Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Ask LinkedIn
LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals recently implemented a new site feature that allows users to post questions and let subject matter experts respond.
I thought I would give the feature a shot and asked two hard hitting question many in the printing industry want to know: Are you still using print advertising? and Have you used personalization in direct mail campaigns?.
I wasn't expecting to get any ground breaking answers to the questions and was primarily interested in testing out the LinkedIn feature. I figured asking people who evaluate the use of print in advertising campaigns might provide some interesting insight. Here are their answers:
Are you still using print advertising?
I supplied these additional details with the question: Are you still using print advertising? Are you happy with its ROI? What do you like most about print advertising? What do you like least?
A Marketing Specialist at software firm answered:
We still use print, although less aggressively than in the past. We advertise via print more to maintain/build the brand, as measuring ROI is challenging with the medium. In most cases, unless your product has a very modest price point, print isn't the perfect direct response medium--direct mail generally has superior results in my experience. Ultimately, I still think it has its place, although I doubt spending will grow significantly anytime soon given the other options now available.
An owner of online marketing firm wrote:
what's that? since 1995 we have looked to the internet to acomplish what print and other traditional media once did.
and a Marketing Communications Consultant finished the answers with:
We are still using advertisements at our company most of all for creating awareness in a pretty small and closed market. As the image of magazines could create some spin-off on awareness it also fits to our marcom planning. Above this, most deals have been combined with editorial space, online with bannering as well as events like summits.
Have you used personalization in direct mail campaigns?
I supplied these additional details with the question: Have you used personalization in direct mail campaigns? Were the results satisfactory? What would you do differently next time?
The first response came from an Innovative Email Marketer:
I've used personalization in DM with good success, but the level of success depends on the program. Adding a name, or other personal info will not always generate higher response rates. The key is to do intelligent testing to determine when personalization is appropriate. Simple A/B testing usually does the trick (testing the same DM piece -- same design, same copy -- with the only difference being the use of personalization vs. a generic, non-personalized approach).
If the product offering is not extremely relevant to the recipient, personalization will have little impact. Personalization is most effective when coupled with highly targeted, relevant marketing messages.
An Account Manager at a Marketing Research firm wrote:
Personalization is great, but do it in a subtle way. Don't confront your clients / prospects with the amount of information you have on them. People don't like you keeping all kind of info on them. For example, with something as: "Dear ...., You have a car that is 10 years old ....", you might get some negative reactions. Also very important is the quality of the data (addressing a lady as Mr..... is not a good idea.) and the segmentation of it: use the information you have on people to give them a message adapted to their profile. That's also a way to personalize.
A Innovative Marketing Leader added:
Personalization can be a great tool that can provide a significant list to campaign response as long as it is done right. For example, customizing the greeting to say Dear Adam will not provide much impact. However, customizing the offer or the copy based on Adam's past purchases/ behavior has provided a huge lift to my campaigns. It can be something simple like a complementary cross-sell or a complex model that demonstrates a relationship between purchase of 1 item makes me likely to purchase a different item. With the utilization of variable data printing, there are infinite possibilities. Of course, this neccesitates the use of an extremely accurate, clean database. And the cost of the piece could be significantly higher, however, the response rate should increase accordingly.
David Long Founder and chief marketeer at ClikOnMarketing.com provided some numbers on a recent campaign.
I am a great believer in personalisation of DM pieces. It demonstrates that you care about the individual, but don't go over the top and appear like a stalker. For truly remarkable results you should consider combining the DM activity with a telephone follow up. On a recent campaign we split tested this and experienced a 4% (approx) follow up on the DM but when we added the telephone follow up this jumped to over 15%.
Posted in: Advertising
