Just this week, I was on the receiving end of the best B2B campaign I’ve seen in years – and had to fire off this posting to you without delay, given the valuable marketing lessons to be learned from it.

A seemingly hand addressed brown paper envelope was delivered to me.

Inside… a hotel key and a note offering a web address. It intrigued me – had I won a prize? (Of course I knew I hadn’t. But nevertheless, I was impressed by the mystery. How could anyone not be?)

So I took the bait and visited the site. It was a hotel micro-site inviting me to review a simple hotel restaurant menu and “construct” my perfect meal. Very cool interactive content.

Once I completed this menu , the true nature of the campaign was revealed. Both mailer and site were a demonstration of the prowess of VLG - clearly a very interesting interactive agency! VLG pointed out that I had not only engaged with the site, but revealed critical information about myself along the way (steak, not chicken!).

Moments after completing the site’s online form I received a call from VLG.

So what can you take away from this top-flight campaign? Five key components:

1. Accurate Targeting: I lead sales and marketing at AccuData. I’m the perfect target for this agency

2. Attention-Getting Opener: Marketers know unusual mail pieces have a better chance of being opened. Boxes are the best but a hand-addressed brown paper envelope is very good.

3. Irresistible call-to-action: the hotel key was a unique way to spur the desired response… my visit to the URL.

4. Show, don’t tell: The mailer didn’t tell me what VLG could do. It showed me the proof in a memorable way. And that made all the difference.

5. Fast follow-up: By calling just moments after my site visit, VLG reached me at the peak of my interest when they were still top-of-mind. Definitely a best practice.

Was the campaign expensive? Sure. But VLG could never have driven that response from me with email or a more traditional mail piece. B2B direct marketing can often support more expensive promotional costs because of the relatively large value of a sale.

Check out another great mail piece I’ve reviewed: “Dear Mr. Goff” isn’t even close - let’s get variable

A key message we’re hearing at the show is that printers must become “MSPs” or “marketing service providers” to stay competitive. 

Several presentations including a very interesting presentation given by Kodak suggested that the opportunity now exists for traditional printers, “ink and paper guys,” to help their clients develop and deliver effective multi-channel marketing campaigns.

The availability of technology like digital press solutions from Fuji, Kodak and others allows for powerful printed media that incorporates variable data including images.  Add a PURL and you have a highly customized multi-channel campaign.

Last time I talked about Direct Mail, a passion of mine and a marketing tactic some think is dying. 

Despite record postage and the state of the economy, direct mail is still extremely effective.   How do I know?  Hundreds of AccuData customers as well as the direct mail I personally recieve tell me so.  If you are reading this and thinking, “not mine” then it’s time to think hard about how your company funds, develops and executes your direct mail.  It’s time to look inward, not outward at the economy or the USPS.

I recently received a direct mail piece from one of the nation’s largest insurance companies.  To my amazement, I could see through the outer envelope, could see the offer through the paper.  I wondered at the time if this was intentional, after all this company is a large, sophisticated marketer.  Surely every aspect of their direct mail must be tested thoroughly.  Well maybe this was, but I don’t think so.  This was an attempt to shave a fraction of a cent from each mail piece.  Paper is expensive right?  Let’s save some money by reducing paper weight! 

“Boss, maybe we should move our budget to pay per click, direct mail isn’t working anymore!”  As my good English friend and marketing guru Doug Bewsher might say “Bollock”!

First things first - what is the purpose of an outer envelope?  To convince the recipient to open it of course!  Now I have received mailers that were designed to be see-through and a few of them were fantastic.  Not this piece.  This was just lazy.  If I can see through the outer envelope to the content within, if I can see the offer then I don’t have to open the package.  I won’t read the letter, won’t read the brochure,  won’t give the company a chance - particularly if the offer is just so-so.

Large insurance company - you know who you are.  Put on some weight please.  I like em’ heavy!

As a follow-up to the “Odd Couple” post, here I’ll talk about Channel Switching as a way to effectively marry direct mail and email in a multi-channel campaign.

First recall the key point of the “Odd Couple” post.  Multi-channel marketing, particularly simultaneous direct mail and email, can reduce campaign ROI because the incremental channel, often the email channel, doesn’t always result in enough incremental response to recoup its cost.

Channel Switching  can solve this problem by effectively utilizing both channels.  Here is how it works:  The idea is to run a multi-channel campaign, email and direct mail in this case, in stages beginning with the most cost-effective channel (email) and then SWITCHING to the less effective channel (mail).

First, use email to generate as much low cost response as possible.  Since Email is typically less expensive than direct mail the ROI on this first round is attractive.  However since email response rates are often poor it’s important to use direct mail as a follow-up to increase the total response to your campaign (or you may not hit your overall response target).

Second, follow-up the email drop with a direct mail drop to the email non-responders, preferably using a predictive response model to maximize your response rate.  It’s often the case that prospects tend to respond to different channels and so you may find that your direct mail response rate is unaffected by the previous email drop.  In fact you may find that the email helps to increase your direct mail response rate although this is not always the case.

The combination of the two drops increases overall sales while reducing the cost per sale since the cost of the email generated response is less on a unit basis. 

Direct mail and email used together in a multi-channel campaign can work wonders for your ROI - or sink it. 

No doubt, email is HOT and AccuData helps many companies develop and execute multi-channel campaigns involving email and direct mail.  But I find myself advising clients quite frequently NOT to marry email and direct mail – at least not in the way we are often asked to do it - which is to simultaneously drop email and direct mail together to the same list. 

Why?

The problem is that a careful economic analysis often shows that while the output metric of such an approach is often better (e.g., response rate), the ROI can be much worse.  Think about this simple math:

Let’s say your champion approach is a direct mail program that generates a 1% response rate at a cost of $0.50 per piece.  Now you layer on email and the cost of doing this is $0.05 or 10% of the direct mail cost.  That means your total response needs to be 1.1% to break even.  Make sense?

But in reality the cost of email can be higher, especially if you are prospecting for businesses or other targets that require you to purchase managed or specialty email lists.  So the cost could be more than 10%, maybe 20% or more.  So now you need a 1.2% response rate to break even.  Now that just covers the cost of the email – we’ve not factored in other costs such as the cost to develop the email creative, the cost to develop an effective website or landing page, etc. 

It is possible to generate incremental lift of 10% or 20% by coupling email with direct mail in the same drop - absolutely.  But in many cases we don’t see this result and the campaign winds up driving more sales, but at a higher cost per sale.

Now there IS a potentially better way to use email effectively in tandem with direct mail.  It’s called channel switching.  I’ll blog about that next time.

This week AccuData launched a new product called Snapshot.  It’s a big deal around here.  What is it?

Snapshot is an ecommerce application on our leads site, www.acculeads.com.  Snapshot allows a user to upload a customer list (b2B, B2C) at which point the system automatically appends data (demos, lifestyle, SIC division for B2B lists, etc.) and produces a profile report or a “Snapshot” of the uploaded customers if you will.  Beyond producing the profile, Snapshot automatically scores a target geographic area for prospects that statistically look just like the customers uploaded into the application - leads that are available for purchase online.

For many of our clients Snapshot is a big step-up from simple selects or heuristic targeting methods.  The Snapshot approach applies statistical rigor and can improve lift while at the same time providing a good deal of information helpful in channel selection and in the development of creative and offers.

What really excites me about Snapshot is that we’re offering what was formerly a time consuming analytics process on the web with extremely attractive economics.