Distributed execution through technology…

With today’s digital and production technology providing endless opportunities for variability and personalization, keeping brand consistency and even regulatory compliance has become a unique challenge.  This is particularly true when your product or service is offered by way of captive or non-captive agents, franchises, dealers and re-sellers. 

These “representatives” want and need corporate marketing support in their efforts to grow their revenue.  Corporate Marketing wants to help reps and needs to contribute to sales growth.

A solution to this growing concern just might be to commission a “Marketing Services Portal” (MSP).  An MSP provides an on-line, self-served, centralized location that reps can access to gain or perform advanced marketing functions in a controlled environment.  Benefits to this marketing platform include:

• Performing multi-channel direct marketing campaigns.  Reps can choose channels, customize a communication based on pre-approved choices and select qualified leads.
• Customized collateral material.  Reps may upload headshots, logos, or maps to be included on co-branded brochures.
• Educational content.  Reps can now have access to unlimited videos, presentations, sell sheets, etc.. 

At the same time, corporate Marketing departments now have the ability to:

• Design effective multi-channel marketing campaigns.  Design templates to ensure control over regulatory statements, brand images and text while also providing modeled, targeted data selection criteria.
• Design effective co-branded advertising material.  Build a template using your existing collateral material, but allow rep customization for co-branding or other variability.
• Organize and push information.  When designed correctly, the portal is an internal marketing avenue as much as it is a self serve tool for the reps.  The platform offers a centralized home to communicate to your reps regularly.
• Be more productive while managing costs.  Instead of spending time re-inventing the wheel for each rep, focus your time on producing creative solutions and programs that can be rolled out en-mass.

Portals sound great, so how do I go about building one?

It is critical to choose the right partner to build your Marketing Services Portal.  Almost all DM Agencies will offer this type of portal or something similar, but not all agencies have the complete service offerings (design, data, delivery) to produce and support the portal  in-house.

While supporting all aspects of the portal in-house is not a pre-requisite to success, choosing a provider who does will cut down on complexity, build time, and eliminate unnecessary risks with partner integration.

In the current business environment, doing less with more is proving to be more important than ever before.  Selecting and implementing the right tools, making best use of the limited resources available, and staying ahead of the competitive curve will define our successes.

To learn more about marketing services portals, please visit Sourcelink. You can also check out Sourcelink’s blog.

No matter how you dress it up, a printer is a printer. Most printers would say that it is their price and customer service that will set them apart. If everyone has the same recipe for setting themselves apart, how much difference is there?

Becoming a marketing services provider takes some time, and there are some non-negotiable steps along the way to make the transformation complete. First, it is necessary for the online presence of the printer to be inviting, friendly, easy to use, interactive, and functional. The ability for your customers to order online is an important facet of the printer’s transformation. Customers should be able to upload mailing lists using the printer as an email service provider. They should also be able to access and download information to be distributed or printed in small quantities.

But having an online store does not automatically make you a marketing services provider. The printer has to examine cross-media marketing. As I state in the book, cross-media marketing is, “a form of cross-promotion in which promotional companies commit to surpassing the traditional advertisements and decide to include extra appeals for their offered products. The material can be communicated by any type of mass media such as e-mails, letters, web pages, or other recruiting sources.”

So you have become cross-promotional and web-friendly. Now you need to execute some campaigns. You are looking to drive traffic to a retail store, whether that store is brick and mortar or digital, and increase sales. There are steps that can be taken to ensure a successful campaign. Create postcards with personalized URL’s or QR codes to attract the attention of potential customers. 80% of all printed material ends up in the mail, and who knows how much of that immediately ends up in the trash. So personalizing gives your efforts a much higher chance to be received than a standardized mailer. Once the recipient accesses the URL, have them confirm some information to expand and provide accuracy to your database. Then drive them to either take a survey or claim their special offer that you advertised on the mailer. After a couple weeks, follow up with non-responders. When customers do come into the store in response to a direct marketing campaign, track that information to measure the effectiveness. If it’s not effective, go back to the drawing board. This should hopefully all lead to increased profits, data on marketing campaign strategies, and customer contact information. All of this lends itself to one of the most important ideas in marketing: return on investment (ROI).

