Direct Mail – Here Today - Gone Tomorrow?

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I don’t know about you, but I found 2012 to be a year of great experimentation regarding how we communicate with our marketplace. Growing our top and bottom lines has never been easy, but the more complex our marketing activities become, the more people and resource we have to throw at it. It gets harder and more expensive to get a reasonable return on our marketing investment.

This year has seen us fully integrate Social Media, cross channel communications with on-line and offline media, as well as implement new technologies and creative tools trying to increase the impact of our communications with constituency in order to grow our businesses.

Granted, we have opened up many new doorways to talk to our customers and prospects, but has all of that work yielded incremental top and bottom line growth for you or your clients? Is there a real ROI?

We are all chasing the Holy Grail hoping to get a leg up on the competition and again, I ask if we are really accomplishing that? When other industry participants implement these new technologies what choice do we have but to follow suite? We can’t miss the opportunity to get our share of the prize, can we?

To tell you the truth, I don’t have the answers to those questions, I wish I did, but, there is one thing I do know, all of the changes within our industry have not altered the basic fact that our customers and prospects want to be reached, recognized and understood. One tool that accomplishes this goal, never goes out of style and that consistently performs well is direct mail.

Direct mail that follows the core direct marketing tenants to create highly personalized, relevant and timely messaging has been and will continue to be the basic blocking and tackling tool of the industry.

When all else fails, we can count on direct mail to come through for us.

The effective use of internal and external data, has allowed us to greatly reduce waste and cost through precision targeting. Reaching just those that will truly benefit from our messaging has become a standard skill. Today’s small production runs are becoming just as cost efficient as yesterday’s million-piece jobs and believe me, this will only get better in the future.

In the end, this is a time of challenges, frustrations and new competition. We will continue to see innovation, new channels, and more ways to communicate with our constituencies. As Patrick Brand, President, Pitney Bowes, North America Mailing said in a recent post, “If the actions of market leaders are any indication, this is an exciting time to be in the print and mail industry. Even as we have seen an explosion of digital media—from email and Web, to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter—the unique attributes of direct mail stand apart. Today’s direct mail pioneers are embracing the data-driven, digital capabilities of the online world to deliver a stronger connection on paper that is more dynamic, more welcoming, and more personal. Direct mail will thrive.”

Bottom line? Yes, we can continue to count on direct mail. I believe this channel will be with us for a long time. As direct mail specialists, AccuLink has a 32 year history of producing results in the direct mail arena. Please give me a call to discuss some of the unique solutions we offer to improve direct mail results.

Ed Glaser
Chief Marketing Officer
252.321.5805
ed.glaser@acculink.com
Learn: www.intelimailer.com
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Want to Increase Your Direct Marketing Response Rate?

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Response rates driven from relevant marketing campaigns are, on average, over 4 times that of responses to static, same-to-all messages. This is not my opinion; this statistic actually comes from the PODi’s digital print case study collection and the DMA’s 2012 Response Rate Report.

Depending on the segment, the increase in response rates due to personalized, relevant marketing ranged from a factor of 1.3 to 6.2.

These response rates do not magically occur when personalization is used. The critical factor is the offer, and how relevant it is to the recipient. If the recipient gets a marketing piece that offers them something they really want, just at the time when they want it, they will respond. Otherwise, they will not. It makes absolutely no difference how the piece was produced or what the price point is.

In our industry, the terms “personalization” and “relevance” are often used interchangeably.

While they have similar meanings, there are subtle but important differences that are necessary to understand. It might be easiest to think of personalization as a science and relevance as an art. Personalization often refers to variable data that includes the recipient’s name, appropriate images and a personalized response mechanism such as a pURL. While personalization results in what information goes where in a marketing campaign piece, relevance is the art of developing content that speaks to the recipient’s needs, at the right time, and delivers a compelling solution to their problem.

