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Archives for January 2009

Taking Stock of Your Print Inventory

January 27th, 2009 | by Eric Welch

Once upon a time, I worked at a small collectibles company; that is to say, the company was both small in size and made small collectibles. However, there was one aspect of that business which was quite large—inventory. Not only was their warehouse chock full of unsold product, there were dozens of pallets with hundreds of boxes, stacked 10 or 15 high in some cases, filled with outdated catalogs, flyers and inserts. The owners, having invested so much money in this collateral, were loath to give it up even though it was eating up a significant amount of warehouse space (did I mention it was a climate-controlled space? Gotta keep all that useless paper from rotting!). It made a lasting impression on me as to the sheer waste and futility of it all.

Fast-forward to today. In his post titled “Is Inventory Still Evil?“, Paul Barsch comments:

…every B-school graduate knows companies should balance enough inventory to meet customer needs while accommodating shifting preferences.

Admittedly, he’s talking about product inventory as opposed to print collateral. But the principles are the same: balance and flexibility. In the offset print world, that’s a very tricky prospect indeed. However, the digital print world offers the kind of balance and flexibility that would have reduced the amount of excess print collateral at that small collectibles company to, at most, a single box! And if they had underestimated the amount of flyers they needed for a given month, they could have ordered up another batch and had it delivered to their door the next day! Then, they could have converted the reclaimed warehouse space into a sweet employee lounge with a nice, big 108″ LCD HDTV or two, a well-stocked library of Blu-ray movies, a Wii, a PS3, an Xbox 360 and a… but I digress.

Guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with the hyper-spastic rush supplied by this 6-hour Jolt Endurance Shot. Hmm… I’d better drink a second one just to make sure. Caffeine, take me away!

The Direct Marketing Voice Links: 1-27-2009

January 27th, 2009 | by admin

The Direct Marketing Voice: A Preliminary Look at How Business are Marketing Themselves in 2009

I’ve said it once before and now I’ll say it again-rather than focusing specifically on marketing spend, businesses should be reevaluating their marketing strategy.

PrintWeek: DM industry welcomes introduction of PAS 2020

The launch of PAS 2020, the direct mail (DM) industry’s environmental standard, has been met with enthusiasm by the sector.

Ballantine’s Printing Blog: How To Save Money With Clean Release Cards

Today’s video is about clean release cards. If you include plastic cards in your direct mail packages, or you’re thinking about doing so, you should find this video helpful.

Green Printer: Unofficial ‘Hot’ List of Green Design Firms – Green Printer’s picks for January 2009

And yes, it’s been drilled into our heads: “you can have a great product, but if you don’t [insert verbs like 'market', 'brand', 'package' here], you won’t succeed, etc.”. And it true. But design is more than just a means to an end to sell more of your widgets. It also plays a role in the improvement and development of your offerings and sometimes, your organization.

A Preliminary Look at How Businesses are Marketing Themselves in 2009

January 26th, 2009 | by Cynthia Fedor

Is Mr. Bob Bly late to the party or are businesses honestly still seeking an answer to the following question?

During a recession, when money is tight, should companies ramp up their marketing activities and spending… keep them steady… cut back… or stop altogether?

In his blog post today, he does pose a great question regarding the motives of consultancies and ad agencies and why they want businesses to spend during a recession. However, the question noted above has an answer. I’ve said it once before and now I’ll say it again—rather than focusing specifically on marketing spend, businesses should be reevaluating their marketing strategy. If you haven’t already, take a minute to read my post titled, “Smarter Marketing During a Recession.” It will explain my answer.

Now, if my answer does not satisfy you and you just NEED to know whether you should decrease, maintain or ramp up marketing spend in 2009, why don’t we let the intentions and actions of U.S. marketers answer the question for you.

A recent survey conducted by BtoB Magazine, “2008 Marketing Priorities and Plans,” found that approximately 75% of marketers plan on maintaining or increasing marketing spend in 2009.

Additionally, the 2008 Ad-ology “Small Business Marketing Outlook,” revealed similar results. According to it, over half of small business advertisers surveyed will maintain or increase marketing spend on direct mail in 2009.

For more insight regarding how marketers are planning to redirect marketing budgets in 2009, download this whitepaper: “Understanding Direct Mail Impact & ROI.” Follow the hyperlink and get it gratis!

Happy reading and let me know what your business is planning on doing with marketing in 2009.

The Direct Marketing Voice Links: 1-26-2009

January 26th, 2009 | by admin

The Direct Marketing Voice: Relevancy Matters in Direct Marketing

When considering direct mail or email marketing, pretty much the first thing you should figure out is who your target audience is, or to put it another way: To whom is your message relevant? Being relevant to your prospects will mean the difference between throwing money down the drain, and generating new sales.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Direct Mail Pros and Cons and what you can do to limit what you receive

The Cons. According to the website 41pounds.org,”An average of 41 pounds of junk mail is sent to every adult citizen each year. Approximately 44% of this mail goes into a landfill unopened.”

Irish Times: Why it pays to keep advertising

Businesses that maintain their ad spend in a recession will increase sales, writes Tony Philpott. Radio is still heard, TV is still watched, and direct mail is still being opened. Unfortunately, as a consequence of the initial shock and awe that comes with a recession, many marketers cut their advertising budgets.

Bly.com: The Truth About Marketing in a Recession

During a recession, when money is tight, should companies ramp up their marketing activities and spending … keep them steady … cut back … or stop altogether?

Relevancy Matters in Direct Marketing

January 23rd, 2009 | by Robert "Dude" Spellings, Jr.

I’d like to explain what I mean by way of a real situation that happened to me. Like many homeowners these days, I would like to refinance my home with today’s extraordinarily low interest rates. My current mortgage holder, like many today, needs to generate cash flow in order to compensate for all the bad loans on their books that are losing money. In an effort to generate some cash, my mortgage holder has been sending me a direct mail offer every month for the last 10 months proposing to refinance my home loan at a lower interest rate.

So far, it sounds like a great fit for direct mail. I want what they have to offer, so their message should be relevant to me, and it is, but there is more to great direct marketing than just message relevance. Some marketers might stop there and say that I was a great potential prospect, but as you will see, the last 10 months of direct mail have been a wasted effort and actually cost the mortgage company money and resources.

After 10 months of receiving direct mail offers , I finally called the mortgage company (there is a lesson there too: sustained direct mail efforts work!), they pulled up their data and told me that I didn’t qualify for their offer. Sometimes a company may not know if a lead is qualified or not, but in this case, they did know. Imagine how many unqualified leads, like me, had received their direct mail offer and were now eating up their call center resources with no benefit to the company.

What’s even worse is that this wasted effort took time away from their sales reps being able to focus on qualified leads. When I first called the lender, they told me that they would have to call me back because the volume of calls was so large that no one had time to speak with me. It took them 5 days to call me back! That’s a lot of man-hours spent filtering prospects, which could have been done on the front-end by a computer. Undoubtedly, at least some qualified prospects didn’t wait the 5 days for a call-back and probably got their needs met by another vendor. Clearly, this was potentially a very costly mistake.

The problem with this situation is that although the marketer made sure they were relevant to me, they didn’t check to see if I was relevant to them. They correctly identified me as someone who wanted their product, but didn’t verify that I was someone with whom they wanted to do business. The degree to which leads can be pre-qualified varies depending on the circumstances, but in this case, they had all the data they needed to see if I qualified for their program. Checking their data could have saved them (and me) a lot of time and effort.

Work smarter, not harder. Make sure your offer is relevant to your prospects, and make sure your prospects are relevant to you.