Enhancing Direct Mail Effectiveness through Digital Stamps

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In an era where customers are increasingly focused on finding the best deals and are prone to shopping around, securing consistent repeat business year after year has become an increasingly challenging task. To capture customer attention, personalised marketing has evolved into a necessity rather than an option.

However, the inherent challenge lies in the fact that most marketing campaigns are designed for a broad audience rather than tailored to individual customers. So, how can marketers ensure their outreach resonates on a personal level with each recipient?

Defining Digital Stamps:

Mail and Print is one of the select in the UK that have received Royal Mail’s approval to utilise digital stamps. These digital stamps closely resemble conventional postage stamps available in stores, but they are generated through digital printing at the same time your marketing materials are produced. The outcome is a piece of direct mail that mirrors the appearance of a letter one might receive from a familiar acquaintance.

Securing Royal Mail’s endorsement as an authorised provider of digital stamps required us to meet stringent criteria. With only a limited number of companies authorised to offer this service, we take pride in that.

Benefits of Embracing Digital Stamps:

By incorporating digital stamps, your customers receive personalised mail bearing the visual authenticity of a physical postage stamp—an element that has become increasingly rare in today’s mail. Consequently, this type of mail is far more likely to be opened compared to materials that are conspicuously marketing-focused.

At Mail and Print, we are proud of our comprehensive service. By choosing us, you eliminate the need to source individual suppliers for various stages of the process, avoiding the repetitive cycle of requesting quotes and bids for each facet of your print marketing campaign. We offer a seamless experience encompassing printing, postage and delivery.

While it might appear to be a minor detail, the inclusion of a digitally printed stamp can wield a substantial impact on your customers, as demonstrated above.

To delve deeper into how Mail and Print can cater to your print marketing requirements, we encourage you to reach out to us without delay.

What’s all this talk about variable data printing I hear you ask? Well grab a coffee and a seat and I’ll tell you…

VDP or variable data printing is a process that allows you to output individual pieces of print that are specific to a database. In layman’s terms – the advent of larger industrial digital printers allows for each print to be different than the last and using a database to fuel this difference is key.


So to use a scenario, let’s say we’re a car repair garage and we want to remind customers that they are due a service on their car, well it’s simple – we have the names and addresses of our customers along with their vehicle details and service history, we know that they are due a service on their car – so what is a good way of communicating this to them? A mailed item!

What sort of mailed item? For this scenario let’s say it’s a single postcard, that will be posted to the vehicle owners with a simple message that they are due a service on their vehicle.

This is where VDP comes in, you can take that database supplied by the garage, design a branded postcard for their business and ‘plug’ their database into the design itself.

VDP allows you to change any element of the postcard and make it bespoke to that recipient (or customer) – in the case of the service reminder for their car, you can have their standard name and address information that allows you to mail the item – but you can be cleverer than that, you can add the details of the make and model of their car, change any bit of text or any image to be more ‘tuned’ to the customer, so if they have a particular model of ford (other brands are available) then you could have an image of that car on one side, VDP allows for this.

So VDP is a the best proposition for direct mail marketing – it makes it personal!

Not only can you change each image or bit of text depending on the data, but also things like QR and barcodes, making for some highly advanced tracking techniques – not to mention individual voucher codes on a letter or pre-populated details.

A second scenario is a charity who wants to mail their database of members to tell them about a new cause, let’s say a wildlife charity want to raise money to purchase a piece of land that is under treat of development or simply to preserve the wildlife that is there.

That wildlife charity can take their database and contact each member by mail, rather like the car repair garage in scenario 1. In this case, the charity will mail out a 4 page letter detailing the plight of this cause and how, with a simple donation from their member, they could purchase this land for future preservation.

VDP allows us to take the charities’ database of members, design an amazing looking 4 page letter, showing in great detail the charitable cause then populate key areas of the text with the members personal details (names, address, membership number etc) – this can take the form of a detachable slip with a request for a donation with sections already populated or simply inserting their name into the body copy of the letter.

