Volume 2- Issue 1
PRIORITIES Tracking Results
5
ways to track and monitor direct mail
Get Noticed!
3
ways a skilled designer can draw customers
Find out why
Words Matter!
plus... Learn what studies show about silo marketing, personalization and acquiring SMS subscribers
Priority Press Cordially Invites You to Our Annual Open House
MAY 27
TH
9 AM - 4 PM The open house will coincide with Carb Day Activities at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We hope you will be able to join us for food, drink, conversation and the opportunity to tour our recent expansion. See first-hand the enhancements and improvements taking place at Priority.
Your formal invitation will arrive soon. To register early, visit priorityinteractive.com/openhouse.
PRESIDENT’S LETTER
TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 Ways to Track Direct Mail Pages 2-3
Getting Noticed Pages 4-5
One Audit You Shouldn’t Avoid Pages 7
Words Matter Page 8-9
If you’ve ever visited Priority Press, you know we are less than a half mile from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This is a momentous year for both the track and our city because it is the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. The Indy 500 is all about engineering, expertise and speed. Winners must excel in all of these areas. This is a very similar model to that of commercial printing success:
• • •
Engineering projects for quality and performance Expertise in printing, mailing, marketing and customer support Speed to meet our clients’ demands for critical delivery dates
At Priority our goal is to be a brand communications company that provides thought leadership with advanced executional excellence not only now, but for decades to come. We recognize that in printing, like racing, you can’t coast if you want to win. This is why we made such tremendous investments in 2015. In addition to expanding our facility in 2015, we also brought online a new 40” press and implemented a new, revolutionary HD screening technology. Additionally, we continued to develop our CRM activation technologies and further enhanced our industry leading Priority Marketing Cloud software solution. 2015 was a big year for Priority in expanding the business to better serve you, our valued clients. Largely as a result of our construction project, for the first time in a decade, we did not hold our annual open house in 2015. However, with the construction now done, we are excited to open our house once again and have you join us for a fun-filled day on Carb Day on Friday, May 27th. I truly hope you can stop by and enjoy this special day with us.
Joseph Straka President, Priority Press
Priority Press •
888.955.PRINT • www.priority-press.com
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TRACK DIRECT MAIL
5 Ways to Track Direct Mail 3
LEARN HOW TO BOOST ROI BY CLOSELY MONITORING YOUR RESULTS
You’ve worked hard to develop a powerful personalized direct mail campaign. The piece is beautiful. The colors are vibrant. You’ve got a great message and compelling offer … you think. But questions nag at you. Do you really have the right segments? Could your offer be stronger? How about your message? Should you be using different wording for one of the sub-segments? What about different images? These questions can be answered by tracking your results. When you monitor and track on a regular basis, you begin to understand what’s working and what’s not, or what could be working better. Here are five ways to track your mailings to determine how well your audience is responding.
1. Use unique customer codes. Use the power of our digital press to add unique customer codes to each mailer. Ask for this code when the customer calls in or have customers input their codes at checkout if they are ordering online. If you want to test elements of your design or messaging within the same mailing, codes can be used to track those efforts as well. If you don’t want to use personalized codes, you can use promo codes to segment for specific products or offers.
2. Use Google Analytics to monitor web traffic. Say you send out a direct mail piece and see a noticeable spike in traffic on your website. If there is no other reasonable explanation, you can assume that the additional traffic is due to the mailing. This is not going to be a precise measurement, but if you have
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not been running other campaigns, it’s a reasonable assumption.
3. Send a free gift. Encourage people to write, call in, or go online to request a free gift. Every gift you send indicates a response to the campaign.
4. Create a campaign-specific site just for the direct mail piece. Instead of sending people to your main company website, send them to a promo page created specifically for that campaign. Because this page exists only for that campaign, any hits will be due to the direct mail piece.