Here are three tips to make your direct marketing copy more relevant:

1. Put Critical Ideas at the Beginning. Most consumers skim their mail and only read the first few messages. Take advantage of established reading patterns when organizing content and put your most important information at the top. 
2. Have a Conversation with Your Prospect. The goal with any relevant direct marketing piece is to “speak” to your audience. Show that you understand their specific problem and provide the solution with a timely call to action.
3. Make the Call to Action Clear and Easy. Not only should the call to action be relevant, it should also be convenient to respond to. Don’t make your prospects jump through hoops or click too many times to follow through with an offer.

The most successful marketing campaigns are a product of personalization and relevance. Despite their subtle differences, both strategies used in tandem can turn a direct marketing campaign’s offer from interesting to irresistible.

Please let me know if I can help you develop a great marketing campaign using both personalization and relevancy.

 

Ed Glaser
Chief Marketing Officer
252.321.5805
ed.glaser@acculink.com 

Learn: www.intelimailer.com
Watch: http://youtu.be/He429Ylw3l8
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How Much Money Are You Leaving On The Table?

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Ever hear the term “one and done”. If you are a marketer and make a practice of conducting your campaigns this way, then it’s not a question of if you are leaving money on the table, it’s actually how much? Research shows that stopping at a single touch leaves anywhere from half of the potential opportunity to substantially more on the table.

Direct marketing, no matter how targeted, is a numbers game. If you only give yourself one shot at an audience, you’re more than likely headed for failure. Prospects rarely respond after the first “touch” – it normally takes time to build their interest and trust. What if that one particular day that you send out a direct marketing message they’re too busy to read it? What if that particular message didn’t resonate with them? What if they only respond to direct mail and you sent an email? What if their circumstances change in six months and suddenly they become a prime opportunity, but you gave up after your first touch, five months ago?

Experts point out that campaign results can increase by up to 8 times when following up a direct marketing campaign with additional touches. These additional touches can be a combination of phone calls, mail pieces, emails, and of course social media. You may be surprised to know that unless you are touching contacts within your target market at least 7 to 9 individual times you are probably not generating the kind of results that you could be. Don’t stop there. Data also shows that the initial contact cycle; the first time you touch the market with those 7 to 9 individual touches, will yield only 40%-50% of the total available opportunities. The remaining opportunities existing within the market can only be identified by continuing to touch those same contacts, with the same multi-media, multi-touch cycle strategy on a regular basis.

You should expect results from the second and subsequent touch cycles to generate anywhere from 120% to 210% of the initial response rate.

Please note, however, data also shows that response rates begin to decline after the fifth contact cycle.

In summary, using the “one and done” approach, common in so many marketing campaigns, historically generates just one percent of the potential opportunities that are possible with multi-media, multi-touch, multiple cycle campaigns against the same market. How much is too much? As long as the message is fresh but consistent and compelling, there may not be a too much.

Don’t be disheartened when some people don’t respond instantly, and don’t keep chopping and changing your messaging because you get bored. Remember, your audience may not even recall you until after the ninth touch!

If you would like some assistance in creating relevant and timely personalized campaigns that really work or if you are ready to start profiling customer data to identify the best prospects, give me a call. I can help.

Ed Glaser
Chief Marketing Officer
252.321.5805
ed.glaser@acculink.com

“As seen in October DMAW Advents”

 

 

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The Value of Customer Data & When It’s Use Is Appropriate.

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Second only to the people working in a company, the most valuable asset any business has is its customer database. The customer is still 'king' and all businesses are ultimately driven by customer demand. In order to maximize every sales opportunity, a business should focus greater attention on understanding its customers, their preferences, and requirements and then maintain a database with up to date intelligence

A skilled marketer will start an effective marketing campaign by establishing a target audience of key decision makers to ultimately engage with. By asking the right questions, or purchasing consumer demographic data on these customers, you should be able to establish the customer's contact details, income, housing information, age ranges, children at home, etc. In the case of B to B customers, firmographic data is available identifying key personnel, sales volume, the number of employees, age of the business etc. Your own customer data should be able to reveal product or service preferences, buying trends and requirements.

Once you have profiled your customers, it is also possible to “match” them to prospects that look and act like, your best customers. This will allow you to send personalized messages to prospects to engage and convert them more effectively.

