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Brain cell neurons making direct connections with each other

October 26, 2022

Why Our Brains Prefer Direct Mail Over Email

Want to geek out on marketing science? Check out neuromarketing, a field examining consumers’ responses to marketing stimuli. Neuroscience looks at how the brain receives and processes information, and neuromarketing looks specifically at the impact of this process on the various marketing channels. Spoiler alert: These studies consistently find that while email is an important channel, it isn’t for everything. Especially for higher-end products that require more thought processing, direct mail is a better approach.

How do researchers come to these conclusions? They use three primary methods:

Eye tracking: Camera and infrared technology that monitor eye movements in speed and duration of attention. Eye tracking tracks visual attention in reaction to predetermined areas of interest.

Core biometrics: Sensors placed on participants’ fingertips that measure heart rate, skin conductance (sweat), motion, and respiration: Core biometrics gauge the depth of emotional engagement.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FRMI): Brain scanners measure changes in oxygenated blood flow to reveal regional activation during a task or experience. FRMI pinpoints specific deep brain activity beyond surface cognitive function (e.g., empathy and reward).

What do these methods show? A good example comes from one study conducted by Temple University’s Center for Neural Decision Making in concert with the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General (OIG). The study found that while participants could process the information from digital ads more quickly than from print ads, the details weren’t retained or recalled as easily later.

What made participants more likely to retain and recall that information more easily in print?

They spent more time with physical ads.
They had more robust emotional responses to those ads.
While they stated similar preferences and willingness to pay for the item, whether it was delivered in physical or digital format, their brain activity indicated a greater subconscious desire for printed products.

“These findings have practical implications for marketers,” note the report’s authors. “If short on time, the digital format captures attention quicker. However, for longer lasting impact and easy recollection, a physical mail piece is the superior option.”

So, there you have it! When given a choice between print and digital media, especially for products and services that require deep cognitive processing, the brain loves print.

Person holding a bucket with letters falling into it

October 12, 2022

Four Data “Buckets” and How They Can Benefit Your Messaging

Shoppers today expect their marketing messages to be highly targeted to their wants and needs. The good news is there is a ton of data for use in targeting, whether you gather it yourself or purchase it from a reputable list company. But what are the best ways to use that data? There are many different categories of data, and each can be used for various purposes. Let’s look at four data categories and how they can be used.

Demographic data: Demographic data are the most specific data types and create large customer “buckets” that can be used to market the right products to the right people. As two straightforward examples, the types of clothing you will offer teenagers will differ from the types of clothing you will offer thirty-somethings, and the type of landscaping services you suggest will differ whether someone’s home sits on a .5-acre lot or a 15-acre farm. There are limitations to how much demographics can tell you, but they can be an essential starting point.

Geographic data: Where someone lives can give you important insights, too. Customers in the Northeast will be open to different products in January and February than those in the Southwest. Customers in urban areas generally have other priorities and needs than those in rural settings. There are many geographic “slices,” so find the right ones that make sense for your products.

Interests: Cross-referencing your customer data with interest-based data can also be incredibly useful. For example, knowing whether people in your database donate to charitable causes, purchase hunting or fishing equipment, or participate in ultra-marathons will give you even more ways to divide your target audience into relevant segments.

Past purchases: Tracking customer purchases can teach you a lot about your customers and help you anticipate what they might need next. If someone purchased a pair of general-purpose walking shoes in January, for example, they will likely need a new pair one year or so later. If, on the other hand, they purchased a pair of high-end trail running shoes, they are likely logging serious miles and will need replacements within the next three to four months.

Customer targeting doesn’t have to be complicated. It just requires finding the correct type of data to match your marketing goals, then being intentional about how to use it.

Need help? Just ask!

January 12, 2022

Keep Them Thinking About You

In marketing, there is one thing worth more than gold. It istop of mind. Being top of mind means that when someone thinks about your product category, they think of you. Delivery services? Most people think of FedEx and UPS. Soft drinks? They think Coke and Pepsi. Laundry detergent? Tide. Are you top of mind in your category? If not, how do you get there?

Here are five ways to stay top of mind with your customers:

1. Promote your selling proposition.

Every company has (or should have) aunique selling proposition. This is the reason people should buy from you. Think about DiGiorno frozen pizza. “It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno,” right? Their selling proposition is a compelling one — it tastes like delivery without the wait. What’s your selling proposition? Identify it, then articulate it clearly, consistently, and briefly in all of your marketing communications. Keep saying it!

