4 Strategies to Increase Direct Marketing Revenue and Build Your Brand

February 2, 2010 By Bruce Jensen

multipage

I recently saw an ad from a major retailer of furniture and home goods featuring a right-hand, single gatefold that formed the door of an armoire. Opening the folded page displayed the interior of the armoire and its contents.

A little more expensive, sure, but my guess is that it was well worth the money. Get your creative team and printer together to see how you can enhance your creativity within a budget.

Creativity isn’t just about artistic elements, however. It’s also about finding innovative ways to help your customers find what they need, or finding ways to generate special interest for new product launches, best-sellers and other marketing priorities.  

3. Speak to your customers as if you know them. Don’t get the idea that I'm trying to pass the “Dear Sue” stuff off as personal communication. Today’s highly evolved personalization capabilities — both in print and online — dovetail perfectly with good database marketing practices. Doing the up-front database work significantly improves the precision with which you can select customers and create specific offers to their preferences.

Proven print technologies ranging from selective binding to ink-jet imaging enable you to customize catalogs to a high degree. Quickly evolving digital printing technologies now allow for complete customization of each piece. Variable data digital printing is being used as a stand-alone solution, as well as in combination with high-speed selective binding lines.

There's technology that uses an optical character recognition system to selectively insert highly personalized, digitally printed covers and outserts based on customer data, for example. The optical recognition system on the finishing equipment reads the barcode and matches the personalized piece to the catalog, which is then ink-jet addressed to the specific customer at the end of the line.

4. Integrate media … then integrate some more. Don't fall in love with a particular medium. No matter how well it performs, you can bet your last dollar it would do even better if you integrated it with one or more additional media.

This requires strategic thinking and campaign execution, including careful synchronization and timing. True integrated media also means integrating print. Study after study shows that the combination of print catalogs with the web, email and personalized direct mail delivers maximum results.

What’s more, new tools such as the Intelligent Mail barcode help track letters and flats. You can now receive more detailed information than ever on how and when catalogs are being delivered, along with how customers are responding. Moreover, you'll acquire and retain customers you know are likely to generate strong lifetime value.

Virtually no one has enough time and resources to do everything. That means you have to make decisions about what will bring you the best return and then spend accordingly. Focusing on good database marketing practices in combination with strong creative, high-level customization and integrated campaigns will produce the superior returns your company seeks.

Bruce Jensen is the group vice president of sales for Transcontinental Printing’s Magazine, Book & Catalog group. Reach Bruce at jensenb@transcontinental.ca.