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Measuring Marketing Success for a Small Business

Measuring_Marketing_Success_HEADER_11022016 Small businesses depend on marketing just as much as large businesses, maybe even more – even when they’ve become a household name in their local area. How do you track marketing success? How do you get insight from marketing failures? This is a challenge for every business, but it can especially daunting for a small business that can’t afford to hire marketing specialists.

Here are some tips for getting small businesses marketing plans running smoothly, and providing you with real metrics that drive results.

Learn What to Calculate and Why

Before you can dig into figuring out how to grade your marketing performance, you have to know what to measure and why. At the end of the day, the only number that matters is cash – how much sweet, sweet revenue did you make? But marketing metrics can tell you a lot more about the health of your business, and sometimes the numbers aren’t as straightforward as you think. Dive into this alphabet soup and see what you should be monitoring.

LTV. Life time value – this is how much money you earn from an average customer over the course of their entire business cycle with you. Do you have repeat customers? Ongoing subscription plans? How long do these customers, on average, keeping coming back? Crunch the numbers and figure out how much you make from a customer over their lifetime.

CAC. Customer Acquisition Cost – or CAC – is one of the most important metrics to track. It is easy to calculate too, just add up all of your marketing expenses over a time period including salaries and overhead, and divide it by how many new customers you acquired. Compare your CAC to your LTV – the LTV should be at least 3x higher for successful marketing. For example, if you spend $100 to acquire a customer, but on average they spend $500 with you – that’s some great marketing.

NPS. Net promoter score – this is a measure of how willing your customers are to talk about and promote your business. This number can be negative – that’s really terrible. If your NPS is above 50% you are doing an amazing job. Most companies have an NPS score of around 25-30%. Here is some advice on calculating your NPS score.

Digital Engagement. This category covers different scores such as time on page (how long a customer stays on your page), to email open rates, to clicks on paid click ads. This is an easy way to measure if people are using your website, opening your email, or clicking your offers. If you are doing digital marketing (and you should!) the tools you use should provide ways to monitor digital engagement.

Attribution. Attribution measures how much a specific touch, ad, email or direct mail send moved the customer closer to buying. Attribution is incredibly hard to measure and everyone seems to have a different opinion on how it works. Despite that, it is important that you try to calculate it because even the attempt at figuring out your attribution will help you. Soon you’ll be thinking about your marketing efforts in different terms. Here is some info on measuring first and last touch marketing attribution.

Of course there are a lot more metrics you can target but these will get you started.

Start With Digital Marketing

Digital marketing includes a range of tactics, from posting to your blog to advertising on Facebook. Though each of these options are very different, they all make tracking real-time engagement easy.

There is a giant pile of tools, solutions, and apps out there that can help a small business track marketing efforts. For a small business just getting started with tracking their marketing, digital channels make it easy to dive in and start doing the math. Start with these tools:

  • Mailchimp is the gold standard in free and low-cost email marketing platforms. They offer easy to use reporting tools for email campaigns and great technical support, how-to guides, and forums.
  • Google Analytics is used by just about every company with a website to track every possible metric for a website. Large marketing teams will have specialists dedicated just to this program, but you can still learn how to use its basic features and they will be enough to give you insights into digital marketing.
  • Hubspot has great, free resources for all things marketing related, check out their Excel templates for tracking marketing metrics.
  • Built in tools for social platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Hootsuite and more offer ways to monitor your clicks, tweets,

Keep Records Updated

Keep your records accurate. Update all of your metrics at least once a month and if you can, use a tool to help you automate your marketing reports. Enterprise level marketing automation programs may be out of your reach, but with some clever spreadsheets and elbow grease, you can keep accurate data throughout the year.

Compare your results to your marketing plan, but don’t be afraid to change your idea of success. Maybe you’re falling behind on revenue goals, obviously that isn’t good. But what if you find social media efforts are paying off and you’re adding new followers? Should you stop putting money and effort into Twitter? It may make more sense to test ways to make Twitter a revenue generator.

Keeping accurate, timely records won’t just show you where you’re failing, but where you’re succeeding behind your own back.