Research suggests the better you know your customers the easier it is to sell more to them. Additionally, future profits could depend on providing customers and prospects with a rewarding experience that caters to their requirements. This not only creates customer loyalty, but it increases the rate of new customer acquisition, and keeps them coming back.

Data is power, but the question becomes, how will you use this power and to what end? As marketers experiment with data-driven methods of reaching their target audience with the right offer at the right time and customers begin drawing lines in the sand about just how far they want companies to go with these efforts, we’re learning some important lessons in personalized marketing defining what’s helpful, what’s annoying, and what’s creepy.

Just because you know or think you know something about your customer doesn’t mean you have to tell them.

You need to know when to hold back to avoid being annoying, creepy, or just plain wrong. Take for example, retail super store Target’s efforts to “target” soon-to-be-mothers based on recorded purchase patterns. One teen’s father complained about the company insulting his daughter by sending her baby coupons in the mail only to later acknowledge that his daughter was in fact expecting. In this particular case, Target had accurately predicted its customer’s condition and sent her relevant offers, but at what expense?

Being sneaky is tantamount to being creepy, right? Not always. Sometimes, being inconspicuous in your personalization efforts is a good thing. This is something Target learned from their pregnancy promotion. After the incident, the company reworked its strategy and decided to send a variety of coupons to customers they had identified as expecting rather than just offers directly related to their “big” news. That way, the recipients would view the coupons as randomly compiled rather than personally prepared. The same results are accomplished, but without the creep factor.

Perhaps most importantly, rely on the tried-and-true marketing principle of simply putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. As you’re making elaborate plans for how to use all that “big” data, always ask yourself how you would respond if you were the target of these personalized campaigns. If the thought provokes goose bumps or leaves a bad taste in your mouth, then it may be a sign that you need to revise your strategy.

If you would like some assistance in creating relevant and timely personalized campaigns that really work or if you are ready to start profiling customer data to identify the best prospects, give me a call. I can help.

Learn: www.intelimailer.com

Watch: http://youtu.be/He429Ylw3l8

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Ed Glaser
Chief Marketing Officer
252.321.5805
ed.glaser@acculink.com

AccuLink Re-defines High-end Marketing with HP Indigo

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2012-02-23

Trade printing firm’s HP Indigo 5500 and Scodix 1200 production line yield award-winning work

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 23, 2012 – AccuLink, one of the top 100 trade print service providers (PSPs) nationwide, creates superior marketing materials using an HP Indigo press 5500 installed with a Scodix 1200 digital UV curing solution from Scodix Ltd.

The Greenville, North Carolina-based company, which also operates HP Indigo 3050 and 7000 model presses, invested in the HP Indigo 5500 to build a competitive advantage while moving production from offset to digital printing.

“The quality of HP Indigo presses is by far the highest and most consistent of any digital press on the market,” said Lindsay Gray, co-owner, AccuLink. “With such high quality and the ability for variable data printing on a digital press, we have no plans to ever buy offset equipment again. We are consciously moving offset to digital with great success and without any negative ramifications from customers.”

Tackling new applications
The new digital press and UV coater allow AccuLink to create premium products that help its customers achieve better marketing results than standard printed materials. Delivering an unparalleled range of enhancements for special effects, the Scodix 1200 has the capacity to produce up to 99 Gloss Units and a polymer height up to 70 microns for tangible dimension.

AccuLink recently produced a personalized, tri-fold mailer for a professional football team that was sent to 1,800 prospects encouraging rentals of skybox seats. The front features a football that appears to be autographed by the addressee. The football image also has dimples creating a pigskin texture and a raised grip. According to Gray, team officials were very happy with the 4.4 percent response rate to the mailer, which helped sell out the team’s skybox seats for next season.

Since installing the press late last year, AccuLink has seen additional evidence of the superior quality of its new printing and coating installation: three early jobs the company produced on its new equipment have won awards.

