Intelligent Mail: USPS' Tom Day Answers Your Questions
Ethan BoldtOn Feb. 23, DirectMarketingIQ hosted a webinar entitled Save $ and Gain Efficiency with Full-Service Intelligent Mail. For this information-packed event, I was lucky to have on hand the premier expert on Intelligent Mail, Tom Day, senior vice president of Intelligent Mail and address quality, U.S. Postal Service, as well as David Henkel, the president of Johnson & Quin, a direct mail print services providers that recently became fully IMB (Intelligent Mail barcode) compliant.
Afterward, listeners flooded me with questions—too many to answer in the allotted time period. Hence, here are some of the pertinent questions that you—if you're part of a business that is considering going IMB soonish—may have asked, and the authority, Day, was happy to answer.
If/when will businesses be required to move to full-service IMB? Or would we be able to indefinitely stay with basic service?
Day: At this time the Postal Service has indicated that mailers will be required to use the Intelligent Mail barcode on automation mail pieces by 2011, which is the basic option. There is no requirement for migrating to full-service at this time.
Is there a postage increase planned for 2011 (for First-Class and Standard mail)?
Day: While it is too early to discuss plans for 2011, the Postal Service has committed to not increasing prices for market dominant products (including First-Class mail and Standard mail) in calendar year 2010.
Is there an approval process to switch to basic IMB?
Day: Mailers should work with their business mail acceptance personnel to ensure their basic Intelligent Mail barcodes meet USPS specifications.
What processes were automated? Creating sequence numbers, for example?
Day: Full-service mailings require electronic documentation and unique barcodes on mail pieces, trays and sacks, and containers. Mailers should work with their software providers to determine the capabilities to generate electronic mailing documentation for submission to the Postal Service and unique barcoding schemas for the mail pieces, trays and containers.
The electronic documentation should reflect the unique barcodes used in the full-service mailings. Please reference the Intelligent Mail Guides and Technical Specifications here as well as the 162-page pdf "A Guide to Intelligent Mail for Letters and Flats."
What happens if the file submission is made before mailing, and the mailing class or quantity changes the day of the mailing?
Day: Mailers need to submit accurate mailing information that reflects the mail class and quantity. Mailers will need to cancel their electronic submissions and submit accurate electronic documentation that reflects the mail preparation.
3 Tips for Refining Customer Interaction Data Down to Actionable Insight
Ann M. CannonAll that data sitting in your company's CRM systems is a valuable portal to knowledge about your customers. What do they like to buy? How often, and how much do they typically spend? How do they interact with you—over the phone, by mail or other channels?
It's a mountain of data; how do you make sense of it? Better yet, how do you leverage it to more intelligently communicate with your customers individually?
1. Use Analytics to Leverage Historical Customer Interaction Data
First, evaluate your current customer interaction channels. Does the customer have a choice of channels? Are you offering a single or multifaceted approach? With this information, it's time to leverage your historical data to understand how best to steer your communications via customer contact preferences.
Consider setting up a Web portal for your customers to opt in to their preferred interaction channels. This also allows you to deliver higher value to your customers by allowing them to be in control of how they are contacted. This also minimizes ineffective and potentially damaging messages that could be perceived as intrusive or inconsiderate of their preferences. Happy customers are profitable customers.
2. Deliver Higher Value Messages That Increase Customer Satisfaction
Again, there are several key questions to evaluate first:
- Are certain messages more effective via a specific channel?
- Are message scripts concise and easily comprehended?
- What's working?
- What can be improved?
A customer survey can be a great tool to fine-tune interaction strategies by taking the guesswork out of deciding what's working and what isn't. Surveys also allow you to analyze channel and message effectiveness on an ongoing basis, ensuring that your results are based on fact.
More than ever, customer service and experience are driving purchase decisions, while low prices are taking a back seat. According to a recent survey from Forrester Research that polled more than 4,600 consumers across 12 industries, customer service took precedent over low prices when consumers began forming business relationships. Want to know what matters to your customers and how you can provide them with the most value? Ask them. They'll tell you, and you'll both benefit.
3. Decrease Wasteful Spending on Communications That Are Deleted, Thrown Away or Go Unanswered
In addition to discovering what types of communication and delivery methods truly work, the next question is to ask what will work best for your business from a cost perspective. Are there easy ways to communicate the same message with the same or better effectiveness by opting for a less expensive and more flexible delivery channel? For example, you may save money moving from direct mail to e-mail or SMS/text messaging or replacing some live agent interactions with a customer self-service interactive voice response channel.
Moving certain types of messaging to new, automated communication channels deliver increased efficiencies along with significant cost savings when intelligently integrated into current communication strategies.
While just skimming the surface of how to drive more value from the data you already have about your customers, these strategic questions can set any organization well on its way to interacting with customers on their terms, with messages and delivery channels based on each customer's preferences. When an organization takes this thoughtful approach, customers are more likely to open, read or listen to messages, ultimately resulting in loyal, satisfied customers and profitable long-term relationships.
