Using Data, Technology & USPS to Rev Mail Response

Recent research provides compelling reasons to include direct mail in marketing plans--and also highlights opportunities to further pump response and ROI. Direct mail response rates actually jumped in 2016 per the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) 2017 "Response Rate Report," hitting 5.3% for house lists and 2.9% for prospect lists, the highest levels the DMA has tracked since 2003. Also consider last year's InfoTrends' direct mail statistics: 66% of direct mail is opened; 62% of consumers who responded to direct mail made a purchase within three months; and 56% of consumers who responded to direct mail went online or visited the physical store. But direct mail is expensive, and response is no slam dunk, so marketers must plan carefully to leverage positive trends. Luckily, 2017 offers data and print technology options, and U.S Postal Service support, to aid in direct mail success. We suggest committing to six key steps: First, start with data quality. That requires updating, cleaning and aggregating the customer database. Look for data gaps and append important targeting factors, such as contact info, demographics or firm-ographics. Second, analyze the data to identify and profile your best customers and their attributes, preferences and transactional history so that you can find and target lookalikes in acquisition, as well as tailor more profitable retention. Third, use your data to create effective targeting and personalization with tactics such as segmentation, variable data printing and timely triggered mail. Segment the audience into target mail groups, based on factors ranging from age and gender to purchase history. Use variable data printing technology for hyper-targeted messaging with multiple variable-content fields. You also can automate digital-activity mail triggers so that, for example, a relevant postcard is sent within 48 hours of an online purchase. Fourth, use print technology's PURLs or QR codes to leverage multi-channel investment, boost response ease, and create a seamless brand experience by linking physical mail to website, mobile and social. Fifth, test innovative creative that will stand out in the mailbox. Summer Gould, president of Eye/Comm, recently offered some suggestions in Forbes magazine, including Augmented Reality, dimensional mail, "endless folds" pieces, and video mailers. Finally, take advantage of the U.S. Postal Service's postage discounts and incentives! In 2017, programs include Earned Value; Color Transpromo; Emerging & Advanced Technology; Tactile, Sensory & Interactive Engagement; Direct Mail Starter; and Mobile Shopping. For details: https://www.usps.com/business/promotions-incentives.htm

Data-Driven Marketing Power Drained by Basic Mistakes

Data-driven strategy is an ideal that many marketers, especially in the B2B world, have not fully mastered. For example, a 2015 survey of marketing professionals by Ascend2 and ZoomInfo found that only 33% of respondents called their data-driven marketing strategy “very successful.” The good news is that just 10% said their data strategy was somewhat or very unsuccessful. Still that leaves a lot of room for improvement! What's preventing marketers from maximizing data success? In a recent martechadvisor.com post, Hila Nir, vice president of marketing and product at ZoomInfo, cited the three most common mistakes sapping data-driven marketing potential, with a focus on business-to-business marketing. No. 1 is wastefully "throwing the net too wide" and hauling in confusion. While there is a mass of multi-channel data you can gather and analyze, only some data and patterns are relevant to marketing success. So where do you start? Nir advises going to the foundation of the customer relationship--the actual customer contact--and building from there. The No. 2 error is failing to frequently refresh customer and prospect data. Data value erodes over time as basics such as mailing address, job title, phone number and e-mail change. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software that stores lots of outdated legacy data can make the problem worse. And maintaining data quality is a big job that only grows with the size of the database. That's why 79% of the most successful data-driven marketers in the survey said they outsourced some portion of data management. Finally, mistake No. 3 is simply failing to take full advantage of customer and prospect data to improve cost-effectiveness and ROI. Trying to find a path through the data weeds to ideal customer targeting can certainly be daunting and strain internal resources--which is also why many successful B2B marketing efforts turn to consultants for database analysis. Needless to say, DBM Designs is among the data service partners who stand ready to assist! For the full article, go to http://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/audience-market-data/3-mistakes-that-kill-any-datadriven-marketing-strategy/

Marketers Should Stop Snub of Third-Party Data

Many data-driven marketers seem to suffer from a costly bias that focuses on first-party and second-party data and gives short shrift to third-party data. For example, an April business2community.com report of the "Data-Driven Marketing Benchmarks for Success" study by Ascend2 and ZoomInfo shows that a company’s internal first-party data is used by 86% of data-driven marketers, but only 49% use data from marketing partners, 32% use data from channel partners, and a mere 27% use data from third-party vendors. Why the third-party data snub? Marketers may assume that first-party data is more powerful, but that power depends on data quality and completeness. In fact, third-party data has a vital role in enriching first-party data by adding key targeting information. Third-party data sets can be appended to first-party data to correct and fill in missing elements such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, lifestyles, demographics, purchase indicators and more to strengthen customer insights. Second, while first-party data is more powerful for certain marketing goals--such as loyalty programs, targeting and retargeting existing customers, or profiling best customers--it's not going to provide a mailing list of new prospects for growth! Marketers can rent quality third-party data and segment these specialized data sets to target prospects by factors such as demographics or firm-ographics, trigger events, location, recency, purchase history, and more. Marketers also may assume that even second-party data from partners is of higher quality than third-party data. First, that ignores the inherited quality problems and integration issues of second-party sources. Second, more high caliber third-party data is available today than in the past. Marketers can further ensure third-party list quality by working with a data-independent provider, by selecting aggregated data from multiple quality sources and files, and by making sure all data is frequently updated and hygiened. For more on the power of third-party data for direct and digital marketing, read http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/the-power-of-third-party-data

