be less educated and many will need material in a language other than English.

Since many of these new insurance consumers have never enrolled in a health plan before, they are likely to shop for health insurance they way that they would shop for any other major purchase like a home appliance or a car – by seeking out a familiar brand. To become top of mind before these people enter the market, insurers are investing in a wide array of advertising: TV, radio, web, print and billboards to build awareness. Direct mail, email and mobile marketing will only increase as new products become available and market data is refined.

But the retail transformation goes beyond branding, insurers are opening branches where consumers can learn about insurance options and buy on the spot. In May, Horizon BCBS announced that they would be opening a new retail center in New Jersey and Blue Shield of California recently opened a “Blue Shield Store” inside of Lucky’s Supermarket in San Francisco. These are two of several retail store-fronts in 5 or 6 states with more to come in 2013.

These retail operations will naturally need to be staffed with knowledgeable people and supported with kiosks and other technology but, they will also need printed collateral, the ability to order and manage collateral across locations and the kind of seasonal and tailored signage seen in the best branch banks and retail stores.

Back in June, I posted about a Forrester/Silverpop study that shows a rise in marketing automation, including trigger-based marketing. Among the data used to construct triggers, according to the study, were transaction history, order and response history, social media activity or comments, and account activity and balance.

The latest study from Epsilon, its Q3 2012 Email Trends and Benchmarks study, adds to this picture. Marketers’ use of emails triggered from welcome, thank you, or abandoned shopping cart pages rose 10.3% to 2.6% of total email volume in Q3 2012 compared with the year-ago quarter. Triggered open rates performed at 75.1% higher than “business as usual” (BAU) emails in Q312.

These and similar trigger data provide important lessons for the digital print industry. Primary among them: Triggered email doesn’t work because it is email. It works because it is triggered — it offers really, really good timing based on something the consumer himself or herself does. That kind of relevance works for print, too.

The more we see data showing the value of triggers for email, the more it should motivate us to do the same for print. This might mean sending an extra 25% off on the recipient’s birthday. Incentives and promotions to renew subscriptions, leases, or licenses right before the renewal date. Or “we miss you” communications and discounts offered to customers who haven’t ordered from you past a certain date.

There are lots of triggers that you (and your customers) can use to generate high-impact direct mail. Or email if you’re doing multichannel marketing. That, of course, means having the data to construct the triggers. So if you haven’t been able to convince your customers to append their databases or turn their mailing lists into marketing databases, maybe triggers are your “in”!

In this industry, we’ve been talking for a long time about multi-channel marketing and pairing print with email as part of a larger, more comprehensive marketing strategy. With the rise of mobile, this multi-channel strategy has become more complicated, and now there is new data to add to the mix.

Once again, it’s about mobile. More and more emails are being opened on mobile devices (both on mobile phones and tablets)—so much so that the need to accommodate the unique needs of mobile devices is becoming impossible to ignore.

For example, just this past weekend, MediaPost reported that an analysis of 2.8 million emails, Knotice found that during the heavy shopping period around Thanksgiving (November 20-26, 2012), 45% of emails sent by retailers were opened on mobile devices. That was a 50% jump from the same period in 2011.

Knotice also found emails opened via tablets doubled compared to the same period last year.

I have a 2012 infographic from Litmus that reports similar results. According to its analysis of more than 1 billion email opens, more email is now read on mobile (36%) than on a desktop (33%) or Webmail (31%). In addition, it found that opens on mobile devices increased 80% over the first half of 2012. More than 80% of opens were on an iPhone or iPad.

[Update: I just saw another set of data this morning. As reported in Online Media Daily, Return Path found consumers are significantly more likely to open email on mobile devices (37%) than through Webmail using a browser (30%). This is right in line with the data reported by Litmus.]

Reading email on a mobile phone is not the same as reading it on a desktop. So as the percentage of email being read on mobile phones increases, if you’re offering email marketing as part of a multi-channel marketing strategy and aren’t accommodating the unique needs of mobile, it’s time to start.  This means shorter subject lines. Simpler pitches (for multi-tasking users). Even clearer KISS (keep it simple, stupid) calls to action.

You should be helping your multi-channel marketing customers do those things anyway, of course. But as the the email market continues to fracture, and as print is increasingly tied to the success of integrated multi-channel marketing programs, understanding not just the needs of email marketing but mobile phones and tablets is becoming just another part of marketing and selling print.

I’ve been thinking about response rates, and you know what? I’m starting to wonder why we use them. They are in every case study. Every Webinar. Every presentation slide. Yet they don’t really tell us much of anything.

