What’s Working in the World of Personalized Printing? By Heidi Tolliver-Walker Let’s face it. It’s not difficult to add a name to a direct mail letter or the front of a personalized postcard. If it is incorporated creatively into the design, especially if it uses unusual effects such as metallics or dimensional printing, the recipient is even more likely to stop and take the extra look. But true personalization goes beyond name, no matter how creatively employed. What are some of the other ways to increase the level of personalization that are within reach of most quick and small commercial printers and their clients? Finding the Right Vertical Markets For most clients, the extent of most personalization involves using the recipient’s name on the front of a postcard or in the opening of a direct mail letter, then once or twice in the body of the letter, as well. How to get them to go deeper? One of the tricks, printers are finding, is to identify the vertical markets in which companies have a lot of data on their customers but the number of products and services is limited, and where the lifetime value of the customer makes it worth the effort. This makes data analysis and profiling much easier to justify. These include verticals such as automotive, mortgage services, utilities, and telecom. “Clients like mortgage companies and utilities can use their existing customer information to say, ‘If you do this, we can save you this much money, or if we can reduce your rate by such and such,” noted Kris Koeber, who handles customer service for Rockville Printing and Graphics based in Rockville, MD. “They’ll create pieces that say, ‘This is how much you spent this year. This is radius and household income. But working with Accu-Print and its marketing service arm, the e.f. marketing group, it took a more strategic approach. First Brake Check did a deeper analysis of its customer base and created a profile of its best customers. Then it targeted new custowmers that looked just like them. The results? In an A/B split, the personalized approach garnered a 3.6 percent response rate compared to one percent for the static. It also brought in 541 coupons, while the static campaign brought in only 45 coupons. But where the campaign really shined was in the revenue metrics. Not only were recipients of the personalized mailings three times more likely to redeem their coupons, but they spent more money when they how much we can save you if you do this.’” These campaigns tend to produce high response rates. Mailings may be driven by regulatory requirements or the desire to keep customers in-house rather than them defecting to a competitor who can offer them a better deal. Another market that falls into this category is automotive service. We’ve all seen trigger-based service announcements from the service departments of large car dealerships based on the date of last service. “It’s been 25,000 miles since your last tune-up on your 2012 Honda Odyssey,” followed by a list of maintenance items recommended. More Responses, More Revenues We’re seeing this approach used to gather new customers, too. For example, Brake Check, an automotive service company with 40+ locations in Texas, used personalized direct mail to announce its new location. In the past, Brake Check targeted the mailings based on geographic 16 Quick Printing | April 2015 MyPRINTResource.com
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