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Posts Tagged ‘direct mail’
Posted by Sid Haas on November 28th, 2012Vice President of Business Development
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Posted by Sid Haas on October 19th, 2011Vice President of Business DevelopmentBAD NEWS: First-Class postage is increasing by 1 cent as of January 22, 2011. (Standard rate postage is also increasing by 1.9%.)
GOOD NEWS: The second ounce will be FREE for First Class Presort mail pieces weighing between one and two ounces. This could result in a HUGE savings for many of your monthly and quarterly statements. Currently, if any of your mail pieces are over one ounce, you are paying about 22 cents per piece for that 2nd ounce.
With this announcement from the USPS, it is clear that the postal service recognizes the value of including marketing campaigns with your statements and notices. In fact, according to Paul Vogel, USPS President and Chief Marketing/Sales Officer, “This gives companies expanded opportunities to advertise new services and products to their customers as part of bill and statement mailings.”
Well said.
And with transpromo variable data printing capabilities, you can incorporate these marketing messages and ads directly on your statements. You don’t need to include additional stuffers, buck slips, brochures or newsletters. Add personalized letters to your statements – make these statement letters the first page of your statement and transform your statements into effective direct mail campaigns. Print targeted onserts directly on the statements, cross-selling relevant products and services to your account holders by looking at their relationships, balances, demographics, and even their real-time credit data.
LKCS can get your statements to generate revenue for your financial institution. And now we can make it even easier to add targeted marketing without increasing postage.
Posted by Sid Haas on May 1st, 2011Vice President of Business DevelopmentI work with other members of a local not-for-profit user group to organize two information technology training sessions. We bring high quality instructors from around the country to Central Illinois. We promote the conferences to previous attendees, network administrations within 45 miles of our area, and school technology coordinators.
This week, the Illinois Valley Network Users Association, will be holding its annual 2-day Spring Training Conference. When it came to marketing the conference, the IVNUA board turned to me (as usual) to coordinate our efforts.
I used e-mail (sending approximately 10 different e-mail marketing messages over 2-months to our list) to promote the conference to previous attendees.
I purchased a mailing list and sent a direct mail postcard to several hundred network administrators at companies within 45 miles. I was able to select specific job titles from the Dun & Bradstreet database and ensure that I was only mailing to company headquarter locations (not branch offices). I also removed franchises from the list.
I purchased online advertising on Google, using their geo-targeting features. I purchased a wide selection of network technology training terms, but specified only to display to people within 45-miles. And I set a daily spending limit.
And, I also dabbled with Social Media advertising. For the first time, I purchased ads on both Facebook and LinkedIn to promote the conference.
I found Facebook’s ad technology to be truly amazing. I was able to target people by age with specific interests relating to the conference who lived within the target area. As I set the criteria for each ad (I ran four different ads for testing purposes), Facebook showed how many individuals met the criteria — they gave me an accurate count of prospects.
As such, I was able to target a small population of Facebook users with very effective, INEXPENSIVE advertising.
LinkedIn’s technology was similar — but I found that their geographic targeting was based on urban regions, which made it a little less effective when promoting a conference in a rural area. Nevertheless, these were business users and the ads were quite effective at promoting the conference.
All in all, I was impressed with how easy it was to build targeted online social media ads. Costs were very fair — I spent less than $300 for 5 weeks of pay-per-click social media advertising. Keep in mind that my ads were VERY targeted to VERY small populations.
Social media advertising might be worth a look for your next campaign or event.
Posted by Sid Haas on November 15th, 2010Vice President of Business DevelopmentWeb and e-mail marketing were going to make direct mail obsolete. Weren’t they?
As it turns out, electronic marketing has caused a large drop in the volume of direct mail over the last decade (just ask the US Postal Service). Due to the decrease in direct mail, marketers have seen that their mail doesn’t compete with as many other pieces in the mail box. As a result, direct mail response rates are climbing. At the same time, due to overuse, e-mail response rates are declining.
According to Direct Marketing News Magazine, some marketers have found direct mail to be “the best performer: up 150% vs. last year wtih no significant changes in strategy”. The obsolete direct mail channel is infact outperforming e-marketing channels (including social media).