2. Create a consistent visual identity.

There are certain brands you can identify from a mile away: their colors, their design style, their spokesperson, or mascot. A consistent brand identity isenormous when staying top of mind. Create a consistent look and feel in everything from your direct mail to your company stationery. Use templates if necessary.

3. Stay out there.

A one-time advertising blitz can get your message out quickly, but you build credibility and stay top of mind with regular, timely communications. Drip your marketing communications a little at a time to remain part of the conversion.

4. Use multiple touchpoints.

Direct mail is highly effective in reinforcing a personal bond between your company and your customers. Multiple media support that message by touching prospects at different times and ways. Send a customized letter giving your best prospects the inside track on a new product. Follow up with email. Send a postcard or brochure when the product is available. Send a note of thanks when the client makes a purchase.

5. Timing is everything.

Strategically plan repeated communications so customers perceive you as a provider of helpful information rather than an intrusive pest. This requires both organization and dedication.

Never before have consumers had so many choices. Staying top of mind will lift you out of a noisy marketplace and increase customer retention and response rates.

December 21, 2021

The SGP Certification and Why It Matters?

If your company pursues sustainability as part of its mission, you need to know about the Sustainable Green Partnership (SGP) and its SGP certification for printers. This certification is rapidly gaining traction as a way for businesses to show their commitment to sustainable printing by working with SGP certified printers and therefore adhere to specific environmental obligations.

The SGP is a non-profit organization that certifies printing facilities’ sustainability best practices, including and beyond regulatory compliance. Its certification considers the entire print facility – its process, its products, and its social areas. SGP certification elevates a printer into an elite group of sustainable printers recognized by print buyers and the printing industry.

What is necessary to become an SGP-certified printer?

Here are just some of the criteria:

Formal sustainability policy includes full regulatory compliance, focus on continual improvement, and transparency with all stakeholders.

Establishment of a sustainability committee that meets regularly and includes both management and employees.

Adherence to all environmental, safety, and health regulations as documented by environmental audits every two years.

Formal policy supporting continuous improvements around one of the sustainability “pillars” of planet or people.

A written procedure for change management, including energy usage and audit, environmental and air emissions assessments, the environmental impact of equipment and consumables purchases, employee exposure to hazardous materials, compliance with environmental, safety, and health requirements, and solid waste generation and audit.

Documented training procedures.

Regular communications and accountability to stakeholders, including employees, the community, customers, and suppliers.

Documented procedure for checking and correction, as necessary.

When you work with an SGP-certified printing partner, you are working with a company that has a proven record of using best practices that support a robust environmental policy. Combine this with ordering environmentally certified substrates for your marketing and packaging projects, and you are making smart, responsible choices for our environment and your company.

November 17, 2021

Silos Are for Farmers, Not Marketers

Got a silo problem? If you’re like most companies doing targeted and personalized marketing, you do. You may have plenty of customer data, but it might be in different places (silos), and these places often aren’t talking to each other. As a result, your marketing is less effective than it could be.

Here are some risks to having siloed data:

Unhappy customers. Whenever mail gets lost because you have the wrong address, whenever a mail piece arrives with a bad name, or you offer to sell a long-term customer a product they already own, you risk alienating that customer.

High costs. The average price of every piece of returned mail is $3 (Source: Pitney Bowes). This is not just the postage and printing. It’s the cost of the piece coming back to you, figuring out what went wrong, and taking the time to fix it.

Lost sales. How many marketing opportunities are lost because the data on customers’ preferences and behavior is siloed in different departments? That translates into lost revenue.

Let’s look at five steps for getting rid of those silos.

1. Connect inbound mail to outbound mail. Build-in tracking mechanisms that allow you to connect the incoming to outgoing mail. This can be as simple as adding a barcode unique to each participant. When the response envelope comes in, the barcode is scanned. This connects the incoming mail to the outbound file, linking the customer information together.

2. Centralize data capture. Centralize mail processing in one location. Capture mail coming in from marketing, sales, customer service, web forms, and anywhere else in your company.

3. Extract what you need. Your mail contains lots of essential details that can be useful to your print and digital marketing. Extract all of the insights you can, including names, addresses, channel preferences, transaction history, and customer surveys. Input it into a centralized database that can be accessed throughout the organization.

4. Look and learn. Assign someone with a marketing and data background to analyze your database to understand what it tells you. Contained in there are critical nuggets about customer behavior, channel preferences, and more. Need help? Just ask!