The print element of both of these scenarios is the same, each individual sheet that comes of the digital printer can be different. Think of modern digital printers as a large version of an office printer, albeit, ‘slightly’ more complex – but the principle is the same, you throw a multipage document at it and it prints it for you, but these days – the print quality is comparable to more traditional methods, such as litho – but with the added bonus of variation!

There are infinite possibilities with VDP if you have the data!

“Go Paperless”, “Go Green” and “Save Trees” are common messages as many organisations encourage their customers to switch to electronic transactions and communications. But are these appeals based on fact?

These sorts of messages give the impression that electronic communication holds a superior environmental stance compared to paper-based communication. However, drawing such conclusions without accounting for the complete lifecycle of these distinct mediums can be quite challenging.

Paper stands out as a notably renewable and sustainable material. Its primary component, wood, is cultivated and harvested through a meticulously controlled and sustainable process. The sustainability of this approach is exemplified by the significant growth of European forests—where a majority of the raw materials originate—in an area equivalent to the size of Switzerland over a mere 15-year span.

It’s important to acknowledge the often overlooked impacts of the digital realm. Recent research conducted by Two Sides reveals that a substantial 60% of European consumers hold the belief that electronic communications are more environmentally favourable than their paper-based counterparts.

With the surge in usage of ‘cloud’ services, both businesses and individuals are contributing to the expansive data centres that house an array of online activities, ranging from web searches and social media interactions to digital statements.

The escalation of electronic waste poses another colossal and mounting concern. In 2019 alone, this industry was accountable for a staggering 53.6 million metric tonnes of electronic waste across the globe—an amount comparable to the weight of 350 cruise ships. This figure has surged by an alarming 21% over the preceding five years.

Of the total global e-waste produced in 2019, a mere 17.4% was collected for recycling purposes (42.5% in Europe). Regrettably, recycling endeavours are struggling to keep pace with the global growth of e-waste. The inappropriate disposal and treatment of this waste category pose substantial hazards to both the environment and human health.

The components derived from digital equipment, servers, and power generators frequently consist of finite, precious, and non-renewable materials. Additionally, their intricate composition poses considerable challenges in terms of recycling.

As a result of engagement efforts by Two Sides, over 750 of the world’s largest organisations have retracted misleading statements that incorrectly endorse digital communications as a more environmentally sound option.

Building customer loyalty is a difficult process. The digital age has caused markets to become more transparent than ever. Customers not only have the capability, but access to information that allows them to quickly compare pricing and products to find value for money, regardless of the company providing that product or service.

We’re all guilty of this, we see a product we like in a shop or online and immediately begin searching for a better deal on the same product elsewhere. With this capability and access to information, loyalty to a particular company is rare.

So, how can direct mail build customer loyalty?

INVOLVEMENT:

Customers, when reading mail, are more involved than they would be reading an email or display ad. A direct mail piece usually requires more attention from the customer when compared with digital counterparts.

Many businesses have made use of direct mail that customers have to assemble or contain a unique and engaging feature, all in an effort to involve them. Direct mail that acknowledges the customer by involving them and that goes beyond the typical ‘junk mail’ stereotype adds more value and creates stronger connections with the individuality of each customer. By involving recipients, direct mail can be used to reward existing customers to maintain loyalty and create memorable experiences that encourage new customers to become aware of, and consider the brand in their purchasing decisions.

REINFORCEMENT:

Your customers are bombarded each day with advertising messages in the form of emails, social media posts, display ads and mailings. Some of these messages might also be from your competitors. By sending out a direct mail campaign that involves the customer, is highly targeted and personalised with a relevant message, you can create something that cuts through the noise and adds value to your customers.

This, combined with using your brand elements, can work to reinforce your brand and ensure that your customers think of you as a higher priority when they begin their buying process.

MAKING AN EFFORT:

This could be said of any marketing or communication tactic but making an effort when developing a direct mail campaign can go a long way towards building customer loyalty. Taking the time to personalise and target your mailing using relevant data and messaging can create a better connection with recipients that see it as specific to them.