Simplifying workflow
Designed to produce marketing collateral, direct mail, photo merchandise products, books and manuals, the HP Indigo press 5500 is a versatile production device allowing for continuous printing with multiple feeders and stackers enabling seamless switching between jobs, proofs and media types. The added versatility gives AccuLink the ability to run a variety of applications on one press with little disruption in between jobs.

“With HP Indigo, we have so many capabilities and can complete a variety of complicated processes under one roof,” said Gray. “We might have one vanity published book followed by 1,000 personalized postcards followed by a table tent followed by a two-color management book – not many systems can be that versatile.”

AccuLink financed its new Indigo and Scodix purchases using HP Financial Services, the company’s leasing and life cycle asset management services subsidiary. By choosing HP Financial Services, AccuLink received competitive rates and flexible terms, and was able to preserve capital.

More information about HP Indigo technologies is available at www.hp.com/go/indigo, through the HP Graphic Arts YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/hpgraphicarts and through the HP Graphic Arts Twitter Feed at www.twitter.com/hpgraphicarts.

About HP
HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

Cross Media marketing for the Little Guy

Tweet Any business owner knows about economies of scale – the increase in efficiency of production that occurs as the number of goods being produced increases.  Typically, a company that achieved economies of scale lowers the average cost per unit through increased production since fixed costs are shared over an increased number of goods.

Economies of scale bring down the costs of all sorts of things, like printing and mailing if you are a large national corporation or nonprofit organization. 

But what if you are a little guy? Little guys still have profit margins and marketing goals to meet and along with those, the need for affordable marketing solutions.

Thanks to advancements in technology, direct mail driven cross media campaigns can be an affordable solution for small businesses and nonprofits.

Cross media campaigns reach an audience via traditional offline and online channels including direct mail, e-mail, personalized URLs (pURLs), landing pages, QR codes, and mobile messaging.  They feature personalized, relevant, and highly targeted messages.

Acculink is now the primary manufacturer of the InteliMailer formally called Transformailer.  This product transforms marketing messages into a complete cross media marketing campaign.  The InteliMailer offers small businesses and nonprofit organizations a unique way to increase response rates and achieve their marketing goals. 

According to a study by InfoTrends, marketers reported response rates of 20 - 35% when using cross media marketing campaigns over single channel print or email campaigns.   In addition, marketers reported an average lift of 50% in response rates using personalized, relevant and highly targeted cross media campaigns over static print-only campaigns.

Other research shows that combining direct mail with pURLs and well-designed landing pages, as well as QR codes and mobile messaging means higher response rates.  With the InteliMailer employing cross media marketing techniques, we are seeing lifts of 35 – 50% in response rates.  We are able to achieve this by offering a unique direct mail piece that gets noticed, opened, and acted upon thereby multiplying the results even further with personalization and variable data and then tapping into the power of the WEB and mobile marketing.

Until now, creating full color, personalized direct mail letter packages tied to cross media campaigns has been a time consuming and expensive undertaking.  Only large companies with big budgets could afford it.

With InteliMailer, now small businesses and nonprofits can send incredibly effective letter packages supported by pURLS, landing pages, WEB sites, and even mobile messaging in small quantities without any extra work and for only a few cents more than a postcard or self-mailer.

Because the InteliMailer can be produced in many versions, it is very versatile.  It can be a simple letter and outer envelope, both personalized and in full color. It can just be the outer envelope personalized with variable maps, coupons, or other relevant content without any inside sheets.   It may contain up to three personalized sheets and a reply envelope or reply card inside the outer envelope.  A membership card, affinity or loyalty card can also be part of the InteliMailer.  It can be produced in many different versions depending upon its intended use.

Unlike static marketing campaigns, the InteliMailer is supported by integrated on-line and mobile media.  It can be precision targeted, highly relevant, and personalized to a smaller list while yielding higher results than mailing to a much larger list.

For more information or samples please contact Ed Glaser, CMO at Acculink.  He can be reached at (252)321-5805 or at ed.glaser@acculink.com.

Targeting the right prospect is crucial...