Weight and Score Your Touches

In a typical campaign you may send a customer an email, a coupon in the mail, and then send them a Facebook ad if they’ve followed you. You should weight and score each of these send. How you do this is more art than science, and will change as you do more and more marketing. In this example, you could weight the email as being cheap, fast, and easy to duplicate.

If people are responding it it really well, clicking through and reading the site you direct them to, then you can score it highly. The direct mail coupon is going to be expensive compared to the email, but maybe not as expensive a Facebook ad. Measure these differences and give yourself a scoring system that works.

End with a Digital Strategy

There is a whole world of marketing outside of digital channels, and they’re often way more expensive than sending an email or paying for a Facebook ad. They’re also harder to track, but driving customers back online leverages the power of digital reporting. Big companies pay big bucks for special software to get this sort of functionality, but you can mimic these tools by making your calls to action point back online.

If you use a printed piece to advertise your business, make the call to action feature your URL. If you send coupons, make them redeemable online. Use unique coupon codes to tag and track where your customers are coming from.

There are plenty of online resources to help you learn more about marketing, reporting, and metrics. They’re complimented by tools that can help you build reports. They can give you clear, actionable insight into your marketing. They help you learn from success and failure. 

Need help with your print? Talk to a live print expert today: 800-930-7978.

Plastics and Printing

Plastics and Print

We’ve added some real innovations to the printing industry in our 20 year history, and one that we’re really proud of is SmartFlex® paper. This is a synthetic paper that is made from plastic but has the same look, feel, and properties (well, the good properties) of regular wood-pulp.

We developed this paper stock and put it to use printing anything that needs to look perfect, but still be perfectly indestructible. How tough is SmartFlex? Well, here is a list of its superpowers:

  • It can’t be drowned – totally waterproof, your printed materials can go for a swim.
  • It can’t be torn – incredibly tear-resistant, you can’t accidently tear the edges of SmartFlex prints.
  • It’s always looks great – stain-resistance means coffee can’t harm it, making SmartFlex a great choice for menus.

Obviously, we love SmartFlex and we’re proud to bring innovation to the printing landscape. We also know how to print on plastic paper, winning tons of awards for our quality and customer service, but SmartFlex is just the tip of the plastic iceberg. There’s a whole world of plastics to explore.

Plastic Cards

Stand out with a plastic business card – perfect if you’re the sort of person that works on or near water or the outdoors. You can use affordable plastic cards to create your own membership cards, renewal cards, and personal entry or data cards. Think items like magnetic strips, barcodes, and personalization is out of your budget? Think again!

Take a look at plastic cards for a variety of uses if you’re exploring new marketing options. They can be added to direct mail sends or other printed pieces where they form a very official, tangible centerpiece. Plastic cards have an air of authority and can boost others’ perception of your company.

Menus and Brochures

Plastic paper like SmartFlex® really shines when it is used in a food and beverage environment. The plastic paper comes in different weights (sorta like thickness) that can be folded into familiar (or unique) menus. Just like regular paper, you can get SmartFlex in a variety of finishes and coatings – but no matter what you choose, you’re going to benefit from the waterproof and stain-resistant superpower of plastic paper. Not to mention, it’s basically indestructible so your customers won’t be banging up your menus, leaving them looking dingy and grubby.

Brochures, maps, and field guides are all great options for synthetic paper.

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Hang-tags

Hang-tags cover a range of items, from door hangers that can be used as marketing materials to ID or parking badges for hanging in, or on, a car. Hang-tags are often exposed to the elements and need to be protected from the weather. Plastics are a great idea, and if the plastic is coated with any type of protective coating, such as a matte finish, it will help reduce the effects of light fading the ink over times.

Thick Outdoor Plastics

Sometimes you need to go big or go home. The thickest types of plastic we print on is called Styrene. Made from composited layers of plastic, this material comes in a range of sizes and is so thick it can’t be folded, but it can be die cut and it prints very well. This rugged material can be used in outdoor promotional materials, window cards, lightbox signs, bus stop advertisements and anything that needs to take a serious beating.

Special Effects and Plastics

Because of the special way plastic reacts to ink, there are some printing effects that can’t really make it into plastic printing.

