Hunting Holiday Sales? Survey Tracks 2015 Shoppers

Happy Thanksgiving and best wishes for a profitable start to the holiday season. U.S.holiday spending is expected to jump ahead of last year, with a recent consumer survey by SAS reporting that 80% of consumers in the U.S., Canada and U.K. plan to spend as much as, or more than, they did last year (29% in the U.S. specifically said they plan to spend more). Where will they be shopping? According to the SAS survey report by MarketingProfs, some 68% will favor the discount retailers, 59% will choose e-tailers, and 53% will crowd department stores. Gift cards are the top gift choice of consumers, followed by toys/games and apparel. Note that 28% of surveyed shoppers say they will buy a gift for the family pet, a lot more than those who feel like giving to humans outside the family, such as co-workers (only 17%) or neighbors (13%). To boost sales, target a younger crowd in those holiday promotions. Shoppers aged 18 to 29 are more likely to hit the Black Friday week sales per the survey, with 42% saying they will shop the whole week, 41% on Black Friday, and 35% on Cyber Monday. And those millennial shoppers also are more likely to increase spending over last year, while most older consumers stick to their 2014 budgets. And here's more good news: The holiday spending spree will extend past Christmas, with 63% of all consumers saying they plan to shop the after-holiday sales. For more details and a great infographic, go to the MarketProfs article at http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/28846/2015-holiday-shoppers-when-and-how-they-plan-to-buy-infographic

Just the Facts: Why Direct Mail Is Alive--and Thriving

DBM Designs' experience as a partner with successful direct mail programs has helped us ignore the perennial claims of direct mail's demise. But for marketers who still doubt snail mail's continued marketing power, we're happy to share this year's facts from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) 2015 Statistical Fact Book and its latest Response Rate Report. For one thing, company spending on direct mail continues to grow, not shrink, with $46 billion spent on direct mail in 2014—up from $44.8 billion in 2013. Organizations also are expected to spend $9.3 billion on data for direct mail in 2015, an increase over the previous two years. One reason for direct mail's staying power with marketers is that it continues to lead in response. Average response rates for direct mail are 3.7% for house lists and 1% for prospect names, which are both higher rates than for mobile, paid search, social media. Internet display ads and e-mail. For example, e-mail scores an average 0.1% response for customers and prospects. Only telemarketing beats direct mail in response power at 9%-10%, per DMA data. At $19 average cost per acquisition for house lists, direct mail acquisition also costs less than paid search ($21-$30) and Internet display ads ($41-$50) and is close to the $16-$18 CPA of mobile and social. Direct mail does lose out to e-mail ($11-$15) on CPA for house lists. But DMA's most important metric--median ROI--shows why direct mail in still in the game and not on the bench. Although e-mail and telemarketing lead in median ROI (21%-23% and 19%-20%, respectively) compared with direct mail's 15%-17%, direct mail ROI is still on par with social media and way ahead of mobile, paid search and Internet display. For more direct marketing industry benchmarks and response details by direct mail package type and customer target (business or consumer), see http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/direct-media-response-rate-cpa-and-roi-benchmarks-53645/

Without Response Tracking, Your Mailing Isn't Marketing

Quantifiable response data is the soul of direct mail. How else do marketers judge effectiveness, read testing, improve results or budget by channel? Yet we sometimes see direct mail pieces that are long on creative appeal and short on response tracking strategy, a recipe for current and future marketing waste. For a primer on direct mail tracking methods, check out a 2015 Target Marketing magazine article by Summer Gould. Here are her seven suggested tracking devices: QR codes with a landing page for each campaign; PURLs with a unique landing page for each campaign; coupons with a code to track response on redemption; reply cards with a code for each campaign imprinted to track returns; a response phone number, either specific to each campaign or connected to a call center that asks for a code from the piece on intake; text messaging, either providing a special number for each campaign or requiring a code entry from the mail piece on the text response; a mail piece redemption that requires the recipient to bring the mailer with them to get a discount or some other special offer at a sales or event site. Mailers don't have to limit themselves to just one of these methods, of course; offering more than one way to get in touch can capture more responses by recipient preferences. For more detail, read http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/direct-mail-if-you-can-t-track-it-don-t-do-it/

Fundraising Success Relies on Good Data Measurement

In providing data services for many nonprofit fundraising efforts, either directly or via their list brokers and agencies, we can vouch for the critical importance of good data measurement and analytics. A recent business2community.com post by William Comcowich, CMO of CyberAlert media measurement service, addressed that key nonprofit challenge. He began by citing six tips for improved nonprofit data measurement courtesy of Katie Paine, measurement expert and CEO of Paine Publishing LLC: Clarifying the mission and the role each activity plays in support; measuring results from all stakeholders (volunteers, sponsors, employees, and the people served as well as donors); selecting at least three specific, quantifiable and time-limited metrics for analyzing communications channels, including direct mail, e-mail and social media; gaining across-the-board leadership support of measurement; taking advantage of existing data and data gathering across departments; and analysis of measured results to improve and repeat good performance. Comcowich also stressed the need to focus on donor preference data. Based on measurable donor preferences, fundraisers can improve response with tactics such as targeting appeals and communications by age to leverage generational differences; adjusting communications frequency; and segmenting for channel and content preference to boost engagement. For the complete article, read http://www.business2community.com/non-profit-marketing/analytics-measurement-can-improve-marketing-fundraising-nonprofits-01362512

