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Use FOMO to Motivate Recipients to Action

Whether you are creating a direct mail piece, an email, or a social media post, FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out,” is a powerful tool. Harnessing FOMO can drive engagement and conversions by creating a sense of urgency and exclusivity, compelling customers to act quickly so they don’t miss out on something good.

There are different types of FOMO:

Social FOMO: The fear of being excluded from social interactions or popular events: “Everyone else is going. Are you?”

Informational FOMO: The fear of missing out on knowledge or insights, typically related to educational content, webinars, or industry developments.

Experiential FOMO: This is the fear of missing out on unique experiences, such as travel opportunities or concerts: “Exclusive One-Time Event!”

Transactional FOMO: This is the fear of missing out on a limited-time offer or discount: “This offer won’t last! Buy now!”

FOMO Marketing in Action

What might this look like in action? Here are some examples of using FOMO in the headline of a postcard or the subject line of an email:

• Exclusive Offers: “Unlock Exclusive Deals—Only Available to Our Subscribers!”
• Limited Availability: “Hurry! Only 10 Seats Left!”
• Time-Limited Promotions: “Flash Sale: 24 Hours Only!”

FOMO works in calls to action, too.

• Urgent Actions: “Shop Now! These Prices Won’t Last!”
• Exclusivity: “Limited Stock Available! Act Now!”
• Engaging Events: “VIP Event of the Year—50% Off Today Only!”

You can see examples of FOMO marketing when you visit an e-commerce site and see a timer counting down the days, hours, and minutes of a promotional offer. Or real-time sales notifications popping up as you peruse a landing page: “Susie from Portage, MI, just signed up! Subscribe today and save big!”

FOMO can be a powerful marketing tool that instills a sense of urgency and exclusivity. Incorporating the various types of FOMO into your marketing strategies can enhance customer engagement and boost sales. The key is to balance creating urgency and providing genuine value. Need help creating the right balance? Contact us. We’d love to help.

5 Tips for Designing Personalized Direct Mail

While we all know that personalizing your direct mail pieces can improve marketing results, the process can seem intimidating. What do you need to watch for? How can you make sure nothing goes wrong? Here are five tips for getting started on the right foot.

1. Use the Right Data, Not Just More Data.

More data doesn’t always mean better results. Focus on quality, not quantity. Collect information that reflects your target audience’s preferences, behaviors, and demographics to create messages that resonate. This can include past purchase history, interaction frequency, and customer feedback.

2. Design Around the Longest and Shortest Fields.

When crafting mail pieces, consider the variations in field lengths within your database. What’s the longest field you have? What’s the shortest? If you include the name of a recipient’s college alma mater, for example, make sure the layout can accommodate “The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill” and “Boston College.”

3. Always Have a Default Ready.

Inevitably, some data fields may be empty or incomplete. The last thing you want is a personalized piece to say, “Dear [BLANK]”! Set a default such as “Dear Valued Customer” to ensure that your direct mail still feels personal, even if the data in one of the fields is missing.

4. Keep Your Database Clean and Updated.

You can’t have truly personalized, relevant direct mail pieces if your data is outdated. Regularly audit your database to remove duplicates, correct inaccuracies, and update any data that might have become outdated. Implement best practices for data entry and set a schedule for regular updates.

5. Don’t Forget the Images.

Images can be personalized, too. Consider using images that reflect the recipient’s preferences, demographics, or past interactions with your brand. For instance, don’t send pictures of young families to retirees. Match the images to the demographic to make it feel more relevant.

Designing for personalized direct mail requires a strategic approach grounded in quality data and the ability to think ahead and anticipate. By following these five tips, you’ll be well on your way to personalizing great direct mail. If you need help, just ask!

Direct Mail for Short Attention Spans

Direct mail is changing. This channel remains highly effective, but most people don’t have the attention spans they used to. Mail that is fast and easy to scan is winning the day. According to Who’s Mailing What! (WMW!), a database of nearly 300,000 direct mail pieces, the average word count used in marketing copy for envelopes, postcards, and self-mailers has dropped by 24%, 30%, and 29%, respectively, over the past 20 years.