Data is everything. Make sure you aggregate a solid database to help you in your marketing efforts. The best database is one you create yourself. The most relevant information to your business is only known by your business. A list provider can only be so specific to your target audience.

One more big aspect of this chapter is about making print interactive. I mentioned QR codes earlier; they are the best way to integrate new media into your printed efforts. They are two-dimensional barcodes that can be scanned by a smartphone, such as an iPhone or Android. Once scanned, they bring the user to a mobile website or landing page, creating an interactive experience for the customer. This mobile page will be stored in the phone for additional access later on, which means the proper information that you want read will be in the palm of the target audience’s hand.

The groundwork is being laid for the printer to become a full-fledged marketing services provider. In the next installment, we will talk about getting down to fundamentals to really complete the transformation.

To learn more about my book, “Business Transformation: A New Path to Profit for the Printing Industry”, visit my book’s website.

For operations executives and marketers alike, the number one challenge in today’s market is reaching the customer. Customers are clearly in control of the media that they consume. Mobile devices, iPods, DVRs, and the Internet have changed marketing forever. Marketing executives of the future will need to leverage every customer touch point with a mix of interconnected channels. One thing is certain — the effective use of cross-media communications will bring better business results. Delivering multiple impressions and giving prospects a variety of ways to respond can have a dramatic impact.

Media Dynamics are Changing

Over the past several years, we have heard about the importance of transforming into a “marketing service provider” with a focus on one-to-one communications and variable data. Today’s media dynamics are changing. As we look to the future, there will be three critical components for success in the much larger cross-media opportunity:

• Data-driven personal messaging
• Delivering messages across all channels
• Campaigns that engage the end customer

We’ll take a look at the first component now…

Data-Driven Personal Messaging

Marketers continue to see the value in developing intimate and direct communication with consumers. Not so long ago, families gathered around the television set. Now, individuals surf the Web and watch videos on personal, handheld devices. Consumers have grown comfortable with — and have even come to expect — a one-on-one dialogue with marketers. Personalized marketing messages are essential to attracting customers’ attention and delivering communications that increase sales. Today’s consumers don’t have the time or the patience to deal with irrelevant information. Data-driven personalized messaging has never been more important.

Organizations that sell products or services (business-to-business or business-to-consumer) must gather and use information about their customers’ purchases, including how much they spend per sale and when or how often they buy. Knowledge about past behaviors is a valuable tool for predicting future purchases. In addition to guiding business decisions, this information is critical for creating personalized marketing messages that increase sales.

Marketers must work with customers to personalize offers based on past purchases and preferences. The marketing must follow the customer (not the other way around), and the offer must be truly customized to the recipient’s specific needs.

In late 2010, InfoTrends published an extensive survey entitled Capturing the Cross-Media Direct Marketing Opportunity. The marketing respondents that participated in this study reported that over 60% of their campaigns leveraged personalized (one-to-one) or segmented (one-to-few) marketing.

From the perspective of the print service provider, personalization is the future of marketing communications. Service providers must clearly understand how to work with clients on data-driven campaigns. The problem is that personalization is not enough to remain competitive in today’s complex cross-media world.

If you want to learn about the remaining two components, visit www.OceWow.com and download the June 2011 Newsletter. You’ll find even more interesting articles there!

While he was tramping around Peru, Peter O’Neill, a web analyst from Australia, dreamed up a blog about achieving excellence in “joined-up” marketing.

Peter concludes that the marketing management tools and web analytics that measure revenue at various online touchpoints don’t reflect the contribution of offline activities like friends’ recommendations, using multiple computers when ordering, in-store purchasing, and so on. Add in such other influences as PR, print advertising, and social media and – clearly – “What drove the sale?” becomes an inscrutable question. At least for now. But maybe not for long.

Undaunted, Peter says “The measure of success of a marketing campaign is quite simply whether the incremental profit generated was greater than the incremental marketing spend (including salary costs for people working on the campaigns) during the defined time period.”