Tweet The Business Challenge

In March 2009, AccuLink’s client approached them with a unique situation: How to successfully market a home for auction during a housing downturn. Although the house, located in Beaufort County, NC, was desirable waterfront property ‐ times were tight. The average time on market was 249 days. It was the middle of a recession. And, like the rest of the nation, housing prices were way off ‐ in nearby Pitt County, they had fallen nearly 25 percent.

The client’s initial plan was to obtain Beaufort County property tax records and send out a mass mailing.

“He wanted to mail to everybody,” said Tom O’Brien, co-owner at AccuLink.

At the same time, targeting the right prospect was crucial. An auction for luxury waterfront property needed to attract a very specific segment to be successful. “He was worried about getting the right people to show up and bid on the property,” said O’Brien.

Experience told O’Brien that there was a better way to target nearby luxury home buyers. “A general property tax list wouldn’t pinpoint the exact type of buyer he wanted.” After telling his client, “I don’t think I would do that,” O’Brien suggested a different approach ‐ a targeted mailing list from USADATA.

The Solution

Instead of a scattershot approach based on property tax records, targeted mailing lists allow companies to choose the exact demographic characteristics they want their mailer to reach. In this case, O’Brien recommended that his client target high income individuals in nearby Pitt County, rather than people already living in Beaufort County. Additionally, O’Brien suggested that they filter out people who already owned a second home, figuring that they wouldn’t be in the market to purchase another one.

They started the process by using USADATA’s online QuickPick targeting. QuickPick targeting allows customers to select a pre‐defined segment representing their best prospects in just one click. For additional mailing list assistance they contacted a USADATA Data Specialist. The Specialist worked with O’Brien to further refine the mailing list and develop the count and price quote.

“It’s important to work with a mailing list company who will spend time to help you make smarter choices,” said O’Brien. “It’s a much more personalized way of doing business.”

Together, with USADATA’s help, they created a highly targeted mailing list that targeted professionals earning more than $150,000 a year in neighboring Pitt County. Selection criteria included:
· Zip code area
· Age
· Net Worth
· Interest in real estate investing

Results

The auction was an unprecedented success: The house sold for more than $100,000 more than the owners expected. O’Brien was surprised at the auction price, but, then again he’s seen how successful mailing lists from USADATA have been for his clients.

Jon Rapkin, Senior Vice‐President of Sales for USADATA, is pleased with the campaign’s success. “This case study shows the power of a targeted mailing list,” said Rapkin. “This home auction’s success was helped by reaching the right people at the right time.”

Today, the client is thrilled with his results. He was so pleased with the success from his first mailing that he’s strategizing a new direct mail campaign with AccuLink ‐ and planning to work with USADATA for their mailing list expertise.

“They are a great group of people,” says O’Brien. “They give a darn about your success.”

USAData Case Study with AccuLink

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 4

Tweet Today we bring you part four of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

Seven tips for improving your email design

In its white paper “Email Design No-Nos Guide for Nondesigners¹”, online marketing solutions provider Lyris offers advice on making sure your email graphics and design lift, rather than depress, response:

· Bear in mind that graphics are often blocked. That doesn’t mean you have to resort to text-only messages. But “when reviewing email layouts ask the designer to show two versions—one with images visible and one with the images blocked. Both need to work equally well,” Lyris suggests.

· Also bear in mind that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) do not work with all email clients. Outlook 2007 and Gmail, for instance, ignore CSS coding created on an external file and linked to the email. Unless you use Inline CSS to format your design, your emails may not render correctly in all email clients.

· Use your alt tag copy to sell. Alt tags are the HTML code that provides alternative text (hence the name) for images that cannot be displayed. “Many marketers settle for alt tag copy that simply tells the reader how to turn the images on. In today’s environment, you can rest assured that most email users know how to do this. Instead, why not consider giving the customer a benefit to turning the image on to see what it is? Try describing the product if the image is a picture of something for sale. Or selling the event or service through copy if the image is not product-related.”

· Don’t make your call to action a graphic. That goes for phone numbers, URLs, and verbiage such as “call now” or “click here”.

