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Walk the Walk: Using Your Digital Print Technology to Market Yourself
By: Shelley Sweeney
“This product is so good it sells itself!” Usually, this phrase is reserved for street vendors and late night infomercials and most of the time it’s a ploy to purchase something that will surely disappoint. However, digital print providers are in a somewhat unique position to actually sell themselves using the exact technology and campaigns they offer. When digital print providers market themselves, they can apply their own digital technologies to not only make their campaigns more relevant to each recipient, but to also drive better results than traditional methods and to let their prospects experience a sample, multi-channel campaign.
Now is the time to run these campaigns. True, many targets are cutting back on marketing as part of their cost reductions, but savvy businesspeople agree that a recession is not the time to totally eliminate marketing. Many are seeking smarter, more cost-effective ways to market themselves—and demonstrate return on their investment (ROI). They are more than willing to give a promising new vendor a try, and if you can run a successful, initial campaign for them, they may never return to their old vendors.
New customers like these are helping many graphic communications providers begin to shape a more prosperous future. Here are examples of two such providers that are successfully developing new business with their own highly relevant multi-channel direct marketing.
Multi-Touch Campaigns Brings Fresh Business with Long Lasting Results
Many of the more than 260 independently owned business centers in the worldwide AlphaGraphics network provide advanced marketing communications services, as well as print. To drive business and build awareness of these lesser-known services, 19 AlphaGraphics business centers in Dallas-Fort Worth joined forces last year for a lead-generation campaign showcasing their personalization capabilities.
The “Chew on This” campaign used a dimensional box with AlphaGraphics-branded chewing gum—and follow-up postcards and email—to drive prospects to personalized Web pages (PURLs). The incentives were 1) entering a drawing for a 50-inch plasma TV for answering a few questions about their marketing needs and 2) a free $20 gift card for setting up an appointment with their AlphaGraphics sales representative, called out on a personalized map.
It was a smashing success. Out of nearly 6,000 recipients, 468 filled out an online profile, populating a database AlphaGraphics continues to mine. Early sales results attribute $125,000 to revenue, 2.7 times greater than the investment, and projections put the campaign’s lifetime value at $1.5 million—a 33x ROI.
Subsequently, 33 AlphaGraphics centers participated in a similar dimensional-mailer campaign using a Rubik’s Cube and the offer of a $20 gift card to induce 19.5 percent of recipients to fill out online surveys of their marketing needs. “We recommend that 50 percent of marketing efforts go to the existing client base during the recession because it’s five to seven times more costly to find a new customer than to cross-sell to an existing one,” said Brooke Clawson, marketing communications manager, AlphaGraphics.
Helping C-Level Targets Taste Success
A challenge in succeeding with advanced marketing communication services is reaching new targets in marketing departments, as well as traditional print buyers.
DMM, a marketing solutions provider in Scarborough, Maine, invited C-level executives to a wine-tasting event that included an executive roundtable on cross-media and one-to-one relationship marketing. The “First to Know” event was designed to let marketing executives and CEOs be among the “first to know” about the advantages of customized communications.
The campaign used a cross-media platform for invitations (direct mail, email and phone calls), RSVPs (reply cards and PURLs) and confirmations and reminders (two emails, a postcard and a phone call the morning of the event).
The results were impressive. Sixty percent of invitees responded, nearly a quarter of them said they would attend and everyone who said they would attend did. The event led directly to eight new campaigns—three of which were with new customers—and up-selling of services for existing campaigns to four additional customers. Resulting sales topped $1.5 million.
DMM has run two more multi-touch cross-media campaigns since the economy began to falter and has a third planned for fall. “It’s more important now than ever to be proactive in reaching out to customers and prospects,” said Theresa Cloutier, senior vice president, Marketing, DMM. “The key is showing them more cost-effective ways of reaching out to customers and prospects by targeting more efficiently—and being able to demonstrate results by measuring the ROI.”
Start by using your own digital technologies to market your services.
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Shelley Sweeney is Vice President of the Service Bureau and Direct Mail Segments for Xerox Corporation.
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