Going a step further by creating campaigns with higher quality material, something a bit different like dimensional mail, free gifts and unusual packaging all create the impression that you have spent time, money and effort on what your customer is seeing. If a customer feels more valued by the amount effort taken to communicate with them, they are more likely to use your product or service and continue to do so.

Contact Bombouche to discuss how we can help you with you direct mail campaigns and build loyalty among your target customer. Give us a call on 0800 1300 960 or email sales@mailandprint.co.uk

Data Processing Terminology

The world of data processing can be confusing and full of unfamiliar terminology. To give you a helping hand we have compiled a list of commonly used phrases and their meanings:

  1. Deduplication

The process of removing duplicated records from a set of data. Duplicate data can be identified by any one of a number of methods depending upon the quality of your data. 

  1. Suppression list

A list of records that you would like to have removed from your data prior to sending a mailing. These are most likely people who have unsubscribed to your mailings previously, but could also be people from segments of your customer base that you don’t want to market to right now.

  1. Deceased suppressions

If you have a large data set it is an unfortunate fact that some people will pass away.  Obviously, you don’t want to send out items to these people. It costs money and you are likely to upset relatives. This process removes such people from your mailing list.

  1. Gone away suppressions

Every year 10% of the population moves house, in theory that means that up to 10% of your data is out of date within 12 months of collecting it. This process tracks those movers and flags them so you can remove them as required.

  1. Home mover tracing

So, you’ve suppressed the people who have gone away, but that also means that you’ve removed a customer from your list. This process enables you to track those people who have moved and continue to target them.

House suppressions

Maybe there’s a specific demographic that you don’t want to mail to, that could be housing associations or people who rent. This suppression will identify and remove these people from your lists.

Additional Services

  1. Mail Preference Service (MPS)

People can register their address against the MPS. This means that they should no long receive unsolicited mail in the post, it is therefore prudent to check this register prior to undertaking a mailing.

  1. Data health check

A check that is carried out on your data to assess its suitability for the task you want to use if for. As an example:
If you are undertaking a mailing, are all of the postcodes correct and valid?  Or, if you are emailing to businesses, do you have the contact emails and how many are simply Gmail accounts?

  1. Address and postcode validation

The process of checking the addresses you have in your data against the PAF database. This database is held by the Royal Mail and contains every registered address in the UK.

  1. Profiling

The process of analysing your data and creating a profile that fits either your typical customer or the customer you would like to target in this campaign. It could be based on age, sex, marital status, home ownership, etc. Basically, all the data that you have (or can append) to your current databases.
 

As ‘big data’ evolves and the use of data driven marketing campaigns expands I’m sure that there will be more and more terms that come along, but for now we hope that you find this list useful. 

Like it or not your good marketing has the ability to move people through your sales funnel, it offers everything that you need to educate, justify and cement relationships. Albeit through a number of specific steps and stages.

Firstly lets take a look at the various stages in a sales funnel

  • Awareness
    This is the moment you first catch a consumers attention. This could be from any one of your marketing activities, or even a recommendation.  In a nutshell, your prospect becomes aware of your business and what you offer.
  • Interest
    Your prospect is now researching their options looking at what’s around in the market.
  • Decision
    Your prospect is now ready to buy, there may be two or three different options on the table, hopefully yours.
  • Action
    This is the final stage of the process, and hopefully results in a purchase. From here on in you are focussed on retention, making sure that the customer comes back over and over again.

How does Direct Mail fit into the mix?

Awareness

It’s hard, really, really hard to make sure that your business sits at the top of the Google rankings for any product or service.  There’s hundreds of competing routes to market and you get 5 slots on the single most popular search engine in order to get the attention of somebody searching the web, if you don’t you’re already out in the cold.

Direct Mail can be used as a tool to assist consumers to skip the initial search steps, or at least short cut them. A well written letter and case study for example may well give enough information to start a thought process which kicks off the sales funnel.