· Include a call to action in the preview pane. The preview pane or window is the two- to four-inch-high space that many recipients see in their email inbox before they opt to open or discard the message. “Enewsletters should include headlines or ‘in this issue’ content teasers. Promotional emails should summarise or highlight the key value proposition and call to action. And definitely do not put any administrative items like unsubscribe or ‘add us to your email address book’ in this space at the top of your email.”

· Make the most of preheaders. Also known as snippet text, this is a brief bit of verbiage that appears in the inbox of some email clients along with the subject line. For instance, Gmail users viewing their inbox on a PC see the first few words of the email message immediately following the subject line. Outlook’s AutoPreview mode reveals a brief amount of text directly below the subject line. The text picked up by the email client is usually from the first line of the email message, so bear that in mind when crafting your messages.

· Test your emails in a variety of email clients to see how each renders the messages. By now it should be apparent that how your email appears to a recipient using Outlook isn’t necessarily how it will appear to a recipient using Yahoo! or reading the message via a mobile device. “A quick scan of your list or database report should tell you which email clients are popular with your audience,” Lyris notes. “At the very least, send tests to Outlook 2007, Gmail, and a mobile device, since these are the email clients most notorious for mangling formatting.”

¹Published: 12th May 2009
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Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 3

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Today we bring you part three of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

5 Not obvious ways to improve your email campaign

Just about everyone knows the basics of improving the effectiveness of an email campaign: keep your lists clean, make the content relevant, segment your file. But in its white paper “20 Quick Tips for Improving Your Email Programs¹,” email services provider StrongMail Systems offers some often-overlooked suggestions as well:

· Know your SNDS rating. SNDS stands for Smart Network Data Services, and according to StrongMail it’s “the Windows Live Postmaster Group’s method for reviewing your IP address(es). Microsoft has introduced the SNDS rating system as a way to fight spam, viruses and other email abuse… Microsoft provides ISPs with mail traffic data from all the domains hosted by Windows Live Mail and Hotmail. The ISPs in turn use that data to help prevent spam from being sent from their IP addresses.”

· Test your template code. “Program your email templates and test them through a rendering tool at the onset of the template introduction,” StrongMail advises. “Keep master copies of these separate from the ones reused in every mailing to avoid code corruption.” StrongMail also suggests avoiding XHTML.

· Determine your top domains and throttle accordingly. “Throttling” email is a matter of making sure you do not exceed an ISP’s limits regarding inbound mail volume or speed. Exceeding those limits can hurt your email deliverability. To ensure that you don’t, make a list of the domains that receive the bulk of your email messages, then check each one’s policies on inbound deliveries and if necessary modify your delivery rules.

· Link into feedback loops. A feedback loop (FBL) is an ISP’s report to an email sender of recipients who are reporting the sender’s messages as spam. You need to know about these complaints so that you can prove to the ISP that you are not a spammer before it blacklists you in response to the complaints. Various ISPs use different FBLs, so you need to visit the postmaster sites of each to sign up to receive the reports.

· Accommodate recipients who use handheld devices. “More and more people are using handheld devices to access their email, and for those users, it can be an aggravating experience thumb-scrolling through dozens of HTML links before they ever see your first image or text block related to the message content,” StrongMail reports. It offers two ways to accommodate these recipients, though “in either case, you will need to include language at the top of the message and a link to encourage them to click through”: 


1. Program a text message in the text window of your campaign management application. Use the recipient agent data to determine what browser was used to open the message, then flag that recipient record as a handheld user and always send that recipient text.

2. Host the HTML version of your message and ask handheld users to click to view the HTML.

¹Published: 15th April 2008
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Tune in Thursday, January 28 for Part 4: Seven tips for improving your email design.

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 2

Tweet Today we bring you part two of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

Ten tips for improved email deliverability

Email can be a highly cost-effective marketing tool—assuming your emails make it to their destination. To improve the likelihood of your messages getting through, email services provider Silverpop offers a number of suggestions:

1. Minimize spam complaints. That’s commonsensical enough; but how? For starters, be sure to send emails only to permission-based lists, and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe. “Don’t send unexpected mail,” writes Silverpop in its white paper “Email Delivery Rates Above 95 Percent: 16 ‘Must Dos’ to Make It Happen”¹. “If subscribers opted in to receive your ‘Tips & Tricks’ newsletter, don’t suddenly start sending them your pure product promotion emails, unless they clearly requested them.” Avoid exclamation points in your subject lines, flashing red type fonts and anything else that smacks of spam.