Ann M. Cannon is vice president of Omaha, Neb.-based multichannel customer interaction solution provider CSG Interactive Messaging. She can be contacted at ann_cannon@csgsystems.com.
MetLife Mature Market Institute's John N. Migliaccio on What Direct Marketers Should Know about Middle Boomers
Heather FletcherJan Brady may finally have come into her own. Research just out from the MetLife Mature Market Institute takes a closer look at what it terms the "middle boomers," comparing them to middle children who've long lived in the shadow of the older boomers. Much like Jan Brady, the character from the '70s ABC sitcom "The Brady Bunch," whose angst-ridden exclamation "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" was felt by middle children everywhere, middle boomers need to be taken seriously as having needs of their own.
John N. Migliaccio, Ph.D., the Westport, Conn.-based institute's director of research, commented on the study Boomers in the Middle released in March. On behalf of the institute, GfK Custom Research North America surveyed a cohort of 1,000 boomers born between 1952 and 1958. The survey, conducted from Nov. 18 to Dec. 12, 2009, found that these boomers are the connection between the oldest and youngest boomers. But they have unique characteristics and represent the largest portion of boomers, as well as 10 percent of the total U.S. population.
Target Marketing: How has Internet marketing helped speed the need for direct marketers to think of middle boomers as their own demographic?
John N. Migliaccio: ... The middle boomers have a number of attractions. One, there are a lot of them; they're the largest subsegment of the boomer cohort [at] 29 million or 38 percent of all boomers. Two, they're in their prime earning years. Three, half have children under 18 living at home, and half have grandchildren; they're tied in to the Internet because their kids and grandkids are. They share some aspects of both older and younger boomers. So they're somewhat of a hybrid between the classic youth-culture boomer stereotype and the youngest boomers, half of whom don't even like the term "boomer" to describe themselves and identify more with Gen X.
TM: What sort of direct marketing campaign or strategy would work best with this group and why?
JM: The middle boomers are like their slightly older boomer counterparts in many ways. They share a lot of the same life view[s] and influences as older boomers, such as the JFK assassination, Vietnam and the women's movement. However, they're ... at a different life stage. Many still [have] children at home, and two-thirds have parents still alive, as well. As they are getting older, family and friends, financial security, personal wellness, and purpose and meaning in their lives are taking a higher priority. So helping them focus and figure out these issues at a personal level is very important.
TM: Which marketers would benefit best from treating this demographic differently from the rest of the boomers?
JM: Middle boomers' biggest concern is not being able to afford their health care costs in the future. And they are getting close to really having to pay attention to retirement issues, as well. ... Many still [face] education costs for their children. Almost a third of them are also anticipating a good-sized inheritance from their parents, so financial and benefits issues are a significant concern. About half of them feel like they're behind in their retirement savings. They've been affected by the recession like everybody else, but also have some time to recover from it before retirement. So safety, financial security and income they can count on are leading issues for them.
TM: What direct marketing channels work best to reach this group?
JM: Middle boomers are hooked into all of them, since they bridge having been exposed to marketing from both new and traditional media. Social media is certainly growing, since it's a way to stay current with their children, as well as more focused social media for business and professional contacts. And Skype may be the new VCR challenge. Remember all those blinking digital clocks? They'd love to use [Skype] if someone would just help them figure out how to do so.
TM: What should direct marketers do to retain these consumers?
JM: Middle boomers offer a wide target since they have personal needs, and also respond to child and grandchild needs and parental needs. And most are two-earner households. Offering resources in all these areas that will save them time while they juggle all these demands is a great way to make sure they keep coming back.
7 Copywriting Tips That Should Be Put to the Test
Ethan BoldtCopywriting is the backbone of direct mail—just as screenwriting is the same for the movie business—but in this increasingly high-tech industry, that's been forgotten. With more multichannel campaigns, upgraded database marketing techniques and splashy self-mailers than ever before, the written word becomes an afterthought, literally ... and this is not good, for any direct marketer.
Meanwhile, mailers grappling with squeezed marketing budgets are hesitant to test efforts, especially the bigger tests that involve format changes, rebranding or significant design overhauls.
However, a simple copy test is one of the cheaper and smarter moves to make, and it can pay dividends in the ROI department. For example, making the copy more relevant to today's prospect who will only buy the "essentials" or give to the "truly needy" can more significantly affect the response rate than any change in color or format switch.
After speaking with a handful of top copywriters, here are seven ways for you and your business to take another crack at your direct mail copy.
1. Make the Prospect the Star of the Mailer
It's why direct mail can work so well. The prospect, after a lousy day at the office, gets home and sees mail just for her. It has her name on it, it's engagingly written and the product being offered even makes sense in her life.
"Make the piece look and read as if it were created just for that one recipient," recommends Nancy Harhut, chief creative officer, Wilde Agency. "Write as if you were talking to one member of your target market, with a voice and personality to your words."