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7 Ways “Working Backwards” Keeps You on Schedule

Whether you are sending direct mail only or integrating direct mail with other channels, marketing has many moving parts. The final “send” or “go live” is simply the last link in the chain. To ensure that the whole project stays on schedule, work backward to ensure each component is on schedule.

To get started, sit down with your team and answer the following questions:

1. What is the “in-home” window for the printed piece?
2. What is your final deadline for submitting materials? If you are sending through multiple channels, what are the final deadlines for each?
3. Who is writing the copy, and how long will it take?
4. Are you using stock images or creating the artwork yourself? Who is making those decisions, and how long will that take?
5. Who will be doing the design and layout? What is the time budget for that?
6. How many approvals do you need? How much additional time should be added?
7. How long will it take to print, finish, and mail?

The first answer provides your end date (or dates). Once you have that, you can work backward to determine when you need to start each component. Pad each time estimate by a factor of 1.5 to 3 times, depending on your confidence in the numbers.

Once the project is complete, remember how well you stuck to the timeline. If you got off track, where did you get bogged down? What needs to be adjusted next time to create a more accurate time estimate?

Don’t beat yourself up for making mistakes. Along the way, you learned something, such as when your creative staff says, “It takes us one day to turn around the proof of concept,” they mean two days. Or that you need to consider transportation time when you make your project plan.

Keeping up with your schedule takes some practice and thoughtful planning. If you need help, reach out to someone with experience—us! We’ve got lots of project planning experience, so just ask away! We’re here to help.

The Right Way to Use Bullet Points

When you look at any printed material, what catches your attention first? Often, it’s the bullet points. These concise and impactful lists naturally draw the eye, making them a key element in any layout.

Given the strong influence of bullet points, it’s easy to want to use them to highlight your product’s benefits right away. However, research from MECLABS suggests that, especially in categories where customers may feel uncertain or anxious (for example, products that might be highly technical or unfamiliar), it can be more effective to use bullet points to address their fears and objections first.

MECLABS, which studies consumer behavior, provides an example of a tech company that successfully applied this strategy. The company aimed to ease potential customers’ worries about purchasing a service (web hosting) often seen as complicated and intimidating. Instead of leading with benefits, MECLABS recommended that the company use bullet points to tackle buyer discomfort or uncertainty first. So, the web hosting company crafted the following set of bullet points to highlight key offerings, including:

• 24/7 technical and customer support
• Top global accreditations
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Comprehensive security solutions
• Recognition as a trusted provider

While the company could have started with the features and benefits, these wouldn’t have resonated if potential customers felt insecure about buying these types of services in the first place. Once buyers’ concerns about the larger category were addressed, the audience became more willing to consider the specific benefits of the web hosting services offered. The result? A remarkable 188% increase in response rates compared to a traditional approach.

This example illustrates just one effective way to use bullet points, but it underscores a vital principle for any business in its marketing communications, whether in print or online. If your audience has worries about your product category, leverage the attention-grabbing nature of bullet points to address those concerns upfront. Doing so will make your audience more open to the rest of your message.

How Positive Messaging Can Elevate Your Brand

In a world flooded with uncertainty and unrest, consider something radical: Embracing positivity! Themes centered around kindness, compassion, and optimism resonate with today’s consumers. Here are five strategies to infuse positivity into your print and digital designs.

1. Incorporate Uplifting Visuals: Select images that convey strength, security, and success. These visuals create a sense of well-being and foster a positive emotional response. Whether you’re promoting vacations or household appliances, calming tones and inspiring colors make your audience feel good.
2. Prioritize Simplicity: In times of uncertainty, consumers crave simplicity. Aim for clean, uncluttered layouts. Focus on positive themes in your messaging and allow this to shape your design, making it straightforward and approachable.
3. Build Trust: Trust is crucial in consumer decisions. Research shows that 88% of individuals who deeply trust a brand will likely make repeat purchases and 73% are open to trying new offerings. Use peaceful colors, visuals, and themes that cultivate a sense of reliability and trustworthiness.
4. Emphasize Authenticity: Today’s consumers value authenticity. Strive for genuine connections by featuring real people, testimonials, and user-generated content. This approach reminds your audience that they engage with relatable individuals, not just a faceless company.
5. Align with Your Brand Values: Consumers increasingly prefer brands that stand for something meaningful. 82% want to engage with brands that reflect their values, while 63% say they would switch to a competitor if there’s a disconnect. Identify your core values—environmental responsibility, social justice, or community support—and align them with what resonates with your customers.