2. Validate email addresses at the opt-in stage. According to Silverpop, you can add code to your sign-up forms that detects typos and incomplete addresses and then notifies the subscriber of the mistake immediately.

3. Make sure your coding is accurate and standardized and that your messages render properly in a variety of formats. Before sending an email, view it on multiple platforms and web browsers, with images on and off. In addition, a number of software programs are available to check your messages and templates for coding, content and other elements that could lead to a spam filter or an ISP blocking them.

4. Unless your email volume is very low or sporadic, use a dedicated IP address. If you share an IP address with other senders of email—even if those senders are other divisions within your company—you could find emails blocked or blacklisted because of problems in messages that they send.

5. Authenticate your messages with the major protocols. Many of the major ISPs check messages for authentication with Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Sender ID and increasingly, Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM). Your IT staff or email service provider can help with this.

6. Use your company or brand name in the “from” line. While you’re at it, make sure the message line is clear. “Avoid overly aggressive subject lines. What might work in direct mail may get you a high spam complaint rate in email.”

7. Keep your list clean. Remove hard-bouncing addresses—those that are nonexistent or blocked—immediately, as well as any addresses that have generated a spam complaint. And don’t retry soft bounces—failed deliveries due to a full mailbox, an unavailable server or another temporary reason—repeatedly. “Most email marketing systems are set to retry bounces from one to three times over the course of about three days,” according to Silverpop. “Many systems will also not retry at all to certain ISPs such as AOL.” Don’t exceed those rules of thumb.

8. Comply with ISP throttling limits. This is how many messages can be sent within a given time frame, and the limits vary by ISP.

9. Monitor your sender reputation. Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) provides a summary of how Hotmail/Livemail perceives a sender’s IP address; many other ISPs offer feedback loops, listings of recipients who are reporting a sender’s messages as spam. Sign up to receive these.

10. Track your delivery rates and related metrics. At the very least, monitor hard bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes, any blacklists you may have been added to and inbox delivery rates by ISP.

¹Published: 30th September 2008
Article Link

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Tune in Monday, January 25 for Part 3: 5 Not obvious ways to improve your email campaign.

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 1

Tweet As we work on pURL campaigns for clients that involve email marketing, we often find ourselves educating our clients on the best practices needed in order to garner the success expected. In the following four-part series, we will share with you what we have learned through our research in email marketing and how valuable it can be in helping educate your clients.

Quick pointers for better email marketing

In the July 2009 issue of Catalogue e-business¹, DotMailer’s business development director, Tink Taylor, takes an in-depth look at his company’s Hitting the Mark 2009 benchmark report on marketing email. Here are his top five email marketing tips for retailers:

1) Include “forward to a friend” and “add to social networks” links. Half of the marketers surveyed in the benchmark study failed to include any kind of viral link in their emails. Yet viral and word-of-mouth marketing is an inexpensive way to spread your marketing messages, drive traffic, collect contact information, and ultimately boost sales.

2) Personalize your greeting. Seventy percent of the emails reviewed failed to open with a personalized greeting—even though such personalization has been proven to significantly improve both open and click-through rates.

3) Check renderability before sending. Nineteen percent of recipients will delete an email unread if it fails to display properly—and only 20 percent of the emails reviewed rendered correctly in every type of email account.

4) Make sure your template has a good balance of text to images. As well as helping your campaign to pass spam filters, this ensures that an email is readable when an email server switches off the images.

5) Present a clear call to action. The key to the success of an email campaign is to help recipients answer three questions: Who is the email from? What’s in it for them? What should they do next? Provide clear guidance on what you expect a recipient to do once he has read your email—click through to a product page, forward to a friend, contact someone in your sales department, request a catalogue.