Direct mail is far from dead – especially with today’s advanced one to one marketing capabilities. Smart marketers continue to personalize their mailings and use high quality data sources to make each mail piece more relevant to the recipient. LKCS recommends that our clients use direct mail in conjunction with electronic marketing efforts – use them both in combination for the best results overall.
Posted by Sid Haas on August 31st, 2010Vice President of Business DevelopmentThe US Postal Service has begun sending letters to businesses explaining the Intelligent Mail Barcode. From what we can tell, the communication is not entirely clear, but they are letting businesses know to expect some changes with their statements and direct mail campaigns.
As all mailers nationwide implement the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) by May 2011, it will be interesting to see if companies take advantage of the potential benefits – or if the entire IMB program will be a wasted effort. Designed as a cost-saving measure for the USPS, the IMB does have some potential benefits for LKCS clients.
- The IMB can potentially provide proof of mail delivery on every piece – financial institutions will be able to verify delivery of each and every mailed statement, for instance.
- This mail piece tracking capability could also provide signficant cross-media campaign opportunities. Launch newspaper and radio ads on the same day that direct mail pieces are arriving in mailboxes. Send follow-up e-mail messages a few days or a week after the direct mail piece was received.
- And the IMB provides an address cleansing service, providing a way for LKCS clients to keep account holder and in-house list addresses up to date.
Of course, nothing is free. Will businesses nationwide be willing to pay for the tracking capabilities? And will businesses keep their lists updated or face the possibilities of additional charges from the USPS?
Mailers around the country are scrambling to get IMBs in place. Will the benefits outweigh the effort? Anyone want to take a guess?
Posted by Sid Haas on May 24th, 2010Vice President of Business DevelopmentEarlier this month, the US Postal Service reported a $1.9 billion decline in profit for the first half of the 2010 fiscal year. Looking at mail volumes, total mail pieces have been declining annually — a net loss of 35 BILLION pieces of mail in 2009 compared to 2007. Clearly the recession and continued e-mail growth is hurting the USPS.
But, that’s not the whole picture.
Direct mail can still be an extremely effective part of your marketing strategy. Successful marketers constantly bring up the term “relevance”. The most successful direct mail campaigns (some are achieving response rates of 10% and more) are highly targeted and highly personalized – directed towards specific recipients and what you know about them.
Furthermore, direct mail is just one piece of cross-channel marketing options. Not all people respond to communications in the same way. Some are much more likely to respond to e-mail, others only reply to direct mail. Utilize both electronic and traditional channels in all of your campaigns rather than relying on only one or the other.
And, don’t forget that different channels complement each other. For example, direct mail is terrific at driving people to your web site to subscribe to your e-mail list. Follow up an e-mail campaign by sending direct mail to the people who do not respond.
The decline in the number of pieces mailed does not constitute a decline in the results you can achieve with direct mail. Instead, it is a testament to utilizing technology and imagination to improve one-to-one marketing and cross-channel marketing efforts.
Posted by Sid Haas on July 10th, 2008Vice President of Business DevelopmentLKCS’ DataFlex database marketing system provides extensive reporting and tracking capabilities. A financial institution client recently asked us to create reporting to demonstrate the effectiveness of their Hispanic marketing initiatives.
DataFlex made it easy.
- LKCS appended ethnicity information to their account holder list. LKCS utilizes a highly effective solution to identify ethnicity based on numerous factors. It analyzes both an individuals first and last name and applies ethno-linguistic and geocentric rules to both the surname prefix and suffix and identifies the specific ethnic, religious, and minority status of individuals, even an individual with a multi-ethnic surname.
- This ethnicity data was imported into the DataFlex data warehouse for this client.
- We easily created DataFlex reports to analyze the deposit and loan account relationships and balances currently held by Hispanic account holders. Additional reports utilize trend lines and other visual elements to demonstrate relationship and balance growth over time for this ethnic group.
For more information about DataFlex, contact LKCS at 866-552-7866 or visit our web site at http://www.lk-cs.com.
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