Being the ‘educator’ is the first stage of making your offering the stand out option.

Interest

So, your prospect now has interest in your solution, so much so that they start to look around at the options that are on the market. If the chemistry is right your customer might miss this stage altogether and jump to the action, but it is an unfortunate fact that the likelihood is that they will research the market and look for other options.

Now is not the time to blast your prospect with offers though, this will simply turn them away and put you on the back foot.  Instead, you should now be trying to educate your prospect even more, offering them help and advice.

Give them the tools they need to make a decision that is positive to you, try fact sheets and white papers. Physical reading items, but stay away from out and out selling.

Decision

Here we go, your prospect has the need and desire to place the order, now is the time to blast them with offers. Little things that may well push them onto the action stage of the process and make a decision in your favour.

Postcards work well for this step, maybe you could offer something that your competitors can’t do. A bonus product, some additional services from your professional services team, free shipping if you have physical product to send.

You could even offer a bonus product of discount code.

Action

Here you go, you’re at the bottom of the funnel and your customer has placed the order, it’s been hard work so far – but that’s only just begun. You need to change this customer from a single order into many, many more orders.

Arguably this an even harder process to go through, keeping your customer loyal and happy. In a competitive world ongoing Direct Marketing, you could be sending postcards and leaflets with new products or offers – extending your reach within a business with new ideas and concepts.

Communication is the key, and timings are critical to ensure maximum effect.

Conclusion

Prospects and Clients alike tend to forget their suppliers, or at best pigeon hole them into specific areas of supply. Having used the power of direct mail to move your target from prospect into client you will have created a bond that you cannot create using digital means.

Now you need to exploit that, memories and loyalty offer you a platform to build on. 

In my view, Direct Mail as part of the Marketing Mix is powerful, extremely powerful and possibly the most important part of the mix.

Mail and Print are pleased to welcome on board two new members of our team, Johanna Russell and Ruth Armstrong. Both of whom join the company as we continue our expansion having doubled in size over the last 3 years.

Johanna joins the studio, to replace Leigh Godfrey who has been promoted to the position of Studio Manager. Leigh has been a key member of our studio team for nearly 3 years now and his Adobe Creative Cloud skills and knowledge will be a great resource for Jo as she starts our journey with us.

Jo, already has a significant amount of experience with Adobe Creative Cloud (our line of business Studio application), which she is keen to expand upon. She has been working primarily as a Graphic Designer for a number of years and we were highly impressed by her portfolio.  Jo’s primary focus will be to create stunning mailings for our extremely diverse customer base, she will also assist our own internal marketing team updating the old and creating new materials as she learns about out business.

 

Ruth counts companies like Ryvita among her previous employers, she’ll be working in our admin team ensuring the all of our back office functions are running accurately and efficiently. Ruth’s understanding of process within a quality sensitive environment will prove to be invaluable as we continue to expand our operations over the next 5 years.

Managing Director, Martyn Harvey commented that “these two additions to our team enhance both our internal resources and the quality of service we can offer to our customers. We look forward to working with both Jo and Ruth as our company continues to grow rapidly.”

“Both are part of the wider business plan, and hopefully in the near future we’ll be able to announce the appointment of even more members of the team, so watch this space!”, he continued.

Mail and Print are a Full Service Direct Mail Provider working with customers from a wide variety of industries. We create all types of mailings in house, from the simple and humble postcard to complete highly personalised multi-item mailing packs.

There is no doubt that you currently work in a worldwide market, especially if your company sells products online.  Take our portal as an example, we’ve got customers from all over the world placing orders with us for mailings that are targeted to their UK customers, that’s very easily achievable and easy for us to control delivery cycles and landing days.

But, how does it work in reverse?  How do you as a UK based company market using letters and postcards to customers throughout the world.  Well the good news is that you can, we’ve been mailing worldwide for many years and there’s a number of products already on our website that enable you to do so.

We all know how reliable and predictable the Royal Mail can be with deliveries within the UK but what can we expect from international mailings?

