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Targeted, direct and relevant.

6 June 2020 Stuart Nimmo Cover-19 compliant marketing, Direct Mail, Omni-channel marketing, Physical marketing, Power of Print No Comments

Almost sounds utopian but highly achievable. But yet small businesses still use scattergun approaches to marketing, in the hope of a big return.

What happens when you get something which isn’t relevant to you, you ignore it. If it’s impersonal it too gets ignored. So why the ignorance or your potential customers and customers? Are you just being lazy? Would you respond if someone shouted “Oi! You!” In the street – not likely.

The levels of message absorption in marketing materials are on a downward slide. Due to the high volumes of digital content, people just cannot remember it. Or it just doesn’t strike an accord with them. You want a meaningful customer journey; however, the use of selected channels doesn’t reap the return. Blasting out messages which just don’t get seen or heard seems to be a small given factor in some cases. Looking at our digital profiles, we get plenty of hits, however, the conversion to actual clients is nothing to write home about.

Business is about relationships. No one starts a meaning relationship digitally, how many online dating swipes, either way, dismissing without any validated reason. It’s about reputation, trust and referral. People like people like themselves, commonality, humanity is at the heart of all of us. So why do we try to start a meaningful relationship with so little engagement?

As printers, we haven’t forgotten the power of physicality in marketing. We do networking, we regularly call and chat with people (yes on the phone, not a chat-box), and we aim to inspire our audience with the physical presence print offers. We know we gain clients when it’s a proper relationship. (Proper might have something to do with us being based in Yorkshire) A large percentage of our work comes from referral, we wouldn’t have household names like The Scouts, Barnardos and other prominent charities in our portfolio, if it wasn’t for recommendation by people. How do we do it? Storytelling is the key, it’s the difference we make, the added value of our actions (which don’t necessarily appear as an item on a line on an invoice), how we do business which makes the difference.

This June, we did another release of our House Newsletter, which focused on direct mail and what it can do and offer, it went to a very selective list of people – so focussed, either existing customers of people we’d like to work with. It links with all our other marketing channels, so it builds our story. To be fair, it is an entry-level functional item of direct mail, personalised on every piece within it, so ticks the box of being direct and personal. We added a small twist, a little piece of Yorkshire, with some Yorkshire Values.

My next question is would you be hospitable to all of your customers? I think we all would say yes. So we only did a list of about 100 names, print and production costs came in around the price of a good cup of barista coffee for each piece. (Of course creative and artwork costs do vary, so depends how you view it.) For reference, I also did the number crunching on double the volume and it came in around 65-75% of the price of your barista coffee. All this including the postage, using Royal Mail Barcoded Mail solutions.

In the commissioning process, we dummied and tested different paper stocks for weight and performance. Included and tested different insertion items for weight and Royal Mail compliance. This ensured we remained in Letter, Band One for postage purposes, so controlling the budget.

If you need to be proper and stand out, demonstrate your values, show you’re real and trust-worthy, we can tailor direct mail solutions to fit. We can suggest ideas to get you remembered for the right reasons too. We are well aware that opportunities for face to face business development could be limited in the foreseeable future. Creating a memorable engagement will become paramount.

Covid-19 and our changing habits

30 April 2020 Stuart Nimmo Covid-19, Customer Loyalty, Customer Service, Marketing No Comments

Insights from those nearest and dearest to you, often ring home with a certain resonance. The daily chat with my Mum, she was telling me about one of her friends who called her today. They were chatting about the local small shops at the top of the road. Pam (friend) said her son reported the Butcher was saying he hopes to keep some of the business he’s recently gained. My mum went on to tells the mixed stories about the previous service she had from the said butcher.

Of course, customers gained through this experience of lockdown and resorting to local businesses need the experience to exceed their expectations continually. Ask any hardnosed salesperson they will take about under-promising and over-delivering to maintain an edge with a customer.

Of course, knowing your customers is the key here. Building the relationship is absolutely key, however gaining the information can be the challenge. Developing your offering is important to gaining knowledge of your customers. I’ve met many a serious salesperson who kept a card index with key bullet point notes about when and where of their key customers. Knowledge is power, especially about tailoring the sales offer.

So how do we implement tools to help us gain more knowledge about customers.

The classic one for customer knowledge acquisition is the loyalty card, Championed by Tesco’s with Club Card, and the likes of Nectar and to the contemporary likes of Screwfix and their use of customer profiles. They build the knowledge bank on each customer and offer offers and experiences relevant to them. One of the crux behind these are regular communications, whilst yes electronic tools work within this portfolio, use of selective physical mailers as the mix and change of communication methods keeps the response levels fresh.

However, you engage and build a relationship with a customer it’s worth remembering you don’t have a one-track relationship with your friends. Using a mix of methods will provide you with a rich source of nuggets of conversation pieces, which show you care and value them.

A bit about the author…Stuart is Operations Director for HAD-PRINT, passionate about customer service and meaningful marketing, dabbles with various marketing tools and ideas, and likes to integrate them into a meaningful progression for us and our customers.

Challenge brings change…

14 March 2020 Stuart Nimmo Marketing, Physical marketing, Power of Print No Comments

The outbreak of Coronavirus certainly has got a lot of people thinking, if not concerned. However, resilience is created through necessity and is born through a desire to succeed.

Understandably a lot of small businesses are seriously concerned about the impact of the lack of customers, whether this is b2b or b2c based. With a substantial amount of transactions requiring either a proper face to face engagement or a customer journey which needs real personal engagement, alternative thinking is needed. If you ask any designer or creative where and how they get their ideas, usual influences of X Y or Z pop into the conversation. In other words, nothing is new but just evolved from existing sources.

A face to face engagement creates a meaningful value exchange through several routes, “being there” where both parties read the verbal communication, including tone and timbre of the voice, but also the non-verbal communication of body language. (For specialists which study this, it’s a wealth of signals.) The tone of communication also reflects the attitude which the individuals show towards each other, which allows for a hook for future connections. All this is seriously curtailed with limited face to face contact.

Any seasoned marketing professional will be the first to remind single-channel minded individuals the marketing tools used on the journey can drive the touchpoints to achieve results which meet the end goal.

Using proven methods which evoke kinaesthetic engagement provides a powerful alternative to the lack of face to face engagement. The power of touch is next most engaging method after face to face communication. Using the senses of touch, coupled with the physical interaction of using hands to interact with an item creates a moment of connection to drive further actions.

The world of print has overcome many communication challenges. Conclusively print materials when used with effective messages, the right design structure of the printed piece, constantly achieve higher levels of engagement compared to just digital communication.

The Coronavirus update from the Royal Mail (13/03/20) “From experience with other coronaviruses, we know that these types of viruses don’t survive long on objects, such as letters or parcels” https://www.royalmail.com/coronavirus

So delivery of professional mail shot communications still has the opportunity of engaging your audience, whether at home or business place. So where you face to face opportunities might be diminished, carefully executed and delivered can provide a lot more leverage to assist your business message.

Remember when crafting your mailshot;

The creativity of the communication gets you remembered
Being engaging, physically with the item, along with a tone of voice
Be timely, create wider opportunities to engage
Create opportunities to engage face to face when safe to do so
Use professional print providers as they can ensure compliance for Royal Mail standards, and help you achieve the “best bang for your buck” through clever print and business-grade postage options.