Check out the latest 60 Second Super Cool Fold of the Week. This fold comes from ITP inElizabethtown,Pennsylvaniaand is a piece they created for Global Business travel Association. It is a self-mailing piece that uses an open gate fold format with an interesting tweak. Watch the video to learn more!
Here is the 112th Super Cool Fold of the Week from Trish at FoldFactory. Watch as she teaches you how to create the fun Assymetrical Gate Fold piece with a perfed postcard. It was originally designed by Cayenne Creative Group for International Paper to promote their Elements line.
Direct mailers seem to get more and more innovative every week and create digitally printed pieces that I couldn’t even fathom on my own. This week’s fold is no exception. It is a hexagon-shaped fold that unfolds to a larger hexagon. The catch to successfully recreating this piece is to ensure that each mini hexagon is slightly smaller than the one before it. Check it out!
This week’s fold comes from Capital Printing Company in Austin, TX and was created for Texas State.
If you’ve been paying attention to our blog – or to the world of print around you – then by now you are very familiar with QR codes and how they are being integrated into print almost everywhere. With an increased use of smart phones and the general public’s want of information hear and now, it’s no wonder these have become high profile marketing tools. But did you know that even the United States Postal Service has taken notice of these fabulous barcodes?
Well, they have. So much so that the USPS is offering a promotion on all mail pieces containing barcodes. Between July 1st and August 31st, the USPS is offering a 3% discount to all mailers who include 2D barcodes on their mailings. According to the factsheet, all companies, including Mail Service Providers, who mail using a permit imprint and submit their mailing documentation electronically, are eligible to participate.
This seems like more evidence that there is opportunity for print to thrive in the digital age. In this case specifically, we see how the digital aspect of the QR code actually makes print items more popular and increases demand for printed items with this digital functionality. Utilizing these codes for direct mail can improve the quality of your mail piece while allowing you to better reach internet-savvy consumers. It can also add a much needed spark in the mailing industry – a fact which the USPS seems to have noticed.
Production Solutions in Vienna, VA, did something interesting. They took a current mail piece and calculated how much it would have cost to produce the same piece a decade ago (in 2001).
Guess what?
The cost to mail a test package today appears to have fallen 17% below the cost to mail the same package ten years ago. Why? Because savings inherent in data processing, personalization, and mailshop fees offset rising costs in every other area of operations.
Observations:
• Technology has saved us some dollars and definitely enabled more personal, targeted, effective marketing.
• In the days ahead, ratios will shift adversely if the cost of manufactured materials goes up (paper, ink, window patch material, labels).
• Rising postage costs would squeeze margins, possibly out of existence. What will mitigate that? Can technology improvements and controlled labor costs offset the trend? So far, no … but technology delivers exponential surprises every day, so let’s not give up.
• For now, the real budget killer appears to be energy, gasoline in particular. Business owners also must deal with the rising and fixed energy costs inherent in plant operations. Again, innovations in technology may help us deal with super-charged gasoline and electricity prices. On the other hand, water could prove to be a problem most haven’t thought about.
• And then there’s the cost of labor. As states across the country try to regulate and repress wages and benefits for millions of American workers, the cost (and availability) of labor becomes vastly uncertain. Enter the influence of trends in the world economy, import/export practices, and even climate change (think paper production, for example): more uncertainty.
Whether or not one or more of these particular expenses skyrockets or plummets depends on a range of macro influences. Unforeseen technology advances and innovations in the areas of manufacturing, printing, lettershop, and even marketing itself could make us all rich (well, okay.. prosperous). In 2001, none of us really understood how huge email marketing and online shopping would be ten years later. We didn’t even know about QR codes or smart phones back then. So what will the world look like in 2021?
Perplexing, yes? ….. Perhaps direct mail production and marketing operations would benefit from a “Crazy Day brainstorming session” to encourage employees to “imagine the future” … leading maybe to some long-range thinking and planning focused on staying nimble, quick, responsive, and open to the coming deluge of change. I’d love to hear from readers!
In the meantime, thanks to Production Solutions for its thought-provoking article.
Are you looking for a new idea for a tradeshow leave-behind? Look no further than the 60 Second Super Cool Fold of the Week for the Long Triangle Fold. This collateral piece was designed by The Whitmore Print Group from Baltimore Maryland and created for Edge Technologies in Fairfax, Virgina.
Enjoy!
I received one of those refinancing letters in the mail today. It was perforated, tri-folded, and looked like some kind of official government document. The outside said, “Homeowner,” but inside, it addressed me by name, the refinance offer reflected my original mortgage, and the letter included a “pre-qualification offer.”
So the inside said, “Personal, relevant information for your home,” but the outside said, “We really wanted the cheap bulk postage rate.”
