Use 2019 USPS Promotions to Up Mail ROI

AccuList reminds direct marketers of the raft of 2019 U.S. Postal Service mailing promotions designed to increase response, engagement and ROI via new digital technologies and printing techniques, as well as traditional mail tactics. The registration and promotion periods have already begun for a Tactile, Sensory and Interactive Mailpiece Engagement Promotion that will last from February 1 to July 31. With the goal of encouraging marketing mailers' use of advanced print innovations in paper and stock, substrates, inks, interactive elements and finishing techniques, all USPS Marketing Mail letters and flats are eligible for the promotion’s upfront 2% postage discount. Registration has also begun for the Emerging and Advanced Technology Promotion, open to First-Class Mail and USPS Marketing Mail. The promotion, also offering an upfront 2% postage discount, spans the March 1 to August 31 period this year and is designed to help direct mailers leverage emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), Near Field Communications (NFC), and Video in Print, as well as multi-channel mail integration with Addressable TV or digital assistants. Hurry to take advantage of the Earned Value Reply Mail Promotion since registration closes March 31. The April 1-to-June 30 promotion rewards mailings using Business Reply Mail (BRM), Courtesy Reply Mail (CRM) and Share Mail envelopes and cards by providing them with a financial benefit when customers put those pieces back in the mail. New participants will earn a 3 cent credit per counted reply piece between April-June. Created by USPS to encourage bill and statement producers to invest in dynamic/color printing technology, the Personalized Color Transpromo Promotion also offers an upfront 2% postage discount. Registration starts May 15 for incentives running from July 1 to December 31. First-Class Mail pre-sort and automation letters—bills and statements only—that meet the dynamic print and personalization requirements will be eligible for the upfront 2% postage discount. The Mobile Shopping Promotion benefits marketers who send regular and nonprofit Marketing Mail letters and flats combining mobile with print, with registration starting June 15 for a promotion lasting August 1 to December 31, in time for the holiday season. There are many new mobile bar-code formats, in addition to payment QRs, that can be leveraged to qualify for the upfront 2% postage discount. Finally, this year’s Informed Delivery Promotion pushes the new USPS omnichannel tool that allows residential consumers the free ability to digitally preview letter-sized mail and manage scheduled packages on their computers, tablets, or mobile devices. Regular and nonprofit Marketing Mail letters and flats, and First-Class Mail pre-sort or automation letters, cards and flats will be eligible for an upfront 2% postage discount. Register starting July 15 to take advantage of the September 1 to November 30 promotion period. For more, go to https://www.acculistusa.com/mailers-can-use-usps-2019-promos-to-spur-roi/

Use These Tactics to Weaponize 2019 B2B Data

Targeted, clean data is key to success for business-to-business campaigns. And as they ready to launch their 2019 plans, we urge B2B marketers to take the basic data steps suggested in a recent Martech Today post by Scott Vaughn. Good response and conversion depend on identifying and engaging the right audiences, meaning the right companies and the right decision-makers, Vaughn reminds. To target that right audience requires processes for capturing critical data about prospects, customers and their purchase journey with precision, he asserts, and recommends a strategy of starting with a smaller universe of accounts and roles to more precisely define best targets--and then testing and using advanced strategies, such as predictive marketing and intent-data modeling, to expand to more accounts and buyers. But that kind of data targeting only works if marketers are looking at quality data, so data hygiene is another necessity. When a recent DemandGen survey finds that more than 35% of the data in existing databases is unmarketable on average, avoiding wasted dollars means instituting a "get clean, stay clean" data-hygiene effort for 2019, Vaughn urges. The hygiene regimen should include regularly auditing of data-capture processes and sources, using filters before data can enter the database, and maintaining a cleansing process to eliminate records that are invalid, non-standardized, duplicate or non-compliant. Because today's buyers are leery of brands that don’t treat their information with care and because stringent data-privacy laws are being deployed around the globe, B2B marketers must have a proactive permission-based plan for data as well, warns Vaughn That includes asking for opt-in everywhere and having very visible, clear explanations of how behavioral data, such as website cookies, is used. Meanwhile, prospects and customers have not only come to expect data privacy, they have become used to the rapid, real-time response of the digital market. Yet for many B2B campaigns, it takes two or three days to follow up on a lead or inquiry, or even seven or eight days just to get leads loaded into marketing automation or CRM software! Vaughn proposes a concerted effort to speed data handling by identifying areas where data can be routed faster and reaction time reduced and then initiating sales and marketing training on speedier handling at each stage of the customer journey. Finally, the best data processes won't automatically result in ROI if marketers focus on the wrong metrics. Vaughn reports that high-performing marketing teams use insights with these ingredients: agreed-upon key performance indicators (KPIs); tools that can measure performance; and easy-to-use dashboards that can help all stakeholders (marketing, sales, execs, etc.). For the full post, see http://www.acculistusa.com/weaponize-b2b-data-for-2019-with-these-tactics/