  • Pantone colors, or spot color can’t usually print on plastics (it would make them way too expensive).
  • Metallic foil doesn’t work well on plastics.
  • Embossing plastic cards, like a business card, is really only possible if you do a special font and restrict the embossing to just number and letters – perfect for something like a credit card, but you can’t emboss your logo.

Some effects look really, really good with plastics.

  • Plastics can fold very well, if they’re not too thick.
  • Die-cut plastics look fantastic.
  • Special UV effects and metallic foil tend to pop on plastics.

Plastics are an exciting new world for printing. Plastic printing is functional, beautiful, and plastics are completely recyclable. We are leading the industry in plastic-based papers.

Need help with your print? Talk to a live print expert today: 800-930-7978.

Get Your Printing Done in Time

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It’s the holiday season – and that means notecards, coupon mailers, and holiday thank-yous are going to be flooding mailboxes. If you’re planning on mailing printed pieces, you might already be under the gun with a looming deadline. To get your printing done in time, you have to plan for proofing, production, and mailing. We’re going to break it down for you so you can work with your printer (like us, because obviously we’re the best) to meet your deadline.

Print Production Schedules

Before you can start mailing something, you need to get it printed. Depending on what you’re printing this could take time. Typically you’re looking at 4-6 business days to turn around most print projects.

Of course, some projects get done much quicker and others take a lot longer. If you’re adding a lot of custom effects, especially effects that require a plate to be made (a plate is a custom rubber or metal plate used in printing), your set-up time could add another day into the estimate.

You can make the process go faster if you keep these points in mind:

  • Provide final artwork in the right format. This means using the correct color space (usually CMYK or Pantone), the right resolution (usually 300 dpi or higher) and the correct size. This will save you back-and-forth with your printer and will make sure your proof is that much better.
  • Always insist on a proof. A good printer will send you a proof as part of the print job, but if they don’t or if you’re even a little unsure, insist on a proof every time.
  • Check typos and errors before you send the final pieces to the printer. Really go over it with a close eye – retooling a print job can cost you days.

Mailing Schedules

A mailing timeline could take 4-5 business days, after production. Of course this can change dramatically depending on how you’re sending the materials through the mail. The following assumes the artwork for the printed piece is fully approved and the printing presses are about to kick on to print the final piece.

  • Bulk rate is the slowest but cheapest way to mail your printed materials. This option is great for huge orders – over 500 pieces – but takes about 4 weeks from the day your order is placed until the first pieces start to arrive in the mail.
  • Presorted first class mail is the next fastest choice, shaving about 3-4 business days off of a bulk rate’s total time. This type of mailing has requirements on the size, shape, and weight of the mailed piece. It is designed for postcards, envelopes and notecards – perfect for most holiday sends but not boxes or heavy objects.
  • First class mail is the fastest way to ship your print, as you may have suspected it is also the most expensive. It can reach customer’s hands within 6 business days after your order starts production. On average it is about 5 cents more expensive per mailer than presorted first class. The same size and weight limits apply.

Here’s a calendar for a typical production schedule.

Cost to Mail

It can get pricey to send a lot of marketing through the US Postal Service. To reduce cost you may want to consider using the Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) service. EDDM is a service that allows you to send direct mail to every household in a specific geographic region. You can target a zipcode or specific routes and the post office sends your mailer to every house on the list.

You don’t need a list of addresses – the mail just goes to the homes in the area. This service usually has pretty cheap rates, though it can add some time to your overall delivery dates. Learn more about EDDM here.

There are tight deadlines for getting your printed materials into your customer’s’ hands and with the holidays approaching you shouldn’t wait. If you want to get something in their hands in time for Black Friday, for example, you should be hitting production no later than the middle of October.

Need help with your print? Talk to a live print expert today: 800-930-7978.

Use a Postcard Mailer to Get More Voters

Political_Postcard_HEADER_08182016 It’s the homestretch to the voting booth and if you’re on a political campaign or running for office, then you’ve got to start leveraging every channel to get your message out there. Obama won both elections in large part due to his online savvy, and you should certainly focus efforts on building a robust, smart, targeted digital campaign, but even today there’s room for getting attention with a political flyer. People are already keyed into the election cycle, and you can’t get away from talks about the presidential campaigns. Leverage that top of mind influence to get your own message out there.