That makes some sense, but it really doesn’t work for direct marketers who have followed Lester Wunderman since 1967, testing, measuring, adjusting, testing, measuring… and so on.

Though they didn’t admit it for years, all this weighing must have made quite an impression on TV, radio, newspaper, billboard, and print advertising folks, because — somewhere on the way to the scales — a strange thing happened. Every channel began to quietly calculate how it, too, could measure.

As extensions of traditional direct marketing, email, p-URLs, landing pages, and all other online media were naturals of course. But the guys with the scales also began to find measurable profits in infomercials, radio, publishing, television, mobile marketing, and even social media.

In fact, even though apologists had let PR and media advertising off the ROI hook for years, the first arrows shot at social media’s launch charged that nobody could measure its results.

So, is it possible to calculate ROI across multiple channels? It is. Increasingly, it is because direct marketing suggests we can.

p.s. The notion that direct mail is the only measurable non-electronic marketing media still makes it stand out in the crowd.

Bare Deal likes to describe its coupon service as “Groupon meets Netflix.” Its founders are a couple of Northwestern grads who mail (yes, mail) coupons to consumers who’ve asked for them, requiring payment only when consumers use the coupons.

Bare Deal co-founder, Glen Andrianov, explains through an example. ”This week, we are  featuring the company, Chocolate for Your Body. Anybody who signed up for Bare Deal is able to select this specific deal on our website. A scratch off-card for Chocolate for Your Body is then sent to the person’s mailing address.”

Put another way, this is the process:

• The consumer hears about the service via Twitter, Facebook, word of mouth, or opt-in email and goes to the Bare Deal website, and “signs up.”
• The consumer who wants to explore a deal, registers for that deal.
• Bare Deal digitally prints and mails the consumer a scratch-off coupon featuring a 40- to 100-percent discount, branded with the business’ info.
• When ready, the consumer takes that coupon to the business and redeems it.

Because the recipient asked for the coupon, the open-rate is high. But there’s another – some might say better – reason to open that envelope immediately. Consumers don’t know precisely how big their discounts will be until they scratch-off in the privacy of their home. The discount could be a healthy 40%, or the discount could range up to 100%.

Andrianov says consumers have fun with the coupons. “Instead of a product focused only on savings (Groupon and competitors), our scratch cards provide variable savings, which create excitement – consumers are ‘winning’ a discount.”

Couponing is huge in the Windy City (as this Chicago Tribune article notes) so there’s plenty of competition. But coupons enjoy impressive marketing acceptance, too. So how does Bare Deal differentiate and market its coupons? Andrianov says the company set out to create a service people would love and drives traffic to the website mainly through word of mouth and social media (Facebook and Twitter). “Also, members pay businesses directly, which helps foster loyalty between consumer and their business.”

Lynford Morton, owner of PhotoTour DC, a company that teaches photography on walking tours around Washington, DC, would concur that business access to consumers is critical, but also missing in most coupon arrangements. Morton, who has a lot of experience with coupon marketers, says, “I get pitched by these coupon companies all the time. They all claim some novel differentiator…which really turns out to be yawn-inducing. Every now and then I get a couple smart ones who want to talk to me about where my pain points might be with the daily deals of the world and how they might address them. Others bring me solutions to problems I don’t have. If I understand the Bare Deal approach correctly, this business solves one huge problem by letting you communicate with your customers. To know 600 people bought your product, but you can’t communicate with any of them is nuts. Giving a business owner direct access is huge.”

Andrianov agrees. “Businesses prefer us over competitors because they are able to put their brand identity on a physical product, compared to a black-and-white printed piece of paper with no brand identity.”

Customers must love the pay-as-you-go arrangement, too? I mean who doesn’t have at least a few coupons already paid for, but unredeemed sitting in a folder somewhere? Guilt! Angst! Pressure! Ah… relief!

The delivery of branded, redeemable scratch-offs can happen only one way: via direct mail. “Because we provide a physical product that can’t be printed on a computer, we use direct mail .. This process allows us to send scratch cards only to members who are interested in a specific deal … If a member does not select a deal, they will not receive anything in the mail.”  