5. Use personalized URLs as the response mechanism. Like campaign-specific sites, any landing on the personalized URLs will be due to the mailing. You can also use these microsites to further personalize content, whether based on your existing data or responses to survey questions. Once someone has landed on their microsite, you can further track and monitor their behavior, including whether they watch videos, download content, and how long they stay on which pages. This gives you insight into where they are in the sales cycle and their readiness for the next step.
Want to make it even easier to respond to personalized URLs? Use personalized QR Codes. By enabling people to access their URLs simply by scanning their codes, you give them all the benefits of personalized URLs without requiring them to type anything in by hand. Direct mail is often given a bad rap as being difficult to track, but these are five SIMPLE yet HIGHLY EFFECTIVE methods of response tracking that anyone can do. Need help tracking your direct mail? Give us a call!
Priority Press •
888.955.PRINT • www.priority-press.com
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The Fine Art of
GETTING NOTICED WHY USING A SKILLED DESIGNER MAKES A DIFFERENCE You can profile your data, segment your mailing, and create highly relevant, personalized mail pieces, but if the design falls short, the message may not get seen. What makes your target audience stand up and take notice? Here is where the skills of a professional designer pay for themselves many times over. Here are some key elements that professional designers take into consideration in any print or multichannel marketing project to make it pop off the page.
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GETTING NOTICED
Typography The art of typography goes beyond which fonts look cool. It involves selection and pairing of fonts for style, branding, and readability. Typography also involves font size, spacing between letters, line breaks, and paragraphs (tracking and leading), and arranging the text in a way that makes it easy for the eye to navigate around the page. Fonts can be sirens, however, and they have to be handled carefully. Some are more readable than others or are more readable against different backgrounds. Some fonts harmonize well. Others clash. Some fonts send the right branding message. Others can undermine your goals. There is also a hierarchy of positioning of heads, subheads, and body copy that helps to move your eye along and prioritize various elements of the text.
Color Palette The colors used in the print project will set the mood for the entire piece. Common color palettes include:
All of these palettes can include lighter and darker tones of that color, as well. Color palettes can be warm tones or cool tones, CMYK or spot color. With digital, you can even replicate metallics. Colors can have high saturation or low saturation. The palette can be chosen based on color theory, which is based on the idea that certain colors evoke certain feelings or emotions in people.
Alignment of Elements Designers may use invisible lines to place design elements, such as images, charts, and even text blocks, where they have the most impact. For example, designers may use the “rule of thirds,” in which a page will be divided evenly by three horizontal and vertical lines. Where the lines intersect is where elements will draw your eye. Designers will also use grids, arrangement of white space, and placement of margins to move your eye around the page and bring attention to specific elements. There is a lot more to professional design than many people realize. It is about more than aesthetics. It’s also about branding and communication. When it comes to designing a logo, creating a brochure, or developing your next direct mailing, bring in a professional designer. Let them help you reap outstanding results.
• Monochrome: Based on a single color on the color wheel. • Analogous: Based on three colors next to each other on the color wheel. • Complementary: Based on colors directly across from one another on the color wheel (blue/yellow, purple/lime). • Triadic: Built from three colors equally spaced from one another around the color wheel.
Priority Press •
888.955.PRINT • www.priority-press.com
5
PRIORITY MARKETING ADVISORS
Marketing Communication & Data Strategies That Accelerate Sales
At the Priority Group, we know that what truly matters is generating a sales pipeline, closing business, and accelerating revenue. Period. That’s why we’ve expanded our service offerings to include a consulting practice that helps to provide clarity to your marketing. Our data-driven approach helps you to:
• • • • •
Target customers Advance lead management practices Improve marketing measurements Create sales enablement tools Enhance online and direct mail marketing efforts.
Our proven methodology delivers real results based on buyer insights and market-driven best practices. There are many ways Priority Marketing Advisors can work with your company, including working alongside or in addition to your current agency. Call us or send us a note at priority-ma.com/contact and let’s start accelerating your sales.
