A recent presentation delivered by HP at the Cross Media Show this year delivered some interesting statistics on direct mail. Consumers need to ‘trust’ a brand in order to engage with it and out of all marketing communications it was ‘direct mail’ that they trusted the most.
Personalised direct mail
Direct mail has been reaching target audiences for years and has produced some great results. However, personalising the message via Variable Data Printing (VDP) can increase ROI even more.
Variable data printing allows you to adjust your direct mail marketing campaign so it is more customised to the receiver. The types of personalisation you can achieve are:
- Using the receiver’s name – there’s nothing worse than receiving a ‘Dear customer’ letter
- By segmenting and being creative with your data you can choose imagery that would be more relevant to women than men – such as cosmetic product promotions
- pURLs that can take the receiver to their own landing page containing a special offer
Data is key to the success of this and it is crucial that you spend time cleansing your data and seeing how you can get the best out of it to engage your customers.
There is also the case of too much personalisation – you don’t want to your customers to feel like they are being overly pursued. A mix of standard and personalised content is a good balance.
But email and social media are so much cheaper?
Variable data print has been around for a while, but even now people get excited about seeing their own name in print. OgilvyOne, supporters of variable data print, reported that even their own employees were excited at the concept of receiving personalised print. This excitement and the one-to-one communication encourages higher engagement making the brand more appealing.
Digital printing is now quicker and more sophisticated than ever before making personalised direct mail very cost-effective. Using VDP means you can create more attention-grabbing direct mail pieces that appeal to your target market.
It’s not just direct mail
You can personalise so much more than just direct mail. In the retail industry stores will require window graphics that have bespoke opening times or hanging posters that display offers that are different from store to store. Phone box graphics could display the address and map of the nearest fast food place – different depending on the site. Events require way-finding floor graphics and each one of those will display a different direction.
Variable data printing expertise
Here at Cestrian, we can increase the effectiveness of your direct mail or large format printing requirements using variable data print so you get better results.
