The economy is turning around. How do I know? My mail told me so. Maybe not in so many words but it certainly insinuated a recovery. Of course I won’t hold the mail or the mail carrier responsible if this prediction falls flat but yes, I do believe all signs point to better days ahead. So you may be asking, “What on earth could have brought about such an epiphany?” Was it a vision? A dream? Nah, it was a piece of direct mail. But not just any direct mail – it was a piece offering timeshares.

The direct mail in question, for The Hilton Grand Vacations Club, was beautifully done and very high quality. It showed – and spoke to – all of the right things and it certainly stood out amongst the mounds of mail I received.

So how does this signal a return to prosperity? Simply by the fact that the timeshare market, Hilton in particular, feels that some people are at a better place, a point where they may be willing to invest in a relatively expensive discretionary purchase.  Let’s not forget that timeshares, along with real estate in general, are big reminders of the banking and mortgage crisis. If a brand like Hilton is comfortable selling timeshares to audiences again, things must be getting better…even if just a little bit, right?

The other thing that stood out was the medium itself – direct mail. During a time when email and digital technology are heralded as the best bang for your direct marketing buck, it is proof once again that direct mail does have its advantages. When done properly, it informs and generates a positive emotional response, which makes a huge difference in prompting a buying decision or developing customer loyalty. Plus, direct mail is tangible – a piece can lay around a home or office for months, garnering numerous views from the recipient or passive viewers, making your messaging shelf-life a long one.

So, things are looking up. Let’s keep our minds moving forward and an eye on the future – in the meantime I’ve got a Hilton Mini-Vacation to book…

As PODI show continues, I am amazed at how the forum always offers new and exciting ways for participants to stay relevant. AccuData exhibited at Print ’09 and I came away from the event struck by not only the incredible printing technologies available to marketers today but the additional value-added services offered as well.

One of the best exhibits last year was Kodak’s. It was large and very high-tech but on a more practical level, it was jam-packed with great information for printers interested in becoming “MSP”s – Marketing Service Providers. This year, I can only imagine that many more attendees will be offering – or looking for just those kinds of services.

Why? Because it’s just smart business. At the end of the day, printers touch a huge portion of the direct mail and other direct marketing materials produced every year – direct mail alone is still a huge $51 billion business. But thanks to shrinking margins, dwindling budgets and attacks by competitors, the printing business is more competitive than ever before.

To remain competitive, many printers have become, or will become MSPs. What this means is that they are layering value-added marketing services (advice, creative, PURLs and email, data, analytics and database systems) on top of their traditional “ink & paper” business – allowing them to assume the role of seamless partner as opposed to disposable vendor.

Today, a successful MSP can help their clients more accurately target and develop better direct marketing materials and increase ROI.  The risk of NOT doing this is the possibility of losing key accounts to more sophisticated players. I’ve seen this happen and it’s ugly.

If you aren’t at PODI, give AccuData a call. We’re here to help as we have done for hundreds of other printers across the country.

Wow, 2010! The New Year has always been my favorite time of year for business –it’s a time of renewal and excitement for the future.  We all get a fresh start on January 1^st.

Or do we?

The boom is over – and boom-time companies, executives and marketers are done if they don’t have what it takes to survive in the new economy.

Most economists believe the country is out (or nearly out) of recession and that we’ll see some growth this year.  But recovery isn’t the only story we’re likely to hear about in 2010.  If you are a student of business history you know there is something very interesting going on – something that has already reshaped industries across all sectors and will continue to do so all year long.

Frankly, for some companies it wasn’t hard to make money during the boom.  While some companies and executives certainly did better than others, success was evident in abundance.  New ideas were easily embraced by investors and consumers.  The bar for marketers was low – everything worked and delivered sky high ROI!

Not anymore.  Now it’s time for the real stars to emerge.

Companies without a clear competitive advantage and sound management won’t make it.  Marketers can’t just throw money at the problem; products and services must have compelling value, quality marketing and delivery to succeed.