In short, Bare Deal’s innovative merger of a pay-when-you-use-it-only coupon with the thrill of a strike-it-rich scratch-off should add up to a model with promise.

As Netflix already proved, the U.S. mail has its advantages. In fact, some people would argue that the U.S. Postal Service made Netflix successful. So, yes, it’s good to see smart marketers still working the direct mail angle.

For most marketing service providers the number one focus area for the customer relationship is delivering improved campaign results utilizing a cross media, multi-channel marketing  approach. One area taking a back seat to the overall campaign strategies is the tracking and measurement of campaign ROI.  The reason for this is simple.  It isn’t easy to do and with the growing list of marketing media being utilized the challenge increases.

Marketers are under intense pressure to generate improved results for all marketing activities and to deliver an acceptable ROI for each activity.  Without the ability to measure at a detailed level they don’t have the ability to fully evaluate which activities are meeting their objectives and why!  Two dynamics that are on the increase that make this area more important than years past are:

• The average number of cross media touches per campaign
• The number of personal channels for each consumer

Number of Cross Media Touches

According to an October 2010 InfoTrends in-depth study entitled Capturing the Cross Media Direct Marketing Opportunity, the study reported a shift toward not only using more electronic and online marketing, but also more channels. The survey results indicated that marketers are using an average of 2.7 media channels per campaign. Another revealing data point was that 53.1% of marketers are using 3-5 marketing touches per campaign! This data clearly illustrates how quickly marketers are evolving their tactics to leverage the improved results of more personal and relevant communication across multiple touches.

 Number of Personal Channels for Each Consumer

The other area on the increase is the area of personal channels.  Recent studies have confirmed that the average consumer can be reached on an average of 7.2 channels in today’s world, most typically:

• A landline phone
• A mobile phone (this counts as two channels when you consider voice and text)
• A Skype account
• A Facebook account
• A Twitter account
• A personal and business e-mail
• Membership in online forums with private messaging facilities (e.g., LinkedIn)
• A home address for traditional mail

In addition, you have to add all of the mass media in use and remember that the overall goal is to optimize and maximize each touch for improved visit and conversion results.  Study data indicates that 55% of marketers today don’t have a “formal” tracking and measurement program in place.  The number one reason is it is difficult to accomplish and they lack the resources to get it done.

Marketing Service Providers have an opportunity to help the marketer in this critical area.  To do so, you have to make it a part of your initial discussion on marketing objectives, typical conversion levels and ROI for all media in use.  Typical questions such as, “How do you capture the visit and conversion levels for each media touch in use for your campaigns” and “How do you identify non-responders for each media touch” are two examples of information you will need to gather.

Critical Tracking and Measurement Dynamics

As you work with the marketer, there are a number of areas that they will need to track and measure on a daily basis.  Let’s look at some of the most important:

• Prospects that respond to a campaign (typical visit and conversion rate)
• Report “real-time” tracking and measurement for all media used in the campaign
• Leads Generated by rep/region
• Activity by responder
• Message Reporting – email, SMS, QR Codes detail about all deliveries
• ROI – calculate Marketing ROI per campaign
• Any click on a redirect link to other sites and documents
• Click – through to online purchase sites
• Compare contrast: email response rates vs. direct mail and QR Codes
• Blind captures/Refer a friend/Social Media responses (how many organic touches led to new opportunities and contact information)

Providing the marketer with this information in a fully automated marketing dashboard empowers them to really understand what their actual results are and where campaigns or media are not connecting with their prospects.  Having this information is the first step to making course corrections in their campaign approach and media usage. It provides the foundation for long-term success of all programs and allows your company to be pivotal to that success.

CMO’s 2011 Priorities

This month the CMO Council shared research on the top priorities for marketing executives for 2011.  One of the top three was” build stronger customer intelligence” and that requires online marketing intelligence gathering as well as tracking and measurement. The other key finding is that lead generation and qualification is one of key areas of investment for CMO’s in 2011.

