AMiable Solution #207: Treat Marketing

Last week, I got a personalized pen in the mail.  I didn’t order it, and I’d never heard of the company before, but there it was.  A nice, ball-point pen with my company’s name on it.

You’ve most likely experienced something similar.  A set of free Christmas cards here.  A calendar with your name on it there.  You have to wonder: does it work?  Do free samples really bring in business?

Yes, they do.

Sampling does what no four-color catalog, no exquisitely written email, no multi-piece envelop mailer can do: it lets customers see, feel, and use a product instead of just reading about it.  And it’s a practice you can implement through direct mail, at trade shows, and in retail facilities.

YA, an engagement marketing and promotions company in Minneapolis, made the following conclusions through its own research:

·        92% of consumers will try a product sample

·        53% bought the product sample they tried

·        42% have switched their brand preference based on trying a product sample

·        56% like product samples because they are looking for alternatives

·        77% say that receiving product sample would motivate them to try another from that brand

If you choose to send free samples, however, make sure they’re just that: free samples. 

According to U.S. Title 39, your company can mail unsolicited merchandise to someone if it’s clearly identified as a free sample or if you’re a charitable organization soliciting contributions.  It is not legal to send something to someone with the intention of collecting payment later.  Your recipients may contact you for more.  They may not.  They may throw your samples away.  In any case, that’s the risk you take.

Did I order more pens?  No, but I did put it in my drawer.  You just never know when you’ll need one.

AMiable Solution #206: Return to Sender

Sometimes the problem with a mailing address isn’t yours: it’s your customer’s.

You might not think that a customer, donor, or member would have trouble addressing mail to you.  After all, you have your mailing address plastered all over your website, your marketing collateral, and your social media sites.  But it happens.

For starters, if you have multiple locations or segregated offices (a corporate headquarters location, a fulfillment location, a customer service location, etc.) your customers might not know which address to use and send their inquiries, donations, or orders to the wrong address, delaying the process.

In addition, if you don’t provide pre-addressed envelopes, labels, or reply cards and rely on your audience handwriting your address, you risk that handwriting being illegible.  Although the Postal Service has advanced scanning technology that allows its machines to “read” nearly 160 billion pieces of mail every year, the system isn’t completely foolproof.  In 2015, the USPS’s Salt Lake City Remote Encoding Center--the last of what once was a 55-building strong “fleet” of facilities--processed more than 2 billion pieces of mail that post offices around the country identified as indecipherable.  While the “keyers” at the center are able to fill in the gaps and complete or identify the illegible addresses on the mail, the process takes time and delays your receipt.

So how can you make sure you get your mail on time?  First of all, make your mailing address large and clear on every order form and every page of every promotion.  Leave no doubt about where your customers’ responses should go.  Then, if your department can afford it, include a mailing label, reply card, or envelope with all of your campaigns.  If that’s not practical or possible, include a mailing label that customers can print or cut out and mail.

Your offers should inspire your market to respond.  Make sure your campaigns make it easy to do so.

AMiable Solution #205: KO the UAA

The United State Postal Service identifies mail as undeliverable for one of seven reasons:

• ·        no postage
• ·        incomplete, illegible, or incorrect address
• ·        addressee not at address
• ·        mail unclaimed
• ·        mail refused by the addressee at the time of delivery
• ·        mail refused by addressee after delivery when permitted
• ·        minimum criteria for mailability not met.

You can eliminate or at least greatly reduce the occurrence of two of those reasons-- incomplete, illegible, or incorrect address; addressee not at address--by keeping your mailing list clean.

Clean lists start with careful input.  No matter who’s entering the information, whether customer service, marketing, or sales, that information has to be accurate from the get-go.  That sometimes means taking longer than usual to enter a name and address into the system, and it sometimes takes a phone call or other follow-up to verify the information with the client or member. 

But that’s time well spent.  Horizontech Inc., a global information technology services organization, reported in its May 2011 “HTI Base Statistics on UAA Mail” report that the USPS receives 6.9 billion pieces of Undeliverable-As-Addressed (UAA) mail every year at a cost of approximately $1.4 billion annually. 

Why waste money developing, printing, and mailing something that’s never going to get anywhere?

Once a contact is in your database, keeping it current is key.  Out-of-date or inaccurate addresses accounted for more than 68% of UAA mail in July 2016, according to the USPS’s online report of nixie volume by mailing industry. 

Keep your addresses deliverable by running a merge purge on your house list, and any big mailings with multiple rentals, at least once a year.  You can buy your own software, but your best bet is to let a data processing company run the merge purge for you.  Your data processing company may be your mailhouse or an independent provider, but it should have the resources and tools (NCOA, LACS, and CASS) you need to clean up your list and take advantage of postage discounts.

As the saying goes, you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip, and you can’t deliver sales from an undeliverable mailpiece.  A clean database is a happy place.

AMiable Solution #204: Falling for It?

Fall is here, and with it comes cooler evenings and brisk mornings, back-to-school, and football.  It’s brought longer pants, shorter attention spans, and thoughts of the end of the year.

Fall has also brought the opportunity to create season-specific campaigns and promotions.

Did you send out fall-themed marketing last week?  Do you have others currently in production?  According to Brielle Jaekel, you may want to review them closely before you let them drop.

In her September 25, 2015, Mobile Marketer article, “Marketers Largely Fail With First-Day-of-Fall Social Campaigns,” Brielle says that brands are constantly incorporating national events and holidays into their social feeds.  The result?  Seasonal overkill.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  You can “fall” into your marketing, but you have to use it wisely. 