4026 West 10th Street | Indianapolis, IN 46222 | 1.888.955.7748 info@prioritygroup.com | priority-ma.com
One Audit You Shouldn’t Avoid HOW YOU COULD BENEFIT FROM A MARKETING AUDIT
It’s tax season and the last thing any business is looking for is an audit from the IRS. IRS audits can be tedious, time-consuming, and sometimes costly. In contrast, a marketing audit can help you better understand your marketing results and improve on them. A marketing audit can give you a clearer picture of where your marketing efforts are at and a better idea of where to take them.
What Does a Marketing Audit Do? A marketing audit helps you assess your current marketing activity. What kind of marketing are you doing? Is it working for you? Have your goals changed? Has the market changed? A marketing audit tells you what’s working and what isn’t. A marketing audit functions as a map to direct your marketing activity. Taking time to evaluate your aging marketing plan or campaign and identifying weaknesses can help you avoid costly detours or time spent trying to find your way back to the main road.
How Can a Marketing Audit Help? Your marketing efforts will run more productively with some basic maintenance. A marketing audit will check for inefficiencies and help you to address them before you experience real damage under the hood of your marketing engine.
A marketing audit gives you an opportunity to take a look at what is going on, both in your business and in the market in which you operate. By looking at potential pitfalls that exist internally and externally, you can swerve in time to safely avoid the proverbial accident and ensure you are on the right path moving forward.
Why Should I Complete a Marketing Audit? Peter Drucker famously said, “What gets measured gets done.” Measuring the time it takes to serve customers in a coffee drive-thru can help a coffee chain improve customer service. Measuring the number of work place accidents can improve employee safety. The same is true with your marketing. By measuring your marketing efforts, you can improve upon your efforts, and a marketing audit is a great place to start. If you have a sneaking suspicion that you need to take a step forward with your marketing, it might be time for a marketing audit. Call 317.241.4234 today to schedule an appointment with an Account Executive and our in-house marketing consultants. Make sure you visit priorityinteractive.com/whatshot and request our What’s Hot in Marketing 2016 publication to get some fresh ideas and best practices in marketing today.
Priority Press •
888.955.PRINT • www.priority-press.com
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WORDS MATTER! When crafting any promotional offer, your choice of words can make or break your effort. Readers are drawn to what’s new, what’s trending, and where there is limited risk. But they don’t want to be pandered to. This is why “meaningless” words like “quality” and “service” tend to be turn-offs. When creating headlines, opening sentences, and subject lines, there are some proven wording do’s and don’ts.
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WORDS THAT SELL Sale Exclusive Off New Best-Seller Free No obligation No Salesperson will call Limited time only Guarantee
© iStockphoto.com/Peopleimages
WORDS MATTER
Sign Me Up! 51%
In 2014, brands were more likely to acquire SMS subscribers via in-store signage than in 2013. Source: Experian “State of Cross Channel Marketing”
WORDS THAT KILL Final days to save Hurry! Once in a lifetime Hassle-free RIGHT NOW!! Best Quality Value Cheap Caring Integrity Service
PERTINENT
88%
of companies say they need to do a better job of personalizing the customer experience.
Source: IBM and Econsultancy, “Listening to the Customer: 7 Key Customer Experience Trends”
& PERSONAL
Welcome to the latest issue of Priorities. This newsletter is designed to provide you with information that will keep your 1:1 print campaigns cutting edge and profitable. 4026 W. 10th Street Indianapolis, IN 46222
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About This Issue Paper Used 80# Unisource Gloss Cover
Equipment Used Magnus 800 Image setter Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 6-40 coater Extended delivery polar 115em cutter stahl continuous feed 30� folder osako 6 pocket stitcher/trimmer
Design Programs Used InDesign CS5 Adobe Illustrator CS5 Adobe Photoshop CS5
Font Families Used Big Caslon - Medium CalRomanCapitals Champion HTF Welterweight ChaparralPro Regular GillSansStd Family Helvetica Family Myraid Pro TFForever Two Demi Trade Gothic LT Std Utopia Family
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!! Priority Press annual open house. SEE INSIDE FOR EVENT DETAILS