Response rates simply tell us whether the basic marketing elements of the piece are compelling enough to get people to take an initial first step. The respondent makes a phone call. They scan a QR Code. They log into a personalized URL.

If they do, great! But you can have an 80% response rate and the campaign can be a money-loser. Why? Because simply taking the initial action doesn’t necessarily translate into a purchase. If they make the call, scan the code, or log in but don’t actually make a purchase, sign up for the loyalty card, or take the other desired action, the response rate didn’t do you much good at all. That’s why we need to know conversion rates.

At the same time, you can have a high conversion rate but the campaign still loses money. Why? What is the cost to develop and execute the campaign? How much did it generate? If it costs $2.00 each to send the postcard, but each postcard only generated $1.80 in revenue, you’re going to lose money no matter how high your response rate and conversion rates are. That’s why we look at metrics like dollars per sale and ROI.

Here’s a look at some of the common metrics used in evaluating campaign success today:

• Response rate
• Conversation rate
• Cost per sale
• Revenue per sale
• Return on investment
• Lifetime customer value

There are additional metrics for online campaigns, such as open rate, click-through rate, form fill rate, and more.

Do you know which marketing metrics are most effective? Do you talk to your clients about using the right metrics to evaluate the true success of their campaigns? (For info on a brandable white paper on this topic, click here.) If not, this is a conversation you should start having . . . because knowing the response rate isn’t enough.

When we talk about how digital print fits into today’s marketing trends, we often talk about multi-channel marketing. Increasingly, 1:1 printing doesn’t stand alone. It works in concert with other channels like email, social media, QR Codes, social media, and opt-in text messaging.

But just how many channels are we talking about? Is one channel enough? How about two? Or do you need three? It depends, perhaps, on how easy you make it for your customers to deploy them.

MindFire has been tracking growth in the use of multi-channel elements by its customers’ end users (marketers) and its data show just how quickly a marketer’s multi-channel programs can expand when the addition of channels is simplified.

In 2009, Marymount University, which uses the MindFire platform, began using a multi-channel strategy. Over the next two years, it rapidly expanded its number of channels used. Because it tracked and monitored each channel, it knew where its efforts were most effective.

Over time, it increased its total number of mailers by 15.5%, increased its email component to nearly 100%, increased its graphics versioning from one version to six, and added SMS text reminders, personalized QR Codes, and mobile-optimization.

What kind of things did Marymount learn? In its 11 cross-media campaigns with PURLs between February 2011 – April 2012, it found that . . .

• 10% of people responded after the direct mail launch but before the first email
• 69% of people who responded did so only after receiving the first email follow-up
• Multi-channel prospects are 4.5x more responsive than single-channel responders — 1.32% average single single-channel response rate vs. 5.87% average multi-channel response rate.

These are powerful insights.

You don’t get results like these by looking at sales figures at the end of a campaign or end of a season. You get results like these by monitoring each channel individually, then wrapping those lessons around to the next campaign. It’s added time, but as Marymount University clearly discovered, it’s worth it.

This morning, I was reading an interesting case study from the Motorcycle Superstore. The company is using personalized email to great effect, and as I read through, I wondered what lessons could be taken away by MSPs and the world of print.

To me, probably the most interesting portion of the case study is that which addresses the company’s handling of abandoned shopping carts. The superstore doesn’t take “abandoned” to mean “dead order.” Instead, it follows up on them and converts them to sales.

The Motorcycle Superstore follows up with cart abandoners with personalized emails that encourage them to return to their carts and finish the sale. The emails show images and titles of the products they left behind, have clickable buttons that bring people back to their selections, and sport headlines such as “Hey [first name], did you forget something?” or, “The gear you left behind needs a good home.”

The results?

• 52% open rate, more than three times higher than the team’s standard emails
• 49% clickthrough rate, 48% higher than standard emails
• 7% conversion rate, more than three times higher than standard emails
• 20% higher average order value than standard emails
• 73% lower unsubscribe rate than standard emails

There are important lessons for print providers here.

First, email isn’t the enemy. Helping your clients by setting up trigger-based follow-ups like these can help your clients and increase your value as a service provider. They just make sense, and if you aren’t providing them, you have to ask yourself why.

Second that we can use similar tactics in the world of print. For example, the ability to use the information from personalized URLs to gather warm leads. These are people who, like the online shopping cart abandoners, are interested enough to respond to the call to action and come to the microsite but don’t finish filling out the survey or the form. These leads can be nurtured through phone calls, email or print follow-ups, or other contacts to gradually move them toward conversion. That means better returns for your clients and more print, more email, more revenue for you.