So which was it? A personalized offer or mass mail? In the end, of course, it was mass mail. We can do that in a data-driven way these days. But the interesting thing was that I looked up the company in a Google search and found lots of rip-off complaints. Not because the company was actually doing anything illegal, but because the perception was that recipients had been duped by personalized letters that weren’t really personal at all.
Basically, the data (from public information sources) was used only to get people to call the 800 number. From there, the information and qualification process began from zero.
For those of us in the printing industry encouraging clients to personalize their documents, this should serve as a warning bell. We can populate data fields in letters and documents using data, but it’s not really the same as personalization. Personalization has, at its core, the sense of relevance. In this case, the relevance was near zero. As a result, no matter how accurate the information, the perception was that it was a rip-off and a scam. The Internet is full of the outrage.
So the moral of the story is that data doesn’t make personalization. Relevance does.
Join Trish on her 100th episode as she shows us how to create a super cool direct mail piece from Hyundai. This is another good example of how direct mail can be powerful and innovative and can help your customers impress their target audience.
Everybody is talking about mobile marketing these days. From the perspective of the print provider, this transition is a threat to print. But does it need to be?
In order for your customers to send out mobile marketing campaigns, they need to gather mobile phone numbers. How are they going to do that? Marketers cannot buy these numbers. Consumers must provide them. They must sign up. Opt in. How are marketers — your customers — going to get them to do that? Often, it’s through print!
Think about all of the case studies you’ve read about mobile marketing. Think about the examples you see in your own life. How are marketers getting people to opt in with their mobile phone numbers? They are printing — yes, printing — offers on direct mail, posters, paper cups, tabletop tents, billboards. (“Text BESTOFFEREVER to 12345!”)
Basic text marketing is not complicated. Marketers have been doing it for years. What’s changed is the explosion of inexpensive third-party providers to make it happen. Even the smallest marketer can afford a text messaging program these days. So partner with one of the zillion text messaging providers and get your customers into mobile marketing in the most simple, basic way possible. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated to be successful.
Are you going to make a ton of money doing mobile marketing? Probably not. But in order to gather mobile numbers, your customers are going to have to print. So while selling basic mobile marketing programs might not be profitable, the print jobs necessary to gather the mobile phone numbers to drive them just might be.
It’s no secret that marketing departments are savvy when it comes to direct mail. It’s a channel they’ve traditionally owned. They routinely work with vendors – whether it’s a direct mail house or commercial printshop – who provide access to sophisticated tools for conceiving, creating, composing, personalizing, mail-merging, printing and delivering mail pieces to a designated set of recipients and then measuring campaign effectiveness. For direct mail, they have plenty of tools for interacting with the process, from uploading artwork and providing lists to measuring response rates.
However, when it comes to bills, statements, policies and other production print output, many marketers find it more difficult to navigate the terrain (if they even consider stepping onto it in the first place.)
Why do I think marketers are less engaged with production print?
For starters, there’s the cultural dimension: IT and Operations versus Marketing. Historically production print has been the domain of the technology, operations or billing department, a silo neatly tucked away from creative and marketing types. As a result, many marketing execs simply didn’t consider transactional documents as vehicles for their messages. As awareness grows, marketing teams and even CMOs are starting to recognize the value of the transpromo opportunity. This is especially true as they face mounting pressure to deliver more accountability and better results at a lower cost. However, because they’re new to the game, they may be unsure of what executing a transpromo campaign entails, or how to engage with their traditional rivals in IT.
If you’re a print services provider, this is a golden opportunity.
Maybe you’re already providing direct mail or transactional print services for a particular client. You’ve got a new way to add more business and generate new revenue streams if you can help Marketing bridge the gap with IT. Start by helping marketers understand the potential of adding the statement into the marketing mix. Demonstrate the effectiveness of delivering targeted messages to recipients who are highly likely to spend time with the document. Point out the economies of embedding messages in documents that are delivered in an envelope where the stamp is already paid for. Keep in mind that you also have to win over their IT and operations folks who will be concerned about production cycles, data integrity and the ability to test. These guys want to know that a marketer is not going to be sticking their fingers in the code the day before (or even the week before) production.
Once you’ve convinced Marketing and IT that you have the skills, processes and tools to help them “do transpromo” in a quality controlled and measurable environment, help them foster dialogues with other departments and stakeholders. This might entail determining who maintains the library of messages and conditional business rules that define their use. Finally, provide access to tools that make it as easy to manage content for transaction documents as it is for direct mail – and make sure to measure results. In many cases, the very tools that enable marketers to interact with their suppliers for direct mail campaigns can be adapted for the transpromo world.