If you don’t believe me think Pontiac or Circuit City and countless other mid-sized and small businesses whose storefronts were shuttered all over America.  I’ll wager that many of the superstar CMO’s from the past decade won’t make it in the next.  Now it’s about strategy, planning, sharp pricing, distribution, etc. and these things are hard.

Now is the time to get smart – while you still can.

There are a host of great service companies, including AccuData that can help.  Now is the time to reach out, challenge your thinking and see if you can find better services at better prices.  If you don’t use services, you should seriously consider it.  Service companies can spot trends across industry sectors well in advance – they deal with hundreds, even thousands, of companies.  It’s sometimes easier to spot opportunities from this vantage point.

I promise that your competition (and your colleague down the hall) is thinking hard about this.  They are making a move.  You don’t want to be standing still when they run past you.

A client recently asked AccuData to develop a predictive model to help target a large national direct mail and email campaign. Notice the request was to develop “a” predictive model - we actually wound up building ten, and despite the incremental cost of building ten vs. one, they drove sky-high ROI for the campaign.

Why did we do this and why did it deliver economically?

Predictive models built for a national prospect universe assume that individuals or households with similar characteristics behave the same way in each MSA. They don’t. Many marketers approach this problem by asking their analytics team to include a geographic factor, essentially asking their team to make sure the predictive model includes a factor for geography. But this is often a mistake.

First, in many cases the geographic factor is weak compared to other key elements (e.g., demos, lifestyle factors). In this case the geographic factor falls out of the model. Alternatively the geographic factor could be so strong that other important variables fall out of the model.

What works?

In our experience the best way to address the challenge is to build distinct models for each key market. In this way a weak, but potentially important geographic factor, is incorporated into your targeting. At the same time a strong geographic factor is incorporated because you will develop models at the MSA level (or some other geo level).

If you are a large marketer you must fight for every 1/100th of a percent of response. In our experience, building localized models for key markets delivers critical competitive advantage.

The prevailing perception among many marketers is that all buyers of your product or service are alike.  Hence they typically focus on age or income or other basic segmenting factors.  The fact is that there are regional influences and behaviors that clearly earn a place in differentiating those that will buy from those that don’t.  For example, in some recent models I’ve built, there were buyers from both urban and rural areas.  The rural buyers tended to like Gardening and Fishing.  If we were to apply that natioanlly - without regional geographical recognition - we would erroneously use those attributes for targeting purposes. We would completely miss densely populated areas that likely do not offer Fishing and Gardening opportunities.  Clearly, the opportunities offered in an urban setting attract a certain market segment whereas the opportunities offered in a rural setting offer different opportunites. 

Recognizing these important regional differences will increase the probability of a purchase.

The AccuData team is home after a very productive week at the DMA and I have to say that this year’s show was a great success.  This seemed to be a far more serious crowd than last year.  Perhaps it was San Diego vs. Vegas or maybe CFOs simply didn’t approve non-essential travel.  While the reason is a mystery, the floor and the sessions were filled with a healthy crowd looking for solutions and to learn.  Good stuff.

The Brain enjoyed the show as well and several hundred t-shirts and Twitter followers later he’s developed quite a following.  Next year we may have to provide a bit of security for him - there were some unruly groupies and a couple of reporters that tried to sneak into his hotel room.  I just saw his last Tweet - I guess the show was a bit much and he’s tired.  So no new Tweets for at least a week I’d guess.  We’ll see.

Booths are always fun to evaluate.  On the “what were they thinking” scale, one company bought a 10×20 space and had only a chair and small round cocktail table along with minimal signage.   But this company DID hire an actor, dressed and painted to look like a bronze statue, to jab people as they passed by the booth, scaring some of them, amusing others and baffling me.  But this company’s booth traffic seemed good and I hope the show went well for them.  None of the booths really wowed me but there were many good ones and it was clear that most companies put a good deal of effort into their show presence.

AccuData certainly did and while we’ll see how leads and deals play out, the show went well.  I just wish The Direct Marketing Association would allow show exhibitors to do more direct marketing pre-show.  The delegate list was released late, email and telemarketing are prohibited and there are relatively few DMA-sponsored mechanisms for selling.  I don’t get it.  Perhaps this is why the DMA is facing so much emerging competition for mind share and marketing dollars from other associations and companies creating new forums for learning and selling.