How?  Highlight only the events--seasonal and otherwise--that are relevant to your organization.  For example, if you release a signature product every fall, incorporating the fall season into your marketing makes sense.  Slapping a few leaves on a promotion with no tie to the season or the content of your offer does not.

How else can you make sensational seasonal marketing?  If your organization doesn’t have a natural tie to this time of year, create one:

• ·        Plan an open house/career fair for local students.  Invite them to come in and ask questions, talk to your experts, and learn about the important contributions your industry makes to the community and how they can get involved.  Make it an annual event.
• ·        Organize a donation drive that compliments your company’s mission.  The holidays are coming.  If you’re in the restaurant business, collect canned goods for the local food bank.  If you’re a retailer, collect sweaters for a local homeless shelter.  If you’re a service business, organize a company-wide volunteer opportunity.  You get the idea.
• ·        Host a pumpkin decorating contest.  Ask customers to decorate a pumpkin based on one of your organization’s key missions or on a particular product line or service.  Offer a coffee-and-doughnuts celebration for the winning entry’s office.  Be sure to post all photo submissions online to share the fun and recognize participating customers.

Making your fall promotions relevant to the needs and interests of your market not only makes them more effective, but it also makes them more memorable, something your customers will look forward to year after year.

AMiable Solution #203: Setting Up for Success

Everything about a play affects your experience and your reaction to it.  The lighting in the lobby.  The comfortableness of the seats.  The accompanying music.  The projection of sound.  The costumes on the actors.

The sets on the stage.

When done well, set design enhances the story being told.  Its presence is appreciated but almost unnoticed.  Nothing seems out of place.  You feel like those props are supposed to be there.

Overdone, however, and audience members not only notice the ridiculously large lamp in the corner, but they are also distracted by it.  Instead of focusing on the actors and the story they’re conveying, the audience is staring at the lamp, wondering what it’s doing there, what it has to do with the story, and how the theater got it to glow so brightly.  The lamp detracts from the experience.

Like theater sets, graphic elements in marketing create a mood and an atmosphere.  They should maintain the style and tone of the marketing piece and your organization.  They should support the “location” of your story with images of the “characters” affected by your products or services.  They should visually tell the story you’ve written--not serve as a glaring, irrelevant, “look at me” gimmick.

Whether you choose a marketing design that’s minimalistic or full, it should be natural to the content.  It should move the story--your pitch and offer--along.  When they do, that’s when you create the desired reaction.  That’s when you get your encore.

AMiable Solution #202: Vision

Have you ever put down a book because reading it became unbearable?  You just couldn’t put yourself through the agony of the page anymore?

Sometimes you can chalk it up to bad writing.  But sometimes, the fault lies with the plot: the essence of the book.  The driving force of the story.  Maybe it wanders.  Maybe it doesn’t make sense.  Maybe events that happen early in the book don’t line up with events that happen later.  You distrust the story and the storyteller.

If you don’t have a solid annual marketing plan to guide you, your customers may feel the same way.  If your marketing wanders, never surprises them (in a good way, of course), fails to support your mission or their needs, or leaves your customers confused or unhappy, then they’re not going to stick around long enough to see the end.

To keep your market engaged and intrigued, your annual marketing plan, like a good book plot, should include four important elements:

• ·        Specific activities you plan to undertake to move your audience forward.  You want to create promotions and incentives that draw your members and customers deeper into your story and theirs.
• ·        The right audience.  Every marketing activity, like every book, will appeal to a particular audience.  Make sure you know exactly who each activity is targeted to.
• ·        A way to measure success.  For an author, success is measured in book sales and publicity.  For marketers, success comes with inquiries, subscriptions, renewals, memberships, donations, and purchases.
• ·        Engaging characters.  Identify who on your team is responsible for each activity.  Like the characters in a story, every member of your marketing team plays a role in developing your relationship with your market.  Make sure each person understands what he/she contributes to your tale.

Every marketer wants their department to emerge as heroes.  Carefully planning your marketing endeavors--and sticking with them--will help make that happen.

AMiable Solution #201: Teamwork

Football season is back!  Predictions are already being made about which team will make it to the big game in February and which player will be responsible for getting them there. 

The odds-on favorites?  Quarterbacks.  Five out of seven CBSSports.com staff members are already predicting a quarterback MVP for the 2017 game.  And not a single regular-season game has been played!

Why is it that quarterbacks tend to get all the glory?  Why has a quarterback been given the MVP title 27 times in the last 50 championship games (the next most-honored positions, by the way, are wide receiver and running back, with only six players receiving the prestigious award each)?  Is it because the quarterback really is the key to a winning team, or does he just get the glory because he’s the one most people see?

We’re not discounting the importance of the quarterback’s role, but we think he gets all the glory because he makes the most noise.  He’s the one you hear calling the plays, even though it’s his offensive team that helps get the job done.  He couldn’t do it without them.

Marketing and customer service are kind of like the quarterback and the offensive line.  One does all the planning and makes all the noise, but it’s the customer service department that helps complete the plays.  They need to know the plans just as intimately as the quarterback if they want to anticipate needs and provide the necessary follow-through.

 A quarterback can’t just spontaneously throw the ball toward the end zone and hope someone is there to catch it.  He has to communicate with the guards and the tackles and the wide receivers to make sure that he is ready to set up a big play and that someone is waiting on the other end to make it.

Do your marketing and customer service teams work together or individually in parallel?  If you want your customers or members and your organization to win, you have to make sure everyone is working from the same play book.