In a nutshell, educate them, make the appropriate tools available, facilitate the process and help marketers track results and ROI. It’s a consultative sell – but well worth the effort if it cements your relationship with existing customers or helps to bring you new ones.
Yesterday, I returned from the Print Solutions 2011 Conference and Expo where one of the over-riding themes was, not the death of print, but how digital content is driving print.
“If print is dead,” said Andrew Davis, owner of Tippingpoint Labs in his presentation “Positioning Print for Today’s Customer” (from which these examples were taken), “then why are Google and Yahoo! using direct mail to promote Internet search?”
Good point. As I sat in the presentation, I thought about the multiple direct mail pieces sitting on my own kitchen counter at home. They were from Google, with integrated cards inviting me to expand my AdWords account. Haven’t gotten anything from Yahoo! yet, but it’s probably a matter of time.
When I got home from the trip, I was going through my mail and I had to smile and think of Andrew. Yet another direct mail solicitation from Google.
Have you gotten direct mail from Google lately? If so, what does this say about the viability of print?
There has been a lot of chatter about email vs. direct mail lately, and for good reason. Email is cheap. Email provides instant gratification. Email campaigns can be deployed at the push of a button.
It is no wonder that marketers love email. In fact, according to StrongMail’s 2011 Marketing Trends Report, 65% of businesses are planning to increase their spend on email marketing this year compared to 18% that are planning to increase their spend on direct mail.
So here’s the question. Next time one of your clients tells you they are cutting back on print in favor of email, what are you going to say? (Or do you simply watch their print volumes disappear without asking any questions?) Do you have a response prepared?
If not, here are a few thoughts you might want to have at the ready:
Email has many benefits. So does direct mail. One is not necessarily better than another. Marketers simply need to understand their value and use them in symbiosis, not in competition. But they may not think of that on their own. When you find out they’ve shrunk their print budget in favor of email, will you stand there dumbfounded? Or will you have a response ready?
Ever heard this one before? A print buyer sends the specs for a job specifying “recycled paper”.
We’re talking about recycled “content” here, which is simply any percentage of the paper made from fiber (paper) that has been diverted from a waste stream. This is further broken down into pre- and post-consumer waste components. Commonly, but not always, it’s only the post-consumer portion that’s reported on invoices or printed on the piece its self.
Now, especially since the FTC’s proposals for their new Green Guides have hit the streets, many potentially-effected entities are waiting for the storm concerning the definition of post-consumer waste. This may not seem like a big thing, but it is.
It’s more important than ever now to define “recycled content”. For instance, did you know that under the FTC’s current as well as their proposed guideline, a specific edition of printed matter, say a magazine issue, can be considered either pre-or post-consumer waste depending on where it lives when it’s recycled?
Post-consumer reclaimed/recycled/recovered waste/fiber (PCW or PCRF) definitions are going to become a touchy issue in the coming months. Once the FTC codifies their definition, it will become the de facto standard, and no matter which way the wind blows, the FTC will wind up continuing to put their definition at odds with the interests of others.
The current FTC Guides provide that marketers may make a recycled content claim from materials which have been reclaimed either during the manufacturing process (pre-consumer) or after consumer use (post-consumer). This sounds pretty straight-forward.
Furthermore, the FTC aligns their definition of PCW with that of the EPA’s: “Fiber such as paper, paperboard, and fibrous materials from retail stores, office buildings, homes, and so forth, after they have passed through their end-use as a consumer item; all paper, paperboard, and fibrous materials that enter and are collected from municipal solid waste.”
ISO 14021 however defines post-consumer as: “Material generated by households or by commercial, industrial and institutional facilities in their role as end-users of the product, which can no longer be used for its intended purpose. This includes returns of material from the distribution chain.” A definite difference of opinion.
When it comes to paper certification schemes, under current standards, both FSC and SFI subscribe to the FTC/EPA definitions (SFI actually requires alignment with the FTC rulings no matter what), however PEFC adheres to the ISO definition. That’s where the fun begins.
In response to the new FTC draft, many mills, recyclers and other groups have commented on the wisdom of the ISO definition noting that the FTC Guides should incorporate those definitions of post-consumer recycled content because competing definitions currently cause consumer confusion.
The reality can be summed up to intent. Is the intent that all material in its finished form has an equal recycled value no matter whether it has reached the end user/point of intended use or not? One can certainly argue that a publication which is remaindered (i.e.; never distributed) being exactly the same product as one that was read by the end-user, has exactly the same value in the recovery stream.
We don’t know as of yet which way the FTC will decide to go, but one thing is certain. Somebody’s not going to be happy. If the Guides are published as proposed, does it mean that merchants and printers need to watch all imports for the stated PCW content because they adhere to the ISO definition? Or will international mills have to adjust their PCW standards for exports to the US? It does present an interesting conundrum.
