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The Power of Personalization and Cross Media Direct Marketing
By David Murphy
How do you increase response rates in your direct marketing campaigns? We recently executed a cross-media direct marketing campaign with print and electronic components which included both personalized and non-personalized messaging. We were interested in knowing which components of the campaign would drive the highest response rate. Those components were:
(1) A printed postcard (with no personalization) inviting the recipient to visit our website
(2) A printed postcard with personalization (Hi David, Thanks David, etc.) inviting the recipient to visit a personalized landing page (PURL) on our website. This printed personalization was created with an easy-to-use page composition program.
(3) An email with personalization and a hyperlink to that person's PURL
There were two goals of the campaign: The first was to get people to visit our Website to learn about our products. The second goal was to get the visitors to complete a "Request More Info" form.
We split the database into two groups: Group A received the generic postcard only and Group B received the personalized postcard AND a follow-up email with the PURL hyperlink. Here are the results comparing the origination sources of the visitors to the website:
Initial Response:
6% came from Group A (recipients of the generic postcard)
14% came Group B-1 (recipients of the personalized postcard)
80% came Group B-2 (recipients of the personalized email and PURL)
Conversion:
Of those completing the "Request More Info" form, here are the sources:
18% came from Group A (recipients of the generic postcard)
29% came from Group B-1 (recipients of the personalized postcard and PURL)
53% came from Group B-2 (recipients of the personalized email and PURL)
Clearly, personalization had a significant impact on both the response rate and the conversion rate. But do these findings show that email is more effective than printed direct mail? No, not really. Group A received one communication and Group B received two. We sent the email to Group B on or about the day that the postcard would have arrived in the mail. So recipients would have received the postcard AND the email, but more of them clicked on the hyperlink in the email. Because it is easier to click than to type, it isn't too surprising that B-2 response rates were higher than B-1.
What we did not test is the response rate for a group receiving ONLY an email and no postcard. We will perform that test in the near future and post an update on the findings, which may shed some light on the potential variations between electronic-only and print-only communications.
From this study, we can't derive that either print or electronic marketing is more effective, but one can logically conclude that a blend of the two media channels has a distinct advantage over one. Multiple “touch points” reinforce the message and trigger a greater response. At the very least, print needs to be one of those touch points.
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David Murphy is the Vice President of Marketing for RISO, Inc, having held sales and marketing positions with the company for the last 17 years. RISO manufactures and sells the ComColor series of inkjet printers, the fastest cut-sheet full color inkjet printers on the market. David is responsible for the entire scope of product marketing for North America. He holds an MBA and a BS degree in marketing and has conducted field research on user applications for ink-based printing systems in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. David is a contributing columnist to numerous publications and a frequent speaker at printing industry conferences.
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