Why You Should De-dupe Your Data

Anna Kayfitz, CEO of StrategicDB Corp., recently offered AccuList USA this expert advice on why direct marketing success requires de-duping data: 

In today’s data-driven marketing, data is not only the most important asset that your company can have but can also make or break your campaign. Having clean data impacts not only marketing activities but also impacts your reputation, operations and decision-making. De-duping is one of the most important aspects of overall data hygiene. Duplicates can be found on many levels of data; they arise at the household level, individual e-mail level or company level. If you are not convinced that you need to de-dupe, consider the following five benefits. First, you can avoid different offers to the same customer. For example, you send two different direct mail creatives to the same household. As one of the records was a customer, you decided to provide a returning customer 15% off, while the other record was marked as a prospect and only got 10% off. Now the person opening both direct mails will be confused by having two different discounts, and the company also can face a PR nightmare. Second, you can cut unnecessary cost. For example, assume you are doing a direct mail creative which costs you $5 per mailing. Your list contains 10,000 recipients. The total cost of mailings therefore is $50,000. If you decided to de-dupe, you would find out that 10% of your mailing list was duplicated. Therefore, $5,000 was a waste of resources. It would have been much cheaper to de-dupe prior to deploying your campaign. Third, you will get better analytics for decision-making. Analytics is important not just from a perspective of understanding how your marketing and sales is performing but also from a decision-making perspective. By having duplicates in your CRM, you are going to be double-counting your list capabilities, miscalculating your true growth rates, and getting the wrong rate of responses. If you are looking to make a decision on future campaigns, basing it on duplicate data will will give you the wrong list count, wrong budget and possibly the wrong creative picked (especially if you are basing it on an A/B testing done previously). Next, de-duping helps prevent customer service confusion when clients call in, e-mail or come into the store. For example, Mary Smith is found twice in your CRM with the same phone number. She calls in to your customer support to inquire about her order status. Your customer service rep decides to pull up the customer account by phone number and finds two records. Now she has to put the customer on hold while she checks both accounts to try to locate the last purchase before she can even assist the customer. Not only is it wasting everyone’s time and making customer service inefficient, it also makes the customer have a bad customer service experience. Finally, the biggest impact that duplicates have on your business is a potential loss of sale. If you have duplicates, you do not have a true view of all prospect or customer activities. Therefore, you could be excluding prospects from a sales call because your lead scoring system indicated that they are not ready. However, if the data from both records was combined, you would have all signals indicating they are ready to be passed on to sales. With duplicates, by the time you figure it out, a customer may have already lost interest and gone with your competitor. De-duping should be part of your data-cleaning initiative, either prior to any major campaign or on a yearly basis. You can easily de-dupe your list by using a de-duping tool that will require less effort to identify duplicates and establish a master record than is required to deal with the consequences of duplicate data. For more help, see http://www.acculistusa.com/why-you-should-de-dupe-your-data/