Political postcards are a great addition to your campaign. They are affordable, can leverage the US Postal Office’s special Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) service to reach people in a local area and they can easily connect the dots between physical and digital marketing.

Tips for Making the Best Political Postcard Campaign

We’ve been printing political mailers for local and national politicians for over twenty years. We’ve seen some really great political postcards and we’ve seen some that should have never been inflicted on mankind. Here are some of our tips on how to make a great political mailer.

Use a Graphic that Stands Out

If you can afford a graphic designer with your campaign funds, don’t hesitate to hire one. They are worth the money, helping you design a catchy image, logo, or general design that will get your message out there.

On a political mailer, use a striking, memorable image. That doesn’t mean gaudy or cheap. Political designs are moving toward more modern looks – all the major candidates in the last decade have been using simple, flat designs. Your political mailer should heavily feature your branding and logo.

When to Use a Photograph of the Candidate

It isn’t always a great idea to use the candidate’s actual photograph. If you aren’t getting on television, or already featuring your actual image in billboards and commercials then you don’t gain a lot by putting your face on a political mailer – you aren’t reinforcing any ideas. Spend that space on your message.

On the other hand, if you’ve a look that is unique and resonates with your voters – why not play it up? Managing your personal image is something best left to campaign managers but know that it’s OK to not include your face – voters care about message more.

Make Your Message Stand Out

Reduce your message to the primary components that make you the best choice. Depending on your area, that may mean you launch an attack on your opponent or you stick to your own ideas. Whatever you choose to do, make sure your message is short, actionable, and easy to read on the postcard. Tell them why you want their vote. Make the messaging about them, not you.

Avoid putting text over complex images. Don’t use colors that hide the copy – make it bold and easy to read. Make it short – postcards can almost guarantee they’ll be read but the message has to be concise

Voting Information

Great political mailers always include info about when voting starts. This is valuable information for the voter, and if you can be useful in a postcard you’re likely to keep their attention.

Plan for the Label and Stamp

Don’t forget to plan for the label and stamp! Your message won’t work if it’s under an address label. Use a great blank postcard template for Word to design your card properly.

Give Them A Call to Action

Usually the call to action is to get out and vote – but that may be months away! Give your reader a chance to participate in your campaign today. Give them a call to action that drives them to your website, to your phone lines, or somewhere else where they can take real action to help you. Postcards are great because they can deliver a call to action boldly and without any interference. Use it! Why not drive them to your website to add them to your digital marketing and outreach efforts?

Don’t Forget Your Disclaimer

Political postcards need disclaimers. Check with your local ordinances, campaign legal counsel or others to figure out exactly what you need to say, but don’t forget to account for disclaimers in your design.

Use a Political Mailing Service

If you want to save the time, hassle and headache of sending these postcards out on your own, consider using a political mailing service to manage the mailing to hundreds or thousands of constituents.

Need help with your print? Talk to a live print expert today: 800-930-7978.

Use Postcards to Make an Impact with Holiday Marketing

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We know…who wants to think about the holidays in the middle of the summer? While it’s not tops on our list of fun things either, we recognize that in between pool sessions and BBQs we should probably be thinking about holiday promotions. They’ll be here before you know it, and if you take the time to plan for them, you’ll be able to sit back and watch the business roll in this fall and winter.

If you’re like many businesses, you may rely heavily on email marketing. You may even have a marketing automation solution that is automatically sending your holiday promotional content! If so, good for you, and by all means continue to try and engage your fans through email.

But there’s a dark side to holiday email marketing. A dark, black hole. According to the 2016 Email Marketing Metrics Benchmark Study by IBM, there’s an 18.8% lower open rate for emails sent between Nov 27-Dec 31 (p21). There’s also a significantly higher rate of email send during that time, with companies “often doubling the number of [email] sends” during that holiday window (p21).

How Do I Get My Business Noticed?

So more email, lower open rates…what’s a business to do? The best answer is to use all the channels available. Continue your email outreach, but make sure you’re not lost in the digital onslaught. How? Use a well designed postcard and Every Door Direct Mail® (EDDM®) delivery from the US Postal Service to get your message literally into the hands of your buyers.

