Marketing has Gotten Very Personal
We are used to being marketed to on a 1:1 basis, even if we don’t think about it this way. Personalization has become so ingrained in our experience that we barely realize it anymore. If you aren’t incorporating 1:1 print into your marketing, where appropriate, you are out of step with marketing’s cutting edge.
Then there is the issue of cost. In today’s business world, every cost is increasingly scrutinized. Although marketers tend to think of 1:1 printing as a high-cost luxury, when handled properly, the opposite is true.
- 1:1 printing optimizes your marketing investment by not mailing irrelevant information to the wrong people. It makes every record count.
- Properly tracked, 1:1 printing provides provable ROI, so you can compare its value against other marketing methods and justify your spending based on real numbers.
- By focusing on your top-tier customers and generating higher response rates and per-order values from those customers, you can spend less on print and bring in more revenues.
- More relevant communications (newsletters, bills and other correspondence) increase customer retention and provide a benefit difficult to quantify yet with real bottom-line benefits.
From this perspective, 1:1 printing seems less like a luxury and more like a business necessity.
Boost Response Rates
One of the most effective ways to boost your response rates is to use a strategic, multi-touch approach. This approach uses multiple contacts with the same or different media to build your message over time.
Often, these contacts are layered in three stages:
1. Priming the pump (“Watch for our exciting offer!”)
2. Presentation of the message
3. Follow-up or reminder to respond
Please note that not all programs will utilize the same elements.
What is a QR Code?
You are starting to see them everywhere. They look like jigsaw puzzles, sometimes in color but most often in black-and-white. They are on magazine advertisements, posters and billboards, business cards, and just about everything else. They are quick response (or QR) codes, and they act as mobile shortcuts to websites, discount coupons, videos, and other content. Point at them with your smartphone, snap a picture of the code, and you are zipped to a video, a coupon, a Web page, contact information, or other content. A static medium suddenly turns into a dynamic, interactive one.
Immediate Response!
Whether you are a corporate marketer placing a magazine advertisement or a small business doing a sales promotion, QR codes are particularly appealing because they capture viewers’ interest at the very moment it is piqued: See. Snap. View. You don’t lose eyeballs by asking people to manually input URLs or scribble them down onto a piece of paper that might get lost. Plus, QR codes cost little or nothing to add to your print campaigns. There is no reason not to use them. So make those static printed pieces interactive. Add “live” product demos to sell sheets. Send trade show attendees right to your website. Let viewers download your company contact information and “save the date” information right to their phones.
It is no wonder so many of today’s top brands are using QR codes. These include GMC, Ford, Google, Pepsi, Ralph Lauren, The Weather Channel, Best Buy, Chevrolet, Starbucks, Facebook, and countless more.
They’re Trackable
Wait! It gets better. Because these codes resolve to Internet sites, QR codes are an easy way to track the interest level of many of today’s mobile consumers. How many people snapped the code from the brochure you distributed at the trade show? Were mobile users more likely to respond to the trade show graphic or the magazine ad? Track this and more with QR codes!
Where Did QR Codes Come From?
Although many people are just being exposed to QR codes, the codes themselves are not new. In their most basic form, QR codes have been around for years. QR codes were first created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994. Since that time, they have been extensively used in Europe and Japan. Now their use is exploding in the United States. You see them in Times Square, in the pages of Entertainment Weekly, as well as on CD cases, point of purchase materials, business cards, and a wide variety of marketing collateral.