Marketers realize that this is one of the top priorities for 2011 in addition to driving more revenue into their organization through cross media, multi-channel marketing. If a Marketing Service Provider wants to create more value and connect with marketing clients, they will need to make tracking and measurement one of their key offerings!

The “desperate simplification trend” from noted marketing guru Rohit Bhargava suggests that “Information overload is leading consumers to seek simplification.”

In terms of direct marketing, I think Bhargava’s deals with seven important “musts.”

1. Get to the point immediately. It’s okay to write long direct mail letters – after all, these sometime work best, especially to recipients who already know (and like) your organization. But your point needs to appear upfront. The quick message explains the popularity of postcards, email coupons, and smaller retail catalogs in 2010.

2. Trickery? Don’t even try it. Consumers are very short-tempered – even vicious — with marketers who disappoint them or lure them in with one message and then switch to something else. The Internet makes such consumer activities as boycotts much easier.

3. Back up what you say. One magic development of the Internet is the ability for people to “check the sources” instantly, by clicking a link. If you want money or sales, back up your appeal with as many third-party endorsements as you can generate. The more you can Yelp! your own product, the better.

4.  Make it visual. People haven’t got time to pour over complex data. When making a point, use info-graphics to make ideas jump to life.

5. Make it instant. Offer options for immediate response: p-URLs and QR codes are all about convenience and fast response. [Example: Know those plastic key-chain cards that your grocer and drug store always ask to see? Well, smart phones have an app that can scan barcode and QR codes off those cards, store the codes in your phone, and pop them open upon request.

6. Get smart. It’s a challenge, yes, but smart phones are part-and-parcel of the new integrated marketing model. See if a text marketing campaign using short codes might work for you as well as it has for the pizza industry.

7. Be nimble, be quick. When it happens – whatever it might be — be ready to move immediately to practice random acts of marketing.

I’m not going to tell you which company did what I’m writing about here because I actually think very highly of this enterprise. They do cutting-edge stuff in cross media marketing, their communications are first-rate, and their work looks terrific. But I think they screwed up their holiday message.

Their eCard arrived with the words “Sending you our warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful Holiday and a Happy New Year.” Right below, was a green box with the words “Click Here to find out what’s in your stocking!” Also on the elegantly simple cover page were a personalized URL link and a QR code. All the right digital pieces.

Unfortunately, when I got to the landing page, this company was offering me credits against a “new Enterprise or Premium [firm name] Web account. Also, my contact info was auto-filled with “Please sign me up for your newsletter” opted in.

Otherwise, this was a lovely piece of work that even featured a video of a warm living room with a crackling fire. Gosh, guys … couldn’t you just say “Seasons Greetings!” and be done with it?

Maybe I’m off base here. Maybe this company scored big with their Holiday Pitch. I didn’t like it much, personally, but when it comes to direct marketing, results count. So, if this was your work, set me straight. Take credit, tell me that you got a great return and call me Scrooge. I’ll take the coal in my stocking and not complain.

And to all, a good night!

Here are 6 print formats to discuss with your clients. Why? Because they continue to work (and we have the examples to demonstrate how well and a bit of the why!)

1. Postcards focused on discount-pricing are commonplace… which, in this industry, means they’re working. I’ve been receiving coupon-ish, bi-weekly postcards from Bed, Bath and Beyond for months, like clockwork. BB&B’s version is over-sized, printed in blue ink, and looks the same every time. In general, I’m receiving postcards in every configuration from all the retailer’s in my area. The market may hit overkill on “postcards” in 2011, but so far I don’t see a slow-down. Note: The Wall Street Journal’s report on an important consumer trend – just-in-time consumption – suggests an opportunity for smart retailers who can figure out how to embrace more frequent, targeted promotions.

2. Specialty self-mailer “newspapers,” packed with information and printed on inexpensive stock and exemplified by – but never surpassed by — Trader Joe’s The Fearless Flyer. TJ’s describes this fun read as a cross between Consumer Reports and Mad Magazine. I’ve never signed up, but I still receive their annual Thanksgiving issue, which uses humor, great copywriting, and information to persuade  readers to shop at their store. The product isn’t personalized at all but, compared to the full-color circulars other food stores use, this one stands apart because it demonstrates how well TJ understands their pan-generational, no-frills, loyal shoppers.