DMA09 opened last night.  AccuData is a sponsor this year and it was nice to see the AccuData logo on large banners around the hall as well as the conference notepads.  This year we have a redesigned booth, smaller than last year’s and we believe it is much more effective at communicating with clients and prospects and is less expensive as well. 

Keeping costs down is really important for AccuData because we are one of the most cost-effective providers of database marketing services out there and to keep our prices down we must constantly think about our expenses.

Today is the day we’ll find out if the show is going to be a win or not.  Will we have a show filled with vendors staring at each other or will there be delegates looking for solutions? 

San Diego, the show venue, is an amazing city.  Clean, sleek, easy to navigate - San Diego was a good choice for the show’s venue.

The Brain will be at DMA09 and will be giving away cool concert tees.  He also has been tweeting like crazy about all of our products and services. Check out the latest post about AccuPortal at www.Twitter.com/AccuDataBrain.

At DMA09, stop by booth# 2423, see a demonstration of one of our products or speak to one of our experts. You’ll get a cool ’09-’10 World Tour concert tee just for your time. Want to schedule a meeting? No problem, click here, we’ll get you scheduled and one of our data or analytic specialists will be there to talk to you about 2010 planning or any of your database marketing needs.

'09-'10 World Tour Concert Tee

So, you might have caught a glimpse of the gigantic Brain on AccuData.com.  Think of The Brain as the collective intelligence of the thinkers at AccuData.  He is a big giant 300-pound brain and has some smart things to tell you. And he has even started tweeting: www.Twitter.com/AccuDataBrain.  You also might see The Brain appear in your email box, in Target Marketing Magazine and at DMA09. 

Yes, we’ve decided to have a little bit of fun with The Brain in 4Q, but the message is a serious one. 

Next year the economy will rebound and if you’re like many of AccuData’s customers you hope for better things in ’10 – in fact you are counting on it.  AccuData’s message is:  “Be smart.  Consider AccuData in your 2010 planning.” We say this because all year we’ve shown our customers how to be more effective on the top line and bottom line – and we’d like to show more companies what we can do next year.

To find out more about The Brain and AccuData’s products and services, click here.

I’ve written about see-through envelopes and a general deterioration in the level of effort many companies are putting into their direct mail efforts.  But not all companies are letting their direct mail languish - and they are still generating very strong results despite today’s poor economic conditions.

How are they doing it?  Sharp targeting and (increasingly) variable digital printing. 

Regarding the latter, I received a mail piece a few weeks ago that illustrates the level of customization some direct marketers are now achieving in their direct mail.  The piece offered an extended warranty for my vehicle.  I’ve been receiving a number of these lately but this one was different. 

Beyond the usual “Dear Mr. Goff”  the piece included a list of the top 5 repairs I could expect over the next 36 months with their corresponding costs (for my vehicle) and a map showing the location of three nearby garages that not only accepted the warranty company’s coverage, but also waived the deductable.  Impressive.

The information was important because it gave me specific information that I could weigh in my decision making process.  In fact, I even visited one of the listed garages to get a reference on the warranty company.

Out of curiosity I tracked down the direct marketing manager for the warranty company and she was quite open about their approach.  The company had been sending out increasingly less expensive pieces with generic offers and (yes!) see-through envelops.  After some internal debate and experimentation with prospect email, the company decided to double-down on direct mail and address the fundamental issues that had been limiting their response - the lack of “monetization,” that is the lack of data that enabled a consumer to weigh the cost of the warranty against the cost of repairs and the lack of specifics around garages that accepted the coverage.

After building the databases powering the cost and garage data and fully taking advantage of variable digital printing (and upgrading their paper stock), response rates had almost doubled and direct mail became the companies second most effective channel…(can anyone guess what was always and still is their most effective direct response channel?).

The truth is, this example doesn’t come close to illustrating the amazing things possible with variable digital printing, but it does illustrate how a company with a common product can use data very surgically to drive very impressive direct mail results and economics - and it was not all that hard to do.