5. Put it to use. With a closed-loop on your mail communications and a centralized, up-to-date database accessible by all departments, you have a powerful marketing tool at your disposal. Take what you can learn and use it to improve your targeted and personalized direct mail marketing or other customer communications.

September 25, 2021

Online Print Portals Help Manage Projects, Inventory, and Save Time and Money

Using an Online Print Portal Can Save You Time And Money

You’ve probably heard about the many benefits of electronic storefronts. Or maybe you’ve heard of them as “e-commerce portals,” “branded portals,” or “Web-To-Print Portals.” Whatever you call them, these useful tools allow you to store, manage, and customize your print projects online.

Printing Command Central

• Need 500 copies of a product brochure? Order them on demand without ever speaking to a salesperson.

• Need to regularly update prices, swap out images, or tweak the copy in catalogs and company manuals? Ditch your warehoused inventory, keep products updated in real-time, and print as you go.

• Want to enable store managers to create their own promotions without compromising the brand? Offer online templates for direct mail, signage, and email with all of the branded elements locked down.

Review

The Print-on-Demand benefits of these portals are endless. But there are other benefits, too, such as full visibility into inventory and order, that are less understood and underutilized. With customizable reports, you can gain full visibility into which products are being ordered, when, and by whom. You can select monthly, quarterly, or annual reports, and you can get information in real-time, too.

Manage

For example, is there a brochure that is not moving? If so, this knowledge gives you the opportunity to ask why. Is it a new product that you haven’t promoted properly, so it isn’t being used because users do not realize it is there? Is it an old product that isn’t being used because it needs to be updated? Has the brochure become irrelevant? Does it simply need to be removed from the system?

Edit

Just because something is slow-moving does not mean it needs to be removed, however. For some slow-moving sellers, you may simply want to move them to print-on-demand to free up warehousing space. Or, conversely, you may find that certain products are now selling like gangbusters, so you want to move them from POD to bulk printings to be picked and packed from the warehouse.

Ship

You can also identify opportunities based on user behavior. Say you sell your products through distributors, and sales of several of the distributors are lagging. You check their order history and find that they order fewer marketing materials than other distributors. You set up a training session on how to use these materials, provide incentives for ordering them, and lo and behold! Sales start to increase.

Train

With most online print portals, you can access reports 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Take advantage! Use the information to optimize your library and get the most out of the marketing materials that you have invested in.

September 14, 2021

Survey: Print Is Safe, Secure, Trustworthy, and Eco-Friendly

Survey: Print Is Safe, Secure, Trustworthy, and Eco-Friendly

If something is proven safe, secure, and trustworthy, you’d embrace it, right? Now add in that it is also eco-friendly, and you have a product anyone would love. There is such a product, and it’s print. After years of research on consumer attitudes and preferences, print remains consumers’ preferred channel for safety, security, trustworthiness, and sustainability.

Here are some takeaways from research conducted by Two Sides and Toluna, a global polling firm:

91% of U.S. consumers surveyed agree that, when responsibly produced, used, and recycled, print and paper are sustainable ways to communicate.
86% of those in the 18- to 24-year-old age group see print as eco-friendly.
78% of Americans keep hard copies of essential documents filed at home because they see it as the safest and most secure way of storing information.
56% of Americans trust the news stories they read in printed newspapers.
Only 35% of Americans trust the news stories they read on social media.

“Although we regularly hear [that] corporations are going digital or ‘paperless’ as safe, secure, and more [sustainable], this is not a shared opinion by a vast majority of the public, who seem to trust paper for many applications,” says Phil Riebel, president of Two Sides North America.

Furthermore, with the increase in online security breaches and “fake news,” Riebel notes the clear advantages of print on paper. “I believe more and more people will become concerned about what may happen to their personal information held electronically,” he says. “Seventy-six percent of people are now concerned, but that may go up even more.”

The value of print has never been more clear, especially for companies in markets such as insurance, financial services, and medical and pharmaceutical technologies, where safety, security, and trustworthiness remain “make or break” issues for consumers. In these and similar markets, the print channel remains indispensable.

September 10, 2021

Shoppers: How Brands Treat People Matters

Shoppers: How Brands Treat People Matters

How brands treat people during national crises like a global pandemic impacts shoppers’ purchase decisions. This means that even subtle elements in your direct mail, email, and newsletter messaging matter—a lot.