3. Classic fundraising appeals. Apparently, the white-wove, #10 letter format remains a workhorse for a host of nonprofit organizations. From those same mailers, however – particularly targeted to previous donors – come the periodic, extravagant lumpy-mail offer stuffed with premiums. I’ve seen no slack in fundraising direct mail. Quite the contrary, this season my mailbox has attracted more appeals than ever.

4. “Catalogs” in fresh shapes and configurations – thinner, and more targeted. Read more about catalog trends in TDN’s November 11 post.

5. Commercial direct mail targeted with different offers to different groups. Paul Bobnak wrote a piece for Target Marketing about the evolution of credit card offers via mail. In analyzing a series of credit offers that went out this fall, Bobnak noted the trend to targeted appeals, including women business owners and seniors.

6. Your favorite mailing plus QR Codes. Okay, this is a new twist on an old response vehicle, but QR could add a little drama to an old appeal. Mobile billings areexpected to touch $4.1 billion this year, up 24 percent from last, according to Juniper Research, the UK-based telecom and mobile analyst firm, with total turnover expected to hit $12 billion by 2015.

I’m often asked to write on the topic of how to sell 1:1 printing, personalized URLs, QR codes, and other hot-button applications. I never know what to say. I don’t know what to say because the answer is, you don’t.

Nobody wants to hear this. Printers want to hear that by investing in this equipment, this software, this application, they’ll turbo-charge their sales. It’s true that you might make some inroads into new clients by offering these applications, and you might get an existing client or two to give 1:1 or QR codes a whirl, but that isn’t going to save the business.

The companies that have been really successful with these applications aren’t selling them as applications. They are selling marketing. They go into the client’s location and say, “What’s your problem? How can we fix it?” If that fix requires 1:1, they’ll use that. If it requires social media, they’ll use that. If it requires television, radio, short-run segmentation, long-run transactional, whatever it is, they’ll use that.

Even at highly successful companies, there is no guarantee that if you took the 1:1 portion of their business by itself, it would even pay for itself. But having 1:1 printing (or personalized URLs, QR codes, mobile marketing, fill in the blank) is part of a larger expertise base that gives them the tool set they need. If they need 1:1 printing, it’s there. If they need personalized URLs, they’re there. That’s what makes them successful companies—the range of tools and the expertise to wield them.

It’s difficult enough to learn 1:1, let alone social media, mobile marketing, and QR codes, too. You mean you have to be proficient at all of them in order to sell one of them? Well, kind of, yes. Isn’t that’s what marketing is all about? Understanding the marketing landscape and then using the right tool(s) to accomplish the client’s objective?

If printers want to be marketing services providers, they need to do the same. That’s what marketing services means. It doesn’t mean marketing services implementation (you figure it out and we’ll serve it up for you). It means marketing.  This doesn’t happen by installing a new press or a new piece of software. It happens by changing the focus, core competency, and priorities of your company.

I’ve been working on the “Year Ahead” issue of Marketing AdVents published by DMAW, so, for the past few weeks, I’ve been focused on industry trends. Six developments seem to be top of mind these days, but before I get to that, here’s a general observation based on nothing but chatter and intuition:

Things are moving out there in Direct Marketing Land. Over the past year, we’ve seen a lot of company mergers and “affiliations,” especially on the production side of things. Along with that movement, there’s been a whole lotta job switching. For awhile, it was mostly people looking; lately it seems to be people finding. That’s good news. Motion is picking up, so let’s hope it’s not just a random wind storm, shakey, shakey, Now, on to the prognostications:

1. QR Code Explosion. These little roadmaps to wherever are going to dot.dot the landscape next year, as marketers find ever more clever ways to use them. Put them on event promotions, business cards, marketing collateral, even p-URLs. About a year ago, Dana Oshiro suggested these other uses: SWAG and self-branding, geo-based reviews and tours, ticketing and registration, and private “acts of defiance.” The construction industry has more applications, here. From the marketer’s perspective, check-out Joey Tanny’s post on Sparksheet (and don’t miss the comments). BOOM!