Survey Finds Big, Dirty Challenge in 2016: Customer Data

Direct marketers know that quality data is at the heart of their success. Yet three-quarters of customer service, data, marketing, sales and tech professionals told the latest Experian Data Quality survey that they will be struggling with inaccurate data in 2016--undermining efficiency, customer satisfaction and profits. From a recent Direct Marketing News magazine report of Experian findings, respondents cited their main data quality problems as incomplete/missing data (60%), outdated info (54%), duplicate data (51%), inconsistent data (37%), and typos (30%)--and more than half attributed that bad data to human error. Indeed, when it comes to the biggest obstacles to improving data quality, respondents cite the two top challenges as lack of internal knowledge/skills and lack of internal human resources. As a data services provider, we're happy to see that underperforming data quality vendors is at the very bottom of the list of impediments to better data (cited by just 7%). So what kind of projects can we expect from clients this year if they join the push to tackle data issues? Those surveyed said they'd be working on data cleansing (37%), data integration (37%), data migration (31%), and data enrichment (31%). If you are still wondering if data quality is worth the investment, consider the top five reasons given for improving data quality: increasing efficiency (56%), enhancing customer satisfaction (41%), enabling more informed decisions (39%), saving on costs (39%), and protecting brand and reputation (34%)--all goals with a positive impact on the long-term bottom line. For more report details, read the DM News story at http://www.dmnews.com/dataanalytics/managing-customer-data-in-2016/article/469162/

Don't Let Data Glitches Stymie B2B Lead Efforts

Business-to-business marketers dedicate chunks of budget and time to gathering qualified leads. Unfortunately, we've seen basic data problems undermine the effectiveness of hard-won B2B prospect and customer databases. So we'd like to pass along a recent MarketingProfs article alerting marketers to six of the most common data pitfalls. No. 1 on the list posted by Rob Manser, acting director of marketing at contact validation firm Service Objects, is relying on a single contact method in lead data. Focusing solely on e-mail outreach, for example, increases failure from address errors or poor channel response. By gathering or appending multichannel contact options--phone, e-mail and mailing address--the chances of connection climb. As Manser points out: "An e-mail or a phone call might never be returned, but a clever direct mail piece may catch a prospect's eye." Problem No. 2 arises from incorrect data gathering--incomplete, typo-riddled, misformatted or just plain bogus contact information. It doesn't mean all bad-data contacts must be tossed; many can be cost-effectively salvaged today via data verification, validation and appending software. Pitfall No. 3 is out-of-date information. Valuable contacts change companies, move to other locations in the same company, change titles and departments, etc. Frequent and thorough contact-data updating is required. That said, even when info is technically correct, Pitfall No. 4 occurs because data is not contact-specific enough; using a headquarters phone and address instead of the contact's division location will miss response in a geo-targeted campaign, for example. No. 5 on Manser's list of prospecting mistakes: Lead data that doesn't include a company's key targeting criteria--such as title or company size--which creates costly sales and marketing misfires. The final error compounds all others: allowing a contact database to become a pool of wasted opportunities by failing to fix data problems. Manser argues that there is no excuse now that marketers can turn to database services for quick, automated data-appending, data-verification and data-validation programs for clean-up--and we agree!  For more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2015/28978/six-huge-lead-generation-pitfalls-that-are-hurting-your-business 