The Profitability of Positive Engagement

Why should you focus on positivity in your marketing? Positive messaging naturally attracts like-minded consumers, and optimistic buyers are more profitable. Research from Hearst indicates that 77% of positive individuals act after engaging with marketing content, compared to only 63% of those who feel less optimistic.

Adopting a positive mindset in your marketing efforts will attract optimistic thinkers and unlock the potential for more success. Embrace the power of positivity and watch your brand thrive!

The Power of White Space: Enhancing Design, Improving Communication

White space, often called negative space, is the space between and around design elements. While it may seem counterintuitive to leave parts of a design blank, white space is crucial in making a design visually appealing and effective. Here are five ways that white space does just that.

1. Visual Clarity: White space helps to create a sense of balance and organization. By providing breathing room around elements, white space prevents the design from feeling cluttered and overwhelming. Take a look at Apple’s website. Notice how the generous use of white space helps to highlight the products and make the overall design feel clean and modern. Whether you are designing for print or digital, Apple’s website exemplifies the power white space offers.
2. Readability: White space can significantly impact the readability of text. Adequate spacing between lines and paragraphs improves legibility and makes it easier for readers to follow along. Similarly, generous margins around text blocks can prevent the text from feeling cramped. White space can also enhance readability.
3. Comprehension: White space can improve comprehension by guiding the viewer’s eye through the design. For example, Nike’s advertising and branding often feature bold, impactful imagery with minimalist text and design elements. Nike’s print ads, for instance, frequently use white space to draw attention to the product or critical message while also creating a sense of elegance and sophistication.
4. Emphasis and Focus: White space can be used to emphasize key elements of a design. By surrounding important elements with white space, designers can draw attention to them and make them stand out. This ensures that the viewer’s attention is focused where it matters most.
5. Aesthetic Appeal: Beyond its functional benefits, white space can enhance the aesthetic appeal of a design. Well-balanced designs that effectively use white space are often perceived as more elegant, sophisticated, and professional.

White space is a powerful design element that should not be overlooked. You can improve visual clarity, readability, comprehension, emphasis, and overall aesthetic appeal by strategically incorporating white space into your designs. Whether designing a website, a brochure, or a poster, remember that sometimes less is more!

Still Hesitating on Personalization?

While personalization is all around us, not every marketer takes advantage of its benefits. A study from NAPCO Research found that if you aren’t personalizing your direct mail, you’re at a competitive disadvantage.

The research from more than 1,300 marketers in various industry verticals found that two-thirds of these campaigns are either personalized or segmented. Of those, the split is even between fully personalized (35%) and segmented (31%). Only 34% of marketers are using the mass media approach. If you aren’t personalizing, you are behind the curve!

While “personalization” has been around for a while, the type of personalization is changing. Most personalization used to be the superficial kind: name only (“Dear <<FIRST NAME>>”). Today, highly personalized mailings have become mainstream, defined as those including variable images, text, or large portions being fully dynamic. More than one-quarter (27%) of marketers use this personalization level. Twenty-six percent are using custom text and offers.

Of course, it takes more investment to produce personalized mailings than static or segmented ones, but marketers are seeing the results. Overall, 44% of respondents say that personalized marketing campaigns have increased their response rates, on average, by 16%.

The percentage of marketers not personalizing their campaigns is surprising. Perhaps even more surprising is the percentage of people who aren’t tracking their results. Take, for example, nonprofits. According to NAPCO Research, 41% of nonprofits use personalization, yet these same organizations are the most likely to say they don’t know whether personalization helps (39%). Conversely, retailers are the most likely to be tracking their results (78%), and among this group, the percentage that says they are benefiting from personalization rises to 55%. You don’t know if it’s working if you’re not tracking!