2. Icky Picky Mail. As postal rates go north, direct mail gets costlier, which means marketers will get a lot more careful, targeted, relevant, creative, tested, and measured. Dave Lewis, DM guru and VP at ProList, came up with this terrific idea: Send a marketing email before you do your direct mail if you have email addresses. If a prospect clicks through to your landing page off of the email, delete them from the direct mailing. You already got their response. It’s that brand of icky picky that will make direct mail keep on keeping on. Thanks, Dave.

3. Direct Marketing and Social Media Integration. Cross media is all over the marketing Net, but strategic integration of social media into direct mail, email, pURLs, and telemarketing is less common. In fact, this study reports that 88% of social media spend is to solidify customer loyalty. But that is now and this is when. Jeffrey Stewart talked about the concept at the 2009 PODi AppForum, so social media as part of DM is by no means new. However, social media nailed its place in marketing budgets this year, so integration is sure to follow in 2011 (as will positive results).

4. Email Is NOT for Everyone. I’m  not saying email marketing is “dead” (though I hear there are obituaries on ice), but I am saying people really are buried in the email avalanche. Fellow blogger Leo Babauta, Zen Habits, sent a “Dear friends,” email that simply said, “I’m giving up on email. It’s just been too much, and I’ve decided I need to focus my life on creating rather than constantly answering emails.” Bottom line, three words: Opt-in only.

5. IMB Innovations. I already blogged at Digital Nirvana about my annoying and super-hyper personalized email marketing experience with Harry and David. But there’s one thing I loved. H&D sent my email the day after their catalog dropped. How did they know? Intelligent Mail barcode, of course. I’ve no doubt smart marketers will find even more intelligent ways to make this barcode shimmy.

6. Ever More Personal pURLS. Currently, most personalized landing pages feature a person’s name and maybe some stuff related to the offer that drove them to the page. What if we got really personal — as personal as we are able to get in our digital direct mail – and then added hyper targeted links, images, and cross sells to our customized landing page? Too expensive? Hmmm… now that depends, doesn’t it. Shall we test?

p.s. *Thank you, Allstate, for GREAT copywriting and a tip of the windblown hat to Dean Winters.

A lively discussion about personalized URLs (p-URLs) unfolded on LinkedIn’s Direct Mail group this week. Actually, pURLs surfaced in conjunction with a more general posting about cross-media. Things heated up when somebody asked how much other group members were charging clients “per pURL.”

Despite some feisty back and forth, the group generally agreed that — like the envelope, the digital printing, the mailing and postage, and the response vehicle – pURLS are most appropriately costed as part of an entire direct marketing campaign, rather than expensed “per pURL.” That makes a lot of sense. Exotic as they still seem to many direct marketers, pURLS really are “just another response vehicle” to be considered.

Is it  more important to know the “cost per pURL” than it is to know the cost per email response, or the cost per incoming phone order, or even the cost per business reply card?

This number won’t inform your campaign planning or give you any particular insight. If you want to find out whether pURLs can boost results, do a test! That way you’ll have some real information for your next campaign.

Employee Benefits News provided an overview of winning campaigns in their 2010 i-Comm Awards.  The subtitle is: “EBN’s 2010 i-COMM Award winners show how expansive, targeted campaigns can cut through communications clutter to engage workers around health, retirement.” Sounds like our cup of tea right?

There are some interesting notes in here for our industry on the importance of paper in certain circumstances, the necessity for plain language, and the overall importance of clear communications in the success of employee benefits programs. Generally speaking, if you are serving clients in the health and benefits business, EBN is an excellent source for marketing and regulatory information.

How much time do you spend researching pain points and opportunities for your target vertical markets? What sources do you recommend for getting up to speed on various verticals?

This morning, Target Marketing reported on Archive Director Paul Bobnak’s latest analysis of the expansive Who’s Mailing What archives.