If FTC does adopt the ISO definition what happens to the FSC standards? Will they lower them to fit? Probably not, partially because of one interesting development; FSC released new trademark standards this past spring. The recycled mobius which used to convey the PCW content now conveys all recycled content. I find this a highly interesting development in conveying the message that reclaimed materials as a whole are equally valued.
As a final comment and case study, NewLeaf Reincarnation Matte was first released as a 50% pre and 50% post-consumer waste product (now 60% PCW). Under FSC standards both then and now, in order to use an FSC Recycled label there had to be at least 85% PCW, which meant that although 100% recycled, the FSC Mixed label with a 50% in the mobius had to be used for this product. Now under the new standard, though it’s still an FSC Mixed product, the mobius can state 100%. As Arte Johnson used to say, “Verrry Interesting…”
There has been a lot of discussion in this industry about the value of QR codes on mail that goes into the home. Why would people scan QR codes when there is a home computer available? I’ve cited a number of case studies that show that, in fact, the data do support the fact that people will snap QR codes even when another computer is available. I’ve had rotten tomatoes thrown at me for saying so, too.
Yesterday, I had something fun happen to me. I got a QR code in the mail. Well, to be more accurate, I got it the day before, but I didn’t look at it until the next morning. I’d dropped the mail on the counter and ignored it until the next day when I was making coffee and getting the children ready for school. As I was waiting for the toast to pop, I was getting around to what I should have done yesterday.
There it was — a well executed QR code campaign. It had all the elements that make QR codes work. The code was not over-crowded, it had nice clean white space around it, and the marketer had designed a large arrow to point from the code to an image of a cellphone with an image from the video to which viewers would be taken. The QR code even had instructions below it, including a URL where those without a reader could download one.
The mailer was from Samaritan’s Purse, which runs Operation Christmas Child, which distributes Christmas boxes to needy children around the world. The campaign was well done, and sure enough, it made me want to snap the code so that I could view the video.
I stood there, coffee in hand, and was hit on a personal level with the value of QR codes, even for home-based direct mail. I work from a home office, but what if I had been on my way out to work? How many millions of people read their mail as they are waiting for the coffee pot before running out the door? They might not have the time or attention span to go to the link or view the video right then, but they want to view the content and know that, at some point before they get to their desks, they will.
If I had been on my way out to work, there is little chance that I would ever have seen the video if I’d waited to log in at home. By the time I got home, I’d have forgotten about it, someone would have thrown the envelope away, or I just know myself, it could sit there for six months and I’d never get around to it. But put it on my phone. . .
So this post is for the nay-sayers who threw tomatoes at me for my post, “It’s Official! People Snap QR Codes Even When a Computer Is Available.”
I was just reading an interview with Tony Cox, founder of the multichannel food consultancy 5th Food Group, in Multichannel Merchant. Halfway through, I stopped and said, “Huh? Did I really read that?”
Cox had been asked whether he recommended mailing catalogs anymore or whether catalogs are playing a new role for direct merchants in an online world. He said,
“It’s simple economics—as costs for paper and postage continue to rise, and response rates stay flat or fall, the costs of acquiring customers via list rental is becoming prohibitively expensive.
“Case in point, if the proposed postal rate increase goes through in January, it will be another nail in the coffin for both the Postal Service and for smaller catalog companies.”
Did you see it? The implication was it is becoming prohibitively expensive to acquire customers via list rental by sending them unsolicited catalogs as a prospecting tool. Therefore — and Mr. Cox didn’t say this, but in context — the reader was left to assume that the alternative in today’s postal climate was electronic media.
Mr. Cox did mention catalogs reducing page counts, but there wasn’t a single mention of personalization.
Instead of just writing off print for prospecting, as was implied, why not just switch your prospecting to postcards? Pitch the catalog, then let people choose the products on which they would like information. Send them to a personalized URL, where they can select their product categories, then get them excited about watching for their personalized catalogs in the mail.
If you want to boost response rates, over-size the cards and laminate them. Are they more expensive than traditional postcards? Of course! But they’ll be cheaper to send than catalogs! Then when you do send catalogs, they’ll be slimmer and more cost-effective.
With today’s personalization technologies, creating personalized catalogs is easier than ever. Software vendors like Gluon have created online-based solutions optimized for creating publications that are absolutely terrific. Even small companies can use them. Especially when customers self-select their own categories, there is no excuse for not personalizing these days.
The bottom line is that there is no need to abdicate print. Catalogers just need to do it smarter!
It’s too bad that message didn’t make it into the interview.
