Entries from August 2007 ↓

Brian Wolfenden wrote an excellent article in DM News about enhancing print with integrated marketing.

One of the things he mentioned was combining direct mail with personal URLs…and since PURLs are something we now offer, I figured I’d give a client example to illustrate one of the ways it can work.

Our most recent issue of our eNewsletter sums it up best, but here’s the story in a nutshell…

The Blood-Horse used us to send out a direct mail package containing a personal URL.  The PURL directed the recipient to a personalized landing page where the marketing message was continued.

From there, The Blood-Horse used the PURL data to put together some effective follow up campaigns.  Overall, it was a great success for them.

So during your next marketing meeting, bring up the idea of using integrated marketing…specifically, how can your company combine direct mail with online communication for even better campaign results?

Popularity: 27% [?]

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Tags: Direct Mail Case Study, Integrated Marketing, Personal URLs

There was an article in DM News about how Peapod, the online grocery delivery service, outsources their printing to save money and increase efficiency.  Since we’re a print production and management company, we love to see stories like this.

On page 2 of the article, there was a special section that debated what was better: outsourcing or in-house printing.  In a nutshell, do you hire staff to handle your direct mail print campaigns, or do you use a company like us to handle it for you?

But there’s another angle that isn’t mentioned…

We have many clients that have a full production staff, and they still use us for their printing and mailing.  Reason being - our pricing and turnaround time is competitive for them…so they then have two sets of professional production eyes watching their work.

The argument to this is, “well then we’ll be one removed from the actual work being produced.”

Well, yes and no.  Yes, you are one removed from the actual shop printing your work.  But a print production and management company that is good at what they do won’t make this an issue for you.

They’ll get you as involved in the job as you wish; they’ll work with you as a team;  they’ll make your job a bit easier; and most importantly, they’ll help you get the job done right.

So it’s not a question of should you outsource your printing…it’s a question of, what is going to be the best situation for your direct mail print campaigns?

The answer to this question is going to vary from company to company.

Popularity: 31% [?]

Tags: Print Outsourcing, Print Production

The United States Postal Service has now made it mandatory that anyone seeking to receive discounted automated rates must have their names processed through Delivery Point Validation or DPV software. The goal of this software is to reduce the amount of Undeliverable-As-Addressed or UAA mail that is processed by the USPS.

One of the main advantages of the DPV service is that it pinpoints if a record is a valid USPS delivery destination. DPV’s other half, the CASS certification service, can only tell you if the address falls within a range. For example, if you have 123 Main Street, CASS can confirm that it falls within a range of 1-200 Main Street but doesn’t confirm that it’s a valid USPS delivery destination.

But Delivery Point Validation does.

There are other features to the DPV service that you should know about. If you’re interested, please visit:

http://www.g1.com/Resources/Glossary/Delivery_Point_Validation.html

DPV is important because the more we can do to help make the post office more efficient, the better off all direct mail marketers will be.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Tags: Delivery Point Validation, Postage, USPS