The takeaway? In today’s highly competitive marketing environment, personalized and segmented marketing works. But when you personalize, track your results. It’s critical to know what’s working and what’s not. This way, you can justify your additional investment and tweak your campaigns to produce the greatest possible return.

5 Ways to Use Direct Mail for Customer Retention

Direct mail is a powerful tool for retaining customers and building loyalty. It can remind customers about your brand, offer exclusive discounts or promotions, and provide enticing content that keeps your consumers coming back. Let’s look at five ways to incorporate direct mail into your customer retention efforts.

1. Personalization

Personalizing direct mail with customers’ names or preferences is a great way to make them feel special, valued, and appreciated. This can be as simple as embedding their names in the text or as sophisticated as sending coupons tailored to their past purchases. Consumers are used to seeing personalization in digital marketing, but less so on paper. When they see their names in print, it stands out and makes them feel special.

2. Special Offers

Special offers and promotions are a great way to keep customers engaged with your brand. Especially when you make offers that aren’t available to everyone else. Think “customer only” sneak peeks or VIP access through your loyalty program. People love feeling like an insider!

3. Tangibility

Who feels special getting a digital coupon? Hardly anyone. But people feel special receiving vibrant, high-quality mailers on heavy stock or “backstage passes” embossed with metalized foil. These are tangible tokens of value and make a loud statement. Customers also tend to hang onto printed offers far longer than digital ones, extending your marketing reach.

4. No Opt-Out Option

There is no “opt-out” option for direct mail. Use mailers to engage with people who have not opted into your email communications or to send “We miss you!” offers to customers who have lapsed. Invite patrons to participate in surveys to find out how you’re doing and if they have lapsed, how you can make it right. Sometimes, you haven’t done anything wrong. People want to continue to engage with your brand. Their inboxes are full; direct mail is the perfect way to stay in touch.

5. Use Creative Formatting

Be creative when designing your direct mail pieces. Add novelty elements that keep people interacting with the piece longer than typical print materials. Don’t be afraid to experiment with coupon cards, folded mini-brochures, and 3D objects (like pop-up cards and mailers).

By using these strategies, businesses can effectively use direct mail for customer retention while ensuring their messages stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Benefits of Adding Lifetime Customer Value (LCV) to Your Marketing Metrics

Lifetime Customer Value (LCV), also known as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), is a metric that helps you, as a marketer, to understand the total worth of a customer to your business. By focusing on LCV, you can make better-informed decisions on allocating resources effectively, enhancing customer relationships, and driving long-term profitability.

How to Calculate Lifetime Customer Value

Lifetime Customer Value is a projection of the total revenue you can expect from a single customer throughout their relationship with you. It encompasses all purchases made by the customer and considers the profitability of those purchases.

How you calculate LCV can vary depending on the business model and desired detail level. Here is a simplified formula to get you started:

LCV = (Average Purchase Value) x (Number of Purchases per Year) x (Customer Lifespan in Years)

That doesn’t sound so bad, right? Calculating LCV has a lot of benefits, including:

1. Better resource allocation. By knowing the LCV, you can focus on acquiring high-value customers and invest in retention strategies that maximize long-term profitability.
2. Better customer segmentation: LCV helps identify customer segments based on their value. This allows you to tailor your marketing efforts to high-value segments using personalized offers and services.
3. More accurate marketing ROI: This ensures your marketing budget is spent efficiently in acquiring and retaining profitable customers.
4. Better strategic planning: LCV helps you forecast revenue, identify growth opportunities, and make data-driven decisions.
5. Competitive advantage: Companies that leverage LCV can gain a competitive edge by understanding their customers better and delivering superior value.

Real-Life Example

What might this look like in real life? Consider a subscription-based streaming service. By calculating the LCV of their subscribers, the company can determine how much to spend on marketing to acquire new subscribers. For instance, if the average subscriber pays $10 per month and stays subscribed for three years, the LCV would be:

LCV = $10 x 12 x 3 = $360

This information helps the company decide on a budget for acquisition costs, ensuring that they spend less than $360 to acquire a new subscriber, thus maintaining profitability.

What difference can knowing LCV make for your marketing?