¹Published: 9th June 2009
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Tune in Thursday, January 21 for Part 2: Ten tips for improved email.

Reflections on the Print Solutions Conference and Expo – Chicago October 2009

Tweet There was buzz in the air of the Windy City as over 1300 value added resellers, manufacturers and suppliers to the printing industry converged to share new products and approaches to the marketplace. The theme of the conference was focused on repositioning our image away from commodity oriented transactional orders to more robust and relevant offerings attractive to marketing managers challenged by a new world order.

This theme was an ideal fit for our team at AccuLink as it focused on our “sweet spot” of offerings that unite technology, marketing and production related services into one convenient solution for our customers. Our approach is to supply the needed infrastructure required to execute effective marketing campaigns. We make this available at great savings in time and expense.

The theme within our booth and the topic of my education session (awarded for the “Best Educational Value”) dealt with 2d code technology and how to monetize this offering. (Note: the power point presentation is linked to this blog and I will post another article that goes into greater detail regarding the presentation).

No doubt the 2d code education was well received and excited the visionaries who imagined all the possibilities. The light “came on” for those who recognized the value in partnering with AccuLink who not only understands the technology but can weave it into a cross media link to prospects and customers. Of special interest was the realization that the most direct medium to the emerging consumer group aged 15-35 years old is via the smart phone. The 2d code phone scanning application is a unique way to link a printed document to a virtual message via the internet. Of added value is the ability to measure responses and collect new data for the marketer.

Our new eCommerce offering www.b2vcards.com was also well received resulting in numerous orders and inquiries. This unique business card offering is also available in a format allowing a reseller to rebrand our platform and present this offering to their customers under their brand.

The PSDA event in Chicago was a great success. The networking with new friends and fellow PSDA members was upbeat and stimulating. While some complain that print is a mature and irrelevant industry, I beg to differ. I see just the opposite. We are in the business of adding value and improving business communications. The ability of an organization to adapt to change and act quickly on new opportunities will define ultimate success. That is the nature of AccuLink and I am proud to be surrounded by talented team members who share this vision.

The response to our introduction of 2d code technology to the Print Solutions audience reaffirmed my belief that the fun and growth of our business has only just begun!

Don’t sell PURLs!

Tweet This discussion is directed to anyone who thinks they are in a position to “wow” their prospect with an offer to increase results with increased response rates generated by the introduction of personalized URLs (PURLs) in their next campaign. Though the technology is nothing new, we are seeing a greater interest in this service as more publicity of its merits is exposed. For purely selfish reasons the time has come for me to offer these folks my advice…“Don’t sell PURLs”!

You see, at AccuLink we specialize in highly personalized communications and I find myself spending a lot of my time educating others about the benefit of PURLs and how they fit inside a well thought out campaign. Many of my customers are value added resellers who want desperately to be the first to introduce their customers to this new technology. Crazy as it may sound, I find myself discouraging them from selling PURLs more often than not. Let me explain with a simple analogy.

We all know that baseball, like any competitive sport, involves much more than luck to win consistently throughout a season. Championship teams begin with strong coaching, hard work, talented players, thoughtful execution, good timing and practice, practice, practice to name a few. Now in the game of business I equate a PURL with a catcher’s mitt. The ball is the data and all the other aspects of the game are no different than the considerations one must consider in a marketing campaign. Examples of those ingredients include data research, strategic objectives, target audience, relevant messages, powerful incentives, strong call to action, appealing design, timing, ample budget, testing, and follow up (the list can go on).
My intention here is to point out that a salesman is misguided if he focuses on selling a team owner on the idea that a catcher’s mitt product will bring that team a championship trophy. I would argue he may sell his product once but he is risking that relationship if he does not address the other ingredients to the team’s potential victory. A successful marketing campaign is no different.

The moral of the story is to understand where a PURL resides in a campaign. Focus on ALL the ingredients and when you get to the point in a discussion where your client agrees that there is a need to capture more information within the campaign than you started with…well THAT is when the PURL discussion begins and it will sell itself!