1. Be smart about your data

If used improperly, personalization may irritate or offend recipients.

Banking and brokerage customers might appreciate personalized portfolio reports offering additional investment advice, but only if the information arrives concealed in a sealed envelopes.

Mothers might appreciate a timely message about toys or diapers, but may not want their child’s name and age publicly displayed on the mailer.

Personalization isn’t about using everything that you know about your recipient. It’s about the appropriate use of information to increase relevance.

2. Test everything

Some personal data may be relevant to your offer, some may not. If you want to sell minivans to young families, it may not be worth it to switch out depictions of male and female drivers on your mailer according to the sex of your recipients. Just showing the product posed with a family could to the trick.

To make sure about such things, you have to test. Testing is easy, given the flexibility of digital printing and email. If your campaign involves sending out 6000 pieces, try varying one element in 500 of them to see if this affects response, and whether it is cost-justified. Make testing and control groups part of your thinking.

3. Employ multiple media

Studies show that campaigns do better when they deploy email, direct mail and websites in strategic combinations.

Neiman-Marcus, for example, gets most of its sales online. But those sales are prompted by print catalogs. When catalog volume declines, online sales go down.

A study by the US Postal Service demonstrated that websites supported by catalogs showed a revenue life of 163% compared to unsupported websites.

So think in combinations: mailings preceded by email announcements, or followed by email reminders. Mail and email that encourages people to visit websites or personal microsites. There is strength in numbers.

4. Invest in your database

This takes time and sometimes money, but it’s the best investment you can make. A database is like a living thing. It requires continuous nourishment in the form of updating, cleansing, adding variables and so on. As you gain new information through personalized marketing, it’s imperative that this knowledge be entered into your database to inform future programs. The great benefits of personalized marketing can only be maximized through such effort.

Sherry Mitchell
919-696-8791
sherry@laserimagenc.com