Mining Merge-Purge Report Can Yield Valuable Nuggets

Merge-Purge reports can be revelatory--and not just for data processing geeks. Savvy direct mail marketers can mine the report to improve mail quantity as well as quality. Thanks to Gina Valentino, president of Hemisphere Marketing as well as dean of marketing for CatalogUniversity.com, which shares catalog marketing lessons from industry experts, for a recent blog post pointing out the value of digging deeper into Merge-Purge results. She notes three sometimes-overlooked opportunities to boost the bottom line of mailings. First, she advises marketers to pay close attention to Intradupes in the same key code (list). If the Intradupe rate is high, above 1%, you have reason to negotiate better pricing from a rental list (or drop it). Next, she advises looking closely at the Invalid Drops in the best-performing keycodes (such as Hotlines). Business rules that drop recent high-value customers for seasonal addresses, deliverable AFO/FPO or U.S. territory addresses, or DMA Pander matches, for example, need to be evaluated. Third, she urges paying close attention to gross-in and gross-out numbers for house data. If the net-out rate is low (under 99%), then customer/prospect data may not be entered or aggregated properly. Get a sample to see what is going wrong. But here's the advice that we, as data service partners, like best: "If you’re not sure what is useful with the Merge/Purge reports, spend 15 minutes with your data service provider defining and reviewing each column title of the report. Ask questions. Determine where it makes sense to change the business rules for data processing." For more detail on her tips, read https://www.cataloguniversity.com/blog/marketing-blog/check-the-mergepurge-for-freebies/

Want to Up Mail Response? Don't Neglect the Order Form

We're surprised to see some direct mailers neglecting a key response device: the order form. Although a growing percentage of customers are being driven online to complete response, the old-fashioned printed order form is still important. Cutting corners, all the way to form elimination, to reduce print and postage costs can backfire in terms of revenue and ROI. Statistics show that 10%-12% of mail response can be attributed to the order form, for example. In fact, after the envelope, the order form is often the first piece of a direct mail package that the recipient reviews because it is a quick way to assess offer and pricing. That's why a good order form will repeat the sales pitch simply and powerfully--with a killer headline, briefly restated offer and visual impact. Visually, symbols/icons are especially effective with today's audiences because people are so accustomed to shorthand graphics online and in digital calls to action. It's a given that personalization is vital to direct mail response today, and that power extends to the order form, with pre-filled name and address information for example. (Here's another reason to make sure your mailing list data is clean and accurate!) A good form not only makes it clear how to order and makes it easy to order, it also adds a sense of urgency to close the deal. An order form set aside "for later" may be a response lost forever. For some great examples from real-life mailers, check out order form improvement tips from DirectMarketingIQ, which draws on the mail monitoring resources of Who's Mailing What!: http://www.directmarketingiq.com/item/3-tips-improve-your-direct-mail-order-form

Common Design and Data Missteps Can Sink Mail ROI

Even if a direct mailer gets everything right when it comes to list selection, offer and copy, certain common design and data mistakes can boost postal costs, reduce deliverability and cut ROI. Our thanks to Printing Industries of America for a handy summary of avoidable mailing mistakes. The PIA list includes design and mail preparation faux pas, such as creating a flat mailer that could have mailed as a letter for reduced postage; creating an unusually shaped mail piece without calculating the higher postage ramifications; failing to check weight and final thickness and so incurring higher postage; and failing to meet USPS requirements for the address block, either as printed on the outer envelope or viewed via a window envelope. Another group of common errors involves data processing. Mailing list data problems that PIA notes--and that DBM Designs regularly addresses with CASS-certified software, NCOA database matching and merge-purge--include lack of standard USPS abbreviations, punctuation (except the hyphen in ZIP+4), no secondary addresses, no pre- or post-street directionals (N, S, etc.), duplicate names and addresses, and failure to meet USPS Move Update requirements. However, by the time a mail campaign goes to press, it's too late for most direct mailers to cost-effectively avoid mail missteps, even if working with the minority of printers offer mailing services.  Based on DBM Designs' successful direct-mail partnerships, early application of postal and data processing disciplines is the best cure for these common direct mail bugs. See details of all top-10 mailing mistakes: http://www.printing.org/page/9380