While the prospect is the star of the show, the product you are selling needs to become the hero. "Make your selling message fit what your prospect wants and needs—turn your product into that hero," encourages Peggy Greenawalt, president/creative director of direct marketing agency Tomarkin/Greenawalt.
Mark Everett Johnson, freelance copywriter and consultant, agrees with this tactic. "Don't just tell them about your product; tell them exactly how it's going to make their lives better."
2. Make Them an Offer They Can't Refuse
In "The Godfather," Mr. Studio Exec Woltz was a fairly hostile prospect and Johnny Fontane was a pretty bad offer made by Tom Hagen: "Johnny Fontane will never get that movie!" As you know, it was nothing that a horse head in Woltz's bed couldn't solve. Hopefully, there's a better way for you to provide prospects with an offer they might accept.
In fact, Johnson considers this the top copywriting tip: "No. 1, as stated by Inside Direct Mail founder Denny Hatch, the best way to improve your response is to improve your offer. That is, and will always be, my mantra."
3. Make Them Emotional
As with screenwriting, if you don't emotionally engage your audience, your product is dead in the water (and nobody wants to watch that). So while appealing to your prospect's rational side with a hard-to-resist offer is sound marketing, it's often not enough to get the sale. "You've got to engage both the rational and emotional sides of the brain—don't forget the emotional," reminds Harhut.
"State your main benefit right away, or the customer is never going to get to it—they are just bombarded with so much information," agrees Johnson. "You've got to fire your big guns first."
4. Provide Substance
To get people to respond in an emotional way to your mail, you're more likely to succeed—especially if you're a nonprofit—if your copy provides real meaning. "Remember to think about what matters to your reader, not what matters to you as a writer —and then put that into the copy," recommends Merritt Engel, vice president of fundraising agency Merrigan & Co.
Don't forget, your prospects are getting bombarded with information through the Internet, where they have the ability to choose and exit that information as quickly as a click of a mouse. So you have to get their attention with substantial information rather than trickery and thin material. "As technology changes and consumers get more control over what they read, providing relevant content is king," says Engel.
5. Stay in Character
But while it's important to give your prospect what he or she really wants, copywriting experts also urge that you "stay in character," including not getting thrown off your game by whoever hired you to do the job. "Don't be cowed by loudmouths and cocksure prophets," says veteran copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis, in character.
Too often, copy in the letter tries to be too many different things for the prospect. "It's key to find your central focus and stay there," advises Greenawalt. "Don't scatter-shoot, hoping something you say will stick."
Sometimes it's as easy as keeping it simple, especially if you aren't targeting too tightly, says Greenawalt. "If you're too hip, too brainy, too chic, too cool or too funny, you will miss most of the market. For most products, Anytown, USA, is the right address for the greatest numbers of sales," she reminds.
6. Test Screen That Baby
When asked what process produces the best copy, Steve Cuno, chairman of Response Agency, doesn't hesitate. "There are but two. The first is, thou shalt test. The second is like unto it: Thou shalt set aside thy personal preferences and roll out only that which succeedeth," he states.
7. Keep Cool
The writer spends more time alone than most other professionals, often doesn't get the credit he or she deserves, will likely hear more about what's wrong than what's right with the copy, and may grow increasingly thin-skinned and paranoid. Lewis urges that you go in the opposite direction with two simple words: "Keep cool."
Beware Publicity Hounds
Denny HatchMy private electronic archive of news stories contains nearly 50,000 items, indexed and cross-indexed, going back five years when I started my e-zine, BusinessCommon
Sense.com.
The point of the e-zine is to take current news stories and connect dots that trace back to the reader's business, career and life.
Such was the case today when two stories about publicity hounds smacked me in the face and got me to wondering what would happen if an employee or associate of mine got into the business of self-promotion for the sake of self-promotion to the detriment of the company or society. The two publicity hounds:
Kristin Davis, Candidate for Governor of New York
I first became aware of Eliot Spitzer's blonde, buxom madam when she was ranked #1 in New York Magazine's story titled "The Greatest Tarts in New York History (An Illustrated Guide)."
The lede: "New York's latest famous tart is most likely destined to be a footnote to the Eliot Spitzer scandal. . ."
Davis is not a footnote. She's announced for Governor of New York, and somehow I am on her fershlugginer e-mail list, even though I moved out of New York State in 1970.
Today's press release irritated the hell out of me on two counts:
* Davis "called for the repeal of the pension of any public official who resign their office in disgrace to face legal charges. Davis held a press conference outside former Governor Spitzer's apartment at 985 Fifth Ave." The press release continued:
"Why should we pay a billionaire who disgraced his office and his State?" asked Davis who served four months on Rikers Island after being convicted of promoting prostitution and before becoming a women's rights advocate. Davis did four months in prison while Spitzer was not indicted or charged with a crime.
Suddenly the thing became all about her, rather than saving money for the