The numbers show that, despite common wisdom, people love opening direct mail. It can survive a trip through the holiday black hole. In the 2015 DMA Statistical Fact Book, the Direct Marketing Association lays out some compelling stats about the efficacy of direct mail. Did you know:

  • Direct mail has a 3.7% response rate, compared to 0.62% of all digital channels combined
  • 42% of direct mail recipients either read or scan the mail piece
  • Only 44% of advertisers are using three or more channels, which means more opportunity to get noticed using mail

Best of all, EDDM® is easy to set up, easy to use, and gives you great bang for the buck. Let’s dig a little deeper and see just how easy it is to get started.

Using EDDM® Postcards – Your Secret to Success

When you use EDDM®, you should keep a few things in mind. First, the very name is a reminder of what you’re doing; you’re sending a promotional mailer to every door that exists on a specific postal route. Because EDDM is geographically targeted, it’s a great tool for engaging your customers and prospects that are close to your location.

Next, think about what to send. Using EDDM ® will have some impact on your mailing options, since there are specific size requirements for these mailings. See Templates for EDDM® mailers here.

One tried and true piece of collateral is the postcard. Whether you choose standard sizes or opt for a large version, a vibrant postcard with a strong call-to-action will make an impression and get results.

If you haven’t designed a postcard before, take the time to learn some of the recommendations and best practices for building a strong piece. Our EDDM® Success Kit is a great place to see examples, learn best practices, and understand how to track the impact your campaign has on business.

When thinking about the postcard for your campaign, consider custom options to help your message stand out even further. Own a pizza parlor? Send a postcard die-cut to look like your best-selling pie. Include scented ink to get their mouths watering. What’s that? Yes, there is scented ink and it really smells like pizza. Want something more hands-on? Use a scratch off covering to hide a coupon code.

Best of all, EDDM ® mailings are cost effective. Whether you are sending 5,000 or 15,000 pieces, you can usually get into the hands of your audience for less than 40¢ per piece.

How Do I Get Started with Postcard Marketing?

There’s really no bad time to start your campaign, but as you think about the holidays you should be thinking sooner than later. Consumers are gearing up for big holiday spending and you need to be top of mind as they’re heading out the door.

Give yourself at least two weeks of lead time from when you place your order to when you want your piece in the hands of your audience. That’s enough time to have your postcard printed, get your mailing list vetted and let the postcards flow through the mail.

You can compress that timeline, but since you’re getting in front of it early, there’s really no need. Good job!

Ready to get started? Contact us today to talk about postcards and EDDM. Call (800) 930-7978 or email us to get your EDDM ® postcard campaign going. Your business, and your customers, will thank you. 

The Numbers Behind Direct Mail

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Direct Mail Offers an Affordable Marketing Option

Direct mail may be the marketing solution your small business is looking for. The direct mail industry is heating up, with overall spending increasing to $9.3 billion 2015. While spending is up, fewer companies are actually using this channel, meaning there is room for your message.

Why Does Direct Mail Work?

Because fewer businesses are using direct mail, there is more room to get noticed. The electronic and social media marketplaces are getting more and more crowded, making it harder to achieve success reaching your customers or to get noticed at all in the digital world. Direct mail has a 3.7% response rate compared to the 0.62% all digital channels together manage to pull in.

The magic of direct mail is that it allows you to place your message directly in your customers’ hands. It arrives in their mailbox and they have to physically touch it and make a decision about what to do with it. You can be guaranteed that they will at least look at it.

Another reason direct mail is a good investment is because it is easy to track and directly correlate success rates. You can see what is working and what isn’t and adjust your strategy. And because you can control when the mail arrives, it allows you to coordinate other marketing into the same time frame, getting a bigger bang for your buck (44% of advertisers are now using three or more channels simultaneously, usually direct mail coupled with email and social media).

Direct mail allows personalization, so customers can receive a letter addressed to their name with an opening salutation with their name as well. This is called variable data printing (VDP) and it doesn’t stop at copy changes. Whole images can be swapped out, color schemes changed, almost anything you think of can happen on a 1:1 basis. Personalization results in a 47% improved customer experience, so this is an important tactic to keep in mind.

