This VDP article is great!!
VDP Disasters and How To Avoid Them
May 6, 2010 By Crystal Uppercue
Where does a direct marketing manager begin in designing a VDP campaign — with the data or with the creative content?
Forest Wathen, prepress manager at EU Services, notes that with traditional direct mail, typically the creative drives the data. With VDP we’re seeing a shift. “The question for direct marketing managers becomes, ‘What can I do with what I have? What data can I segment or append to drive the creative content to improve responses?’”
Begin by segmenting your list by information that is almost certainly in your database: name, geographic location, customer or donor segment, acquisition date, and purchase history.
Data appending helps you build on what you have. The Helen Woodward Animal Center, a no-kill shelter that provides animal adoption for all types of pets in California, took data they had on their current donors and sent it out to be analyzed. The shelter was looking to identify unique characteristics among donors.
Now that they knew more about their own donors, Helen Woodward then used this information to find people like their current donors on new lists. Information from other sources was set up to match such donor demographics as average age, profession, education level, home and asset average, and contribution information.
From there, the animal center looked at lists with similar traits and identified some they would never have thought of using. They purchased three lists outside their normal scope. That meant fresh contacts not necessarily common to other animal organizations, which, in turn, reduced over-saturation.
Start Small and Test
If you’re new to VDP, it’s important to start small and test. Work with your direct marketing production company to design a test run that will determine whether or not to roll out a larger project.
Consider testing not only aspects of the VDP campaign itself, but also a test against a control group of a conventional direct mail campaign. It’s much better to find out at this point whether your test provides ROI that makes the additional investment feasible.
With the higher per-unit cost of VDP pieces, breakeven points for response rates are inherently higher, so also examine your number of mailing cycles and number of pieces with a view toward tweaking those elements of the campaign.
Calculate Return on Investment
Though they generate better ROI, VDP projects are more complex and cost more than generic non-personalized direct mail. Undertake a standard cost-benefit analysis to ensure that the potential ROI justifies a VDP investment [Note: The ROI is the number generated when you divide the gross receipts from the mailing by the total cost of the mailing].
Remember, depending on your campaign, ROI is not the only measure of success. Projects launched to raise brand awareness, for example, may not show tangible results for some time to come, if ever. ROI analysis is, therefore, well suited to many types of campaigns, but should not be considered the be-all and end-all of your direct marketing project.
Crystal Uppercue is the marketing manager for EU Services, a 330-employee direct marketing production facility based in Rockville, MD. Download EU’s free white paper, “A Marketing Manager’s Guide to VDP Project Management,” at www.euservices.com. You can reach her at cuppercue@euservices.com.
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I hope you enjoyed this article.
Earl
May 8, 2010 No Comments
Netfire1to1 Launches New Website
Netfire1to1 has launched a new website for the Academia enrollment and fundraising market. It is call “Enroll1to1.com”. We are proud to launch this website so the administrator in the private sector of education can use direct mail PURL campaign for a better ROI (return on investment). If you are looking for students for your college MBA programs or trade school students, this is an easy way to test market with a reasonable budjet. You can order as little as 500 pieces for this test. If you know about PURL campaigns, this is the way to do your direct mail campaign with success. Go to http://www.enroll1to1.com to see what all the excitement is about.
Earl
April 5, 2009 No Comments
What is PURL?
Welcome the first post for Netfire1to1 blog.
I believe there is a new technology that lends itself to all types of media. It is called “PURL” (personalized URL), and this type of 1 to 1 marketing lets a company or organization communicate with the customer or prospect just like they are sitting across the table face to face.
Let’s go back a few years in business-to-business sales. When making a sales call, you would set an appointment with the buyer, go visit and give them information about your product or service and maybe take them to lunch. That is one way you would build a personal relationship to maintain future sales with that company. Gone are those days to make that face-to-face first contact so easily. Now, with the computer you can do this. We call it “1 to 1 marketing”.
Recently, there was a big buzz on VDP (variable data printing). Each piece would have a different picture or phrase directed to target the individual receiving a mailing piece. It can be a postcard, self-mailer or letter mailing. This technology increased the response rate substantially. The person getting the piece would think it was just for them because it had their name in big letters or maybe a picture of the salesperson or themselves. Some companies use this type of 1 to 1 marketing now without the next step.
Now, add a URL behind the first and last name and direct them to their own website based on a specific marketing campaign. This type of 1 to 1 marketing is called PURL. Ones the buyer goes to their PURL, they will now begin to take action on different web pages just as if you were sitting right across the table from them. There might be a flash video or a welcome page followed with some survey questions to answer, profile page and thank you pages too. There are many different 1 to 1 marketing versions of PURL we can show you.
In a typical campaign a buyer will answer questions on the survey page, the answers to those questions can have any different number of solutions. It might send them to a product page on your website or better yet the order form to buy over the Internet. If you are seeking donation for a fundraising event, it can direct them to the donation page or event page if you are looking for appointments or reservations to an event. If you are in the service business, you can direct them to your website or take a survey too. There are many different ways to use “PURL’s” and we can help with a “Discovery Audit”.
The personalization can come from a list you provide or one we can get. There are many keys to a successful campaign and we can help you get there to increase your ROI. PURL’s will work with different media type like billboards, television spots, magazine ads, radio spots, newspaper ads. Don’t forget direct mail is one of the best ways too. The Internet is growing and this trend will make it advisable to look into this new way of doing business. It is called “PURL’s”
Earl Jeremy
September 30, 2008 3 Comments