Historically the reliability of overseas mailings hasn’t been great, they have taken a long time to deliver if at all – and it doesn’t take too much time to find blogs and reports on the internet from ex-pats that berate delivery services across the world.

This has changed though, providers around the world are transforming the way that they work and deliver, especially in developed countries.  So, what can you expect if you are sending your mailings overseas?  Here’s some pointers…

Targeted Landing Dates

We can’t give you a specific day on which your mailing will land, but we can give you a range of working days in which it should land:
•  4 – 6 Working days within Europe
•  6 – 9 Working days outside of Europe

Formats

•  We can mail Letters and Large Letters up to 750g

In conclusion, we’re able to make the process of international mailings as simple as undertaking a mailing in the UK, and what’s more we’ve got methods of posting that are incredibly cost effective.  To add to this the reliability of postal services in overseas countries is considerably better now than it used to be making it extremely worthwhile mining for customers among your overseas markets.

Where/What should I do?

I spent a little bit of time in Devon recently, it’s a great opportunity to get out and about no matter what the weather, fortunately for this visit it was fantastic.

Whilst I was bouncing around our normal haunts, enjoying beaches and some very, very long walks I noticed a number of posters, signs and advertisements for a festival which was being held in the area later on this year.  With North Devon being one of my regular stopping points I was interested and looked a little bit closer.

Where is this festival being held?

Erm, well actually, erm…… all this marketing and nowhere was a mention of where the festival was going to be held, there were dates and times, there were acts and everything did a great job of informing the public of how great the event was going to be.  All of the marketing looked great but it didn’t tell me the one thing that I needed to know – where did I have to go to enjoy this festival?

That in itself is one of the major don’ts when advertising something always make sure that you tell the customer…..

  • What you are selling
  • How great it is going to be for them
  • Where it is going to be
  • When it is going to be and
  • How to get on board with the experience!

Miss any single one of those out and the public have to do something themselves to complete their picture of your event, ultimately they won’t do it even if they are interested and you’ll suffer with poor attendance.

Did you know that the Royal Mail have a set of guidelines that they publish for the benefit of all that stipulate quite simply how an address needs to look on mailing items?  Well they do, and whilst these are ‘guidelines’ we try, as best we can, to follow them – purely because we’ve found that by doing so our customers get a better response rate and benefit from higher postage discounts on more items.

With the addresses that we create on the letters being driven by supplied data, there’s a lot that can go wrong so with a little bit of ‘dark magic’ and custom tools we’re able to turn most data sets into a form that comply with these specifications.

This is what an address should look like:

Mail and Print
Berwick Hill Dairy
Berwick St Leonard
Salisbury
Wiltshire
SP3 5GN

But often, based on the data that we are supplied we have the following issues:

All data in a single column creates an address that looks like this:

Mail and Print, Berwick Hill Dairy, Berwick St Leonard, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP3 5GN

Which not only will fail because its’ too long to fit into a window, will look terrible at the top of your letter!  My guess would be that there’s no chance that the recipient will even consider opening this – even if they receive it!

Commas in the data will most likely create an address that works, but it doesn’t conform to the Royal Mails specifications.  This will create an address that looks something like this:

Mail and Print
Berwick Hill Dairy
Berwick St Leonard, Salisbury
Wiltshire
SP3 5SN

Now for something a little different, house numbers separated into a column of their own.  This also does not conform to the guidelines, so we have to ensure that this is corrected to look like this.

10 Sample Street
Sample Town
Sample County
Postcode

With the number in its own column, that address will look like;

10
Sample Street
Sample County
Postcode

It’ll get there, it just doesn’t look good and might not qualify for postage discounts.

There’s loads more examples and as a ‘Data Man’ I could go on about returns, foreign characters and various corruptions that occur when data is exported from systems – loads to think about, all of which we fix using a little bit of magic, but if you are contemplating creating mailing data yourself ask this question;

“What will the address look like once its printed and is that in a format that you would open should your letter come through your letterbox?!

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