Who Reads and Responds to Direct Mail?

Of people who receive direct mail, 42.2% of recipients either read or scan it, while only 22.8% say they don’t read it. That’s nearly twice as many people scanning direct mail than tossing it. Consumers have the most positive response if they are already familiar with the sender, so combining direct mail with other marketing strategies can make a real impact.

55% of adults that buy something through the mail are women, so if you use direct mail, you can hone your message for this group. Response by age of direct mail purchasers is fairly evenly spread among the age groups, but the highest concentration is in the 25-54 age group. Note that the 18-21 age group is rapidly increasing and has tripled in recent years. Some speculate that this age group doesn’t receive much mail at all (they do everything online) so any mail they get stands out to them. This may be a group to focus on if you’re looking for the hottest demographic to tap.

Will Direct Mail Work for You?

Studies about direct marketing show it is most effective for department stores and credit card companies, however these are businesses that spend the most on direct mail and have an enormous volume of business. What about small and medium sized businesses?

Industry statistics show response rates for restaurants have been on the rise with consumers responding to 18.6% of the direct mail they get from restaurants. Direct mail has double digit response rates for other kinds of small businesses including specialty stores, auto maintenance, leisure services, and more. Direct mail coupons have a 2.7% response rate for nonfood and an overall 6.5% response rate for food which is higher than the rates for newspaper inserts and magazines.

Direct mail response rates are second only to telephone sales, which comes in at 9 to 10%. Direct mail comes in second though, above all other types of marketing and can be the perfect choice for a small business.  If you develop a house list, you’ll find you can target your mailings more directly to consumers who are more likely to be interested. Response rates to house lists have been rising so this is definitely an area to direct your attention.

Choosing Direct Mail

If you are interested in direct mail, carefully select a target audience for your direct mail project. You can buy or build a list but no matter where it comes from, it should hone in on the group that will be most interested in your product, service, or offer. The 40/40/20 rule of direct mail marketing says that 40% of your success depends on identifying your list, 40% depends on your offer, and 20% depends on the design of the mailer. It’s also important to keep in mind the kind of response you want to elicit and how you can track it.

For example, it you’re providing a coupon, you can directly track the sales from the mailer. However, no matter what kind of offer or ad you send, don’t forget to take into account the amount of repeat business you may develop from those who don’t respond but later patronize your business because you’ve raised their awareness or made an impression.

Successful Direct Mail

Some people are reluctant to use direct mail because they think it’s just going to get lost in the stack of mail consumers are getting. In fact, mail volume has been steadily decreasing (down by 35% over the past decade as more and more bills are handled online and fewer catalogs are being used), so direct mail is actually a great platform for standing out.

The competition in standard class direct mail is more intense (56.7% of the mail people get is standard mail), but if you choose to send your mail first class, there is less mail in this category. Direct mail tends to be most successful when it looks less promotional and resembles regular mail, sent in an official looking envelope, so the design and delivery of your piece is crucial. More customers respond to direct mail when a courtesy-reply envelope (not a business-reply) envelope is enclosed.

You are also more likely to find a higher response rate if you consider other mail formats. An oversized envelope has a 5% response rate but you can also do well with postcards (4.25% response rate), dimensional mailings (4%) or catalogs (3.9%, which is interesting since consumers always report positive reactions to catalogs but their response rates don’t match their interest).

Isn’t Direct Mail Expensive?

Direct mail is actually priced very competitively, coming in at $19 per acquisition. Compare this to $16-18 for mobile and social media, $21-30 for paid search, $41-50 for internet display ads and $11-15 for email.  Direct mail offers a great return on your investment, 15-17%, which is the same as social media.

Direct mail offers an affordable, effective way to engage consumers who would be interested in your small business. By placing your carefully crafted message directly in their hands, you can expect to see a great return on your investment.

Ready to start your own direct mail campaign? Whether you need help designing the piece, printing it, or sending it to your mailing list, we’re ready to make your mailing a success. Contact us today to get started: (800) 930-7978.

Note: All stats cited here (that aren’t already linked) come from the DMA 2015 Statistical Fact Book, the leading source for direct mail research.