In The News

This Time, it’s Personal: Making a Connection with your Consumers.

In the competitive business world, it is the marketer’s job to ensure that the value of the marketing dollar is stretched to its economic potential.  But many times the ROI of a campaign is not achieving the goals of the department.  Not only is it the job of a marketer to produce results, but also to illustrate how their campaigns have produced revenue for the company.  There is a way to tangibly validate marketing efforts at the same time as increasing ROI.  Welcome to the next generation of targeted, one-to-one marketing.

Variable Data Printing, VDP, is a term that marketers around the world are hearing more and more these days.  Historically, VDP has been the most efficient way to turn marketing dollars into revenue.  VDP is not a new concept, but with the advances in technology that have been made in the past five years, the capabilities of VDP have increased dramatically.

When dissected, the fundamental functions of VDP are much like a turbo mail merge.  The placement of a name, address, number or even greeting within a marketing piece can assist in piquing the reader’s interest; resulting in a higher ROI.  However, VDP has taken this process and completely redefined direct marketing by offering an almost unlimited amount of personalization to marketing materials.  Now, the loud, impersonal messaging in literature has been replaced with a sense of kinship and quiet.  The ability to form a personal connection with a consumer is one of the most valuable marketing techniques.

One of the biggest strengths of VDP is the capacity to evaluate a campaign’s effectiveness.  By using carriers within a campaign, tracking results has never been easier.  VDP also affords the opportunity for a marketer to distribute little shots of a campaign, evaluate the results and decide if the campaign will be cost effective on a large scale.

To better understand the capacities and benefits of this process, let’s look at an example.  You are the marketing director for a travel company.  Pretend that you are sitting at your desk creating the next direct mail marketing campaign for vacations.  You know that this piece is going to be mailed out to 10,000 potential customers and clients. You also know that each one of those clients is different and, therefore, has different interests. How do you customize one piece of literature to fit 10,000 personalities?

The research team you work with has compiled lists of data about your prospects and clients.  You have read all the reports, crunched all the numbers and analyzed all the demographics.  The clock is ticking!    

You design the mailing piece, a simple 5” x 7” flat mailer.  On the front you have a graphic next to the area where the mailing address will be printed along with the name of your company.  On the back, you have inserted a greeting, various promotional copy, and an area where you will insert personalized information about travel destinations based on data collected about your mailing list recipients.  You know that when Bob, the fun loving hiker from Omaha, opens his mail box, he will find a marketing piece that is tailored to his needs.  Not only will the piece say, “Is it time to get away Bob?” it will also include a graphic that shows a hiking trail and promotional information about the hottest hiking destinations in the world. 

Mary from Tucson, who loves to scuba dive, will be delighted to see the lush reef on her mailer and the information about how your company can have her diving in Belize by New Year’s.  The possibilities go on and on. 

VDP has taken the lead in direct marketing processes.  As the volume of business competition increases it is imperative to afford your marketing efforts the opportunity to succeed.  Whether a mailer, a catalog, signage, sales packet or a basic label, VDP can deliver high quality output at prices comparable to traditional offset printing.

How would you like to send out 50% fewer mailers and still get a 5% response rate? You could save on printing, mail services and postage. You would get actually  get a Return-On-Investiment from your marketing program. And salespeople would get a higher percentage of inquiries turning into sales. Sounds like a dream world? Not if you give us a call.

For a quote, please call 781-891-4328.