This is the finding of the Global Web Index (GWI), one of the premier players in the consumer data industry. According to GWI’s report “The Fragile (im)Balance: How Media & Brand Narratives Can Support Women Post-Pandemic,” shoppers are sensitive to narratives around the messaging used by brands and the media, especially during challenging times.

According to GWI, 45% of women say that a brand/company showing support to people during the pandemic impacts their purchasing decisions. This rises to 48% of mothers. In something GWI calls “the dad effect,” this concern is higher among men than women — 50% — and reaches its highest level among fathers at 56%.

The “dad effect” is seen around issues of gender equality, as well. When asked whether they agree that brands and the media have the power to shape how women see themselves during challenging times, 64% of women agreed, rising to 69% of mothers. Men were even more likely to agree with this statement (66%), rising to 74% of fathers. This is attributed to fathers’ desire to have gender fairness and equality modeled for their daughters.

In light of these findings, GWI recommends promoting the following positive messaging in shopper-facing communications:

Valuing women’s health, including their mental health.
Normalizing and encouraging women’s self-care.
Showing concern for the realities of the often chaotic and stressful nature of home life.
Promoting women getting support from their male partners.
Promoting women connecting with other women.

So be intentional in your messaging. Acknowledge these issues. Use language that inspires and encourages. Whether you sell shoes or sushi, show that you care about your audience’s problems, and your message will resonate.

September 7, 2021

Want Better Direct Mail Copy? Tighten It Up!

What’s one of the keys to creating great direct mail copy? Keeping it tight!

Over the years, the amount of copy used in direct mail campaigns has dropped. In fact, according to Who’s Mailing What! (WMW!), a national database of direct mail, the amount of copy used in direct mail pieces has dropped by a whopping 62% over the past two decades.

WMW! discovered this trend after analyzing its direct mail database for its “Top 21 Direct Mail Trends for 2021” report. It cites Amazon.com as a prime example:

For years, [Amazon has] been mailing letters to remind Prime members that they’re entitled to watch Prime Video, but there’s a big difference in word count from 2014 to 2021 example. [In the 2021 piece,] you see…

Shorter sentences,
Much smaller paragraphs, [and]
A few bullet points.

This finding is consistent with what we are seeing elsewhere in the direct mail space. Shoppers are busy, and they have limited time to read. Rather than text-heavy copy, more and more mailers are using images, charts, and graphics that readers can digest quickly.

The trend toward shorter copy ties in another trend on WMW!’s list—the growth in the use of postcards. With any direct mail piece, but especially postcards, you have only a fraction of a second to grab someone’s attention and get your message across before they move on to something else.

If your direct mail copy – whether a letter, a postcard, or any other marketing piece — looks text-heavy, think about where you might be able to tighten up. Where can you use charts or images instead of words? Can you break concepts into bullet points? Imagine that you only have half the space to work with – what information can go?

Buyers are busy, so make it easy on them. Tighten it up! Need help? Talk to us about our services 713.956.8555

September 3, 2021

Is Brand Awareness Worth the Investment?

Is Brand Awareness Worth the Investment?

We all want to sell more products and services, and for decades, brand awareness has been the subject of research and study. Is this a good investment of your marketing dollars? To what extent does brand awareness truly influence the final purchase decision? As it turns out, quite a lot.

Here are the results from one fascinating study:

In a blind study by the University of Newcastle and the University of South Australia, 85.5% of subjects chose the familiar brand in the first trial, even if they preferred a less familiar brand.

Even when testing brands during an initial trial, consumers were more likely to purchase the product from a familiar brand name, even if they preferred the taste (or, by extension, the look, smell, or function) of an unfamiliar brand.

Consumers were not only likely to choose the more familiar brand but were more likely to make the decision more quickly – 9.8 seconds faster.

What does this mean for you? Get to the consumer early. Stay in front of them and don’t quit! Repetition is critical. One statistic we regularly run across is that the average person remembers three to five brands per category. To get in there, you have to push someone else out and then stay there.

This is where consistent drips of brand messaging can pay off in a big way. Send a direct mailer and follow up with an email. Invest in retargeting with social media ads for visitors to your website. Create constant reminders of who you are and what your brand offers.

Creating brand awareness is not always about getting someone to buy right now. It’s about staying top of mind—and keeping your competitors out in the cold—so that when your target audience is ready to buy, they think of you.

Source: “Brand Awareness Effects on Consumer Decision Making for a Common, Repeat Purchase Product: A Replication” (Journal of Business Research)

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