What B2B Marketers Can Do Better With Better Data

AccuList USA is dedicated to providing clean, up-to-date, targeted data for business-to-business direct marketing, and we urge any B2B marketer who still hesitates to invest in higher quality data and segmentation to read the recent CMO.com post by Ed King, founder and CEO of the Openprise data automation firm. King lists five ways high-quality data will make the B2B marketer's job easier and more effective. First, better data allows the addition of demographic scoring to the usual activity-based scoring for better targeting; for example, marketers won't prioritize a lead from online activity when demographic factors on the company or individual show it does not really meet buyer targeting. Second, with more accurate data about prospects and customers in terms of individual and company profiles, marketers can personalize communications and engagement for better conversion and reduced attrition throughout the sales funnel. Third, B2B marketers can better use account-based targeting as opposed to individual lead targeting, including improved use of automation platforms. Fourth, since all leads are not created equal, better data allows for optimized, speedier lead qualification and conversion--providing different treatment of net new leads versus leads from existing accounts, for example. Fifth, marketers can simplify their marketing technology investments, such as predictive, web or social bolt-ons with data cleansing mechanisms because of poor quality data from CRM or automation platforms. By improving source data, existing technology is more efficient and new technology investments can focus on other key needs, such as analytics or workflow. For detailed explanations and examples, read the full article at http://www.cmo.com/articles/2015/12/18/how-would-perfect-data-change-your-job.html

Clues That Your Media Mix Needs a Tune-up

Every budget cycle, marketers question whether they have the right media mix to optimize sales, whether they need to shift dollars between channels, especially in the rapidly changing digital landscape. In a recent Marketing Land article, Scott Rayden, chief revenue officer for 3Q Digital, offers seven clues that a change in your digital mix may be in order. Here are a few of his tips, starting with a no-brainer: If your brand, and non-brand, search numbers are declining, it's time to consider new ways to boost online brand awareness. He advises taking a look at options such as Twitter, display ads, video, Facebook, Pinterest, and Gmail sponsored promotions. Next, now that mobile traffic has topped desktop traffic, you are clearly behind the curve if most of your traffic, whether B2C or B2B, is desktop-driven, so invest in mobile. Rayden also notes that even with great CRM and well-segmented e-mail campaigns, you may not be mining all the gold in your first-party data. Consider using customer knowledge to prospect for lookalikes with new targeting programs offered by Facebook Lookalike Audiences, Google Similar Audiences and Twitter Tailored Audiences, he suggests. And if you are generating lots of leads but not enough paying customers, he advises rethinking targeting and linking CRM first-party data to marketing campaigns to weed out junk lead sources and boost channels delivering conversions. And, of course, pay attention to competitors; if they use many more channels to target the same demographics or firmographics, an expanded media mix may be in order. For more tips, read http://marketingland.com/7-signs-cmos-need-examine-media-mix-133456

Add Digital Power to Direct Mail to Rev Results

If your direct mail is plodding along its traditional response path, it may be time to give it a digital technology boost. A recent Direct Marketing News magazine article cited five tech trends for energizing mail strategy: triggered digital content, delivery-triggered campaigns, retargeting, enhanced personalization, and marketing automation/CRM. Trigger digital content with a scan, swipe or tap of a mobile device by enhancing physical mail with QR codes or other mobile bar codes, augmented reality (AR) video, and even near-field communication chips (NFC). Delivery triggering uses delivery tracking based on conventional or USPS Intelligent Mail Barcode data to automatically launch relevant multi-channel contacts, via mobile text, e-mail or app inbox, and can make use of location, time-of-day and other context-sensitive delivery data for extra impact. Retargeting will boost long-term mail results by going beyond immediate response and conversion to track pURL, QR, site visits, searches and other unique digital actions of non-buyers so that they can be modeled and retargeted for sales. Enhanced personalization means more than printed data fills today; pURLs or unique bar codes in the mail piece can lead to customized, personalized online content. A custom AR app can even be promoted digitally after the mail is sent. Finally, marketing automation and CRM systems can be leveraged to individualize messaging and sync channels around a direct mail campaign, including insight from social media analytics. For more detail, read http://www.dmnews.com/direct-mail-goes-digital/article/400201/