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First the bad news: The sheer volume of information bombarding customers and prospects - from traditional broadcast and print media to the Web, e-mail and instant messaging - is making it harder than ever to get attention for your campaigns.
But there’s good news too. Data and personalisation technology offer powerful new ways to connect with customers and prospects via direct mail.
Today’s savvy direct marketers are using data and the latest digital printing technology to develop data driven creative approaches and mailings that are almost fully customised to the individual recipient. The result is more relevant mail and stronger relationships with customers and prospects. Keep in mind that digital printing allows every message to be personalised to the target so that the merge of data (or information) with the creative can be structured to deliver a customised message that is the true essence of “one to one” communication.
Chances are, you’re already capturing transactional data and contact information on your customer’s historical purchases. You may even have demographic and lifestyle data for customers and prospects. When it’s time to create your next mail campaign, ask yourself this key question:
“What do I know about the people I’m mailing to and how can I use that knowledge to develop a more effective creative approach?”
Here are five ideas:
1. Use data to allocate creative resources. Do pre-campaign data analysis to determine each customers or prospects value or potential. This measurement should drive format selection and allocation of creative resources. Higher-value customers and prospects (and prospects with similar characteristics) should get a more elaborate and personalised mailing; smaller customers and prospects should get a simpler mail piece.
2. Use data for better targeting and personalisation. Append demographic or lifestyle data to customer or prospect files, then use this data to segment customers and prospects into smaller, more targeted groups of like individuals. Develop creative that more accurately targets the specific interests of these smaller groups.
3. Use data to get attention and to engage. Get attention on the carrier and engage readers throughout the mailing with data-driven messages. Even simple geographic references can have a big impact, for example, “Over 400 Melbournians have bought our latest product - are you missing out?”
4. Use data to strengthen relationships. Customers and prospects know their value to your organisation and they expect you to know it. Use your customer or prospect information (such as the length of time they’ve bought from you or the value of their last purchase) to speak to customers and prospects more personally in your mailing about their relationship with you and the value of their support.
5. Use data to facilitate a response. Pre-populate response forms or, for Web responses, create customised URL or personalised passwords that link to pre-populated Web forms to make it easier for customers and prospects to say yes. You also can suggest product purchases based on past purchases.
A final note: The downside of data-driven creative is inaccuracy in the database. Great creative that’s based on bad data can be a relationship killer. Thus, the most important rule is to capture data accurately and keep your data current, complete and clean. If you are renting data, take the time to ensure that deliverability guarantees and update procedures are of the highest order before committing to prospecting data that may effect your campaign.
Posted on 16th August 2006