Of significant interest to Digital Nirvana readers is Bobnak’s finding that — in the first six months of 2010 –personalization of direct mail increased 19 percent over all of 2009. “Used in 35 percent of direct mail, it’s more important than ever to help make mail relevant for the prospect,” Target noted.

I knew that. And you knew that. And my guess is that in the second half of 2010 even more direct marketers will confirm that. So what’s the hold up?

The first of Bobnak’s findings about direct mail trends in 2010 explains why personalization percentages aren’t even more dramatic: to wit, the finding that “Repeat mail, or controls, are up 12 percent in 2010 and now represent a full quarter of all direct mail. Reasons stretch from mailers being budget-conscious to staying with efforts that are clearly working.”

In other words, nervous mailers are entrenched in “what works” to the point they’re afraid to even test personalization. They’ve heard it works – they even believe it works – but, in this milieu of overworked staff and financially freaked CFO’s, personalized direct mail (with its higher upfront investment) is an easy “test” to avoid.

Let’s think a bit differently. Among the figures Bobnak uncovered, I’d wager that, among the 35% of “personalized” proponents you’ll find the direct marketers with the most successful results. Right?

It was a dark and stormy night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets. No. It was a bright and windy afternoon in the City of Big Shoulders. I had just landed at O’Hare and was waiting for my hotel shuttle.

The fifty-ish business woman to my left had no secrets. She was engrossed in a discussion on her i-Berrydroidpod oblivious to the world around her and with whom she was sharing her conversation, namely me. Now I’m not a habitual eavesdropper, but this was so blatant I couldn’t help but absorb her end of the dialogue. I’m sure you’ve all been there.

She started out with instructions to her subordinate– edits pertaining to some document: “Move this paragraph here; add the sub-head for Obstetrics there; start a new chapter on page 87; be sure and link the footnotes” & so on. By now it was obvious this had something to do with the medical profession and was some type of publication, to what purpose I could not discern. Then came the kicker—“I guess we should get a thousand printed”, she said matter-of-factly.

At that moment, my old printer instincts kicked in and my ears perked up. Although I muffled the impulse to be a good-printing samaritan and come to her rescue, calculations started rolling through my brain bucket. Let’s see, this publication whatever its purpose is most likely a minimum of one-hundred pages; times one-thousand copies is one-hundred thousand digital 8 ½ x 11 clicks at the very least. A decent job for any short-run facility.

Did she have a use for that many, or was it simply a Pavlovian response to cost-per-piece-effectiveness training she received in an earlier life?

I thought by now the digital printing industry would have finally conditioned all customers to think print-on-demand until the cows came home. It hasn’t penetrated everywhere. This job could have been suited for short-run offset, or toner-based or high-speed ink-jet digital depending on the real, albeit unknown situation. The issue was that it didn’t sound like there was any fleshing-out of the true needs of the project. “I guess we should get a thousand printed”. A nice round number.

At face value It didn’t sound like a situation that warranted a variable data application, but who knows, with the right coaching it could have turned into a marvelous project incorporating a PURL and the opportunity for users to custom-build a piece based on relevance, or to personalize an event-specific version for a particular demographic. It may have even had TransPromo applications (more likely PubPromo), all of which could have saved a tremendous amount in terms of cost and waste.

In one of my past lives many moons ago I played a game with my clients called “let’s look in the closet”. Every print buyer had a closet of one kind or another. Sometimes it was a walk-in, sometimes a warehouse. The point was to discover their printed material graveyards and guide them to more cost and resource-effective digitally-enabled behavior.

The point is that even today, while we busy ourselves with transpromo, social media and cross-disciplinary integration, we tend to forget that there are still basics to be dealt with out there in printbuyerland, and the distressing fact is that the path of least resistance remains alive and well.

As the woman hopped into her shuttle, still stridently chatting about her project without missing a beat as she handed the driver her bags, I couldn’t help but wonder if her printer, in-plant or commercial, would question the wisdom of “I guess we should get a thousand printed”. Would you?