Reaching Your Target Audience with Personalized Communications
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know what election season means, both as a printer, mailer, and marketer, as well as a resident in the various districts. Direct mail. Billboards. Radio. Email. Social media. TV. Everywhere you turn there will be one candidate or another trying to win your vote. From a direct mail perspective, what can you do to help your client while building your brand image in this highly competitive space?
Make the Most Out of Each Marketing Campaign
Even though you might not be a marketing company, you need to always remember that your product is marketing related. As such, you should be offering services to help your products be a success. Today it’s all about data. Data quality, data enhancement, data mining, data, data, data. The more you know about your data, the more you can target your list, tailor the messaging, and maximize return on investment.
But it’s easier than you might think, especially if you focus on these key areas:
- Creating a highly targeted mailing campaign
- Adding personalization to the mailpiece
- Facilitating multichannel campaigns
It wasn’t coincidental that we combined Track N Trace and DSF2 aimed at election season. We know they’re being used, and how they’re being used, to help companies just like yours bring the most value to their clients.
Let’s Explore Track N Trace
Track N Trace adds value by leveraging Informed Visibility® technology from the USPS® to provide unparalleled mailpiece intelligence and reporting. It does so by providing insight into a mailing as it travels through the postal stream, and this insight can then be used as a trigger in a multichannel marketing campaign.
Multichannel marketing refers to the practice of using more than one communication channel with a target audience. This could be anything from email, SMS, mobile push notifications, online storefront, brick and mortar, and so on.
According to Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing, when reviewing findings in his 2018 Multichannel Marketing Effectiveness Report (a study of over 400 marketing professionals across North America), “… we have seen a direct correlation between those using direct mail in integrated campaigns and higher effectiveness ratings of marketing impact overall.”
“Integrated” is the key word there. Marketers who tie their digital and non-digital campaigns together can start to see up to a 3X higher effectiveness of their marketing efforts vs those with non-integrated campaigns.
Timing is Everything
Marketers are looking for results. They want to maximize their ROI. Track N Trace is an easy and cost-effective way to expose the delivery of a physical mailpiece so marketers can send their target a follow-up email, give them a call, or initiate some digital campaign.
By knowing exactly when a mail piece is being delivered, sophisticated marketers no longer need to rely on rough estimates to time their next step. They can react in real-time to ensure the campaign goes off without a hitch. With the level of integration available today you could have one workflow that facilitates multiple channels with dynamic messaging based on event triggers such as “offer opt in accepted,” “email sent,” “mail piece delivered,” “link clicked,” “website visited,” “item purchased,” etc. It’s almost as if you’re a Maestro conducting an orchestra.
Tying this concept back to election campaigns; What else are we almost always guaranteed to get every campaign season? Whether it’s for campaign contributions, to garner your vote, or both, you’re bound to get a phone call. Right? Imagine the discussion a sophisticated marketer could build around the message of a printed piece someone just received in the mail, coupled with the TV and radio ads they’ve been seeing and hearing. Oh, and the timing of that call would be perfect. Not too early or too late.
Sophisticated marketers have moved past siloed marketing campaigns. The future of marketing is an overall experience across a period of time with multiple touch points. If you don’t have a good sense of what your customers are doing, then you don’t know where you can add value to greatly improve their experience and results.
Let’s Explore DSF2
Delivery Sequence File Processing, or DSF2, is a service offered by BCC Software’s Data Marketing Services that allow you to append carrier route and walk sequence information to an address list. This is used to optimize postage savings by allowing the mailer to receive high density and saturation level discounts.
If you think about most political mailers, they are often blanket or saturation mailings – when you receive one, so does everyone in your carrier’s route. In theory DSF2 processing is not needed to accomplish this, however, using it yields more effective results. The mailer could easily do a simplified mailing by providing BCC Mail Manager™ with the City, State, ZIP, Carrier Route, and Route Count that they want the mailpieces to go to. While effective, simplified mailings often lack personalized content and are targeted by ZIP+4® and Carrier Route only.
So, how can you send a blanketed mailing while still incorporating personalization? That’s where DSF2 comes in. Incorporating lists of names and addresses into a mailing ensures more personalized pieces — instead of referring to an existing lead as “Current Resident,” you can refer to them by their name. The more contact level information you have the more you can personalize the mailpiece, making it that much more appealing to the recipient.
How to get started
Acquire new customers and make the most of your investment by providing premium services your clients need to maximize their return and keep them coming back for more. If you are interested in learning more about what you can offer to your clients just reach out to your Key Account Manager or email Sales@BCCSoftware.com and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.