Direct Mail for 2016: Personalized, Mobilized, Analyzed

The holidays are whizzing by, and those 2016 direct mail plans are on the launch pad. Are you sure you're using the right fuel to reach direct mail heights? We like the way a recent blog post by IWCO Direct's Senior Customer Engagement Manager Krista Black boiled down that question into the three top trends to include in any plan for mail success: targeted personalization, mobile phone impact and multichannel analysis. When it comes to personalized mail, simplistic first-name fills aren't enough to generate customer response anymore. Effective personalization, Black points out, is about targeting with the right offer, right audience and right timing--to segment audience by demographics, geography, purchase history and psychographics for best response; to tailor a compelling offer to audience needs and likely objections; and to time mailings to fit recipient buying cycles. Next, mailers must accept that mobile has become the "first screen" of the majority of the target audience, Black advises. Recipients are likely to go first to their mobile phone after reading a mailer to search for a product, service or retail location. Leverage that trend in printed mail by including QR codes, PURLs, and keywords integrated with SEO/SEM. Finally, today's marketing is multichannel, and that presents a challenge in response and conversion analysis and attribution, Black warns. Marketing analysis needs to account for both direct and "halo" effects across channels--such as direct mail sending respondents via mobile to web pages. We would add a key fourth element for 2016 direct mail success: quality data. Marketers will need accurate, complete, up-to-date, verified, integrated multichannel data to achieve all three of Black's goals in direct mail plans next year--and we can help with that! For the complete post: http://www.iwco.com/blog/2015/12/11/direct-marketing-trends-2016/

Survey Cites Obstacles to Data-Driven Marketing Success

Despite technology advances and the bounty of "big data," data quality remains the biggest challenge for data-driven direct marketing. Consider MarketingProfs' report on a new Ascend2 global survey of marketing, sales and business professionals. In terms of the most important goals of data-driven marketing strategy, personalizing the customer experience led the field (60%), followed by measuring data-driven ROI (51%) and targeting individual market segments (50%). Then when it came to the biggest obstacles to success, companies put front-end data issues ahead of back-end analytics by a wide margin. Improving data quality was ranked as the No. 1 challenge to data-driven success (59%), followed by integrating data across platforms (51%), raising the level of data analytical skills (38%) and measuring data-driven marketing ROI (37%). In fact, only 16% of respondents rated the quality of their marketing data as "very good," compared with the 27% who rated data quality as "somewhat poor" to "very poor." The majority (57%) called their data "somewhat good," which is just not good enough for the most cost-effective marketing results! For more from the survey, read http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/28904/data-driven-marketing-top-objectives-and-challenges

Are You Missing Out on Personalization's Big ROI?

Personalization via variable data printing is a proven way to increase direct mail response and ROI. Any mailer would want a result like this: Melissa Data has reported it found personalized color direct mail typically generated a 6.5% response rate, three times higher than the average 2% response rate resulting from non-personalized direct mail. Yet some direct mailers hesitate to go beyond a "Dear Jon" first-name greeting. It may be because they lack a robust house database and need a long-term data collection process and profiling. Appending and modeling are options to help jumpstart that process. When it comes to personalized prospecting, there are well-sourced, up-to-date rented mailing lists that offer a wealth of targeting data for personalization. Common response factors for B2C include gender, past purchase or donation history, expiration/renewal dates and geographic location (personalized mapping is a proven retailing tool), for example. A remaining personalization hurdle is data quality--inaccurate data, duplicate data, improperly formatted data, or no data at all in key fields. Bad data makes personalization backfire with the wrong name, the wrong address or the wrong offer. Luckily, given the payoff in terms of response and ROI, the low-cost investment in mailing list data hygiene is a no-brainer. Once data is cleaned up, careful mailing list segmentation by target audience preps for variable data printing (VDP) of personalized versions. While working with VDP, consider adding a Personalized URL that sends each contact to a personally customized landing page; research by the Direct Marketing Association and others shows PURLs can further lift overall response (even double it). By the way, if you are in fundraising or in finance and insurance marketing, and you haven't embraced personalization, you are lagging the pack. See the most recent list of top direct mail categories using personalization, courtesy of Who's Mailing What: http://www.directmarketingiq.com/article/whos-mailing-what-direct-mail-categories-using-personalization/1

Study Shows Bad Data Undermining Marketers

If you worry that customer data problems are hurting your marketing results, join the crowd. Poor data quality continues to drag down ROI for the majority of U.S. businesses. In fact, the average U.S. organization believes that one-third of its data is inaccurate, and a whopping 91% of companies believe revenue is being negatively affected by inaccurate data in terms of wasted resources, lost productivity, or wasted marketing and communications spending, according to the Experian Data Quality study released this year. One of the most common culprits cited was poor address data quality. The study definitely reflects the kind of data quality challenges that direct mailers (and their list brokers, printers and agencies) bring to DBM Designs' database marketing services. What are the tasks that usually need to be tackled? Data processing prior to mailing provides address format standardization for proper mail sorting, postal discounts, avoidance of invalid addresses, and removal of wasteful duplicate records from all sources. And with 17% of Americans moving each year, a mailing list check against the National Change of Address (NCOA) database is essential to avoid costly wrong addresses and duplicates. Thorough data processing also helps to detect other data problems, such as missing, incomplete or miscoded customer information, and to create a single-customer view across channels for better segmentation, targeting by channel, and response tracking. For more on the results of the Experian Data Quality study, go to http://www.experian.com/blogs/news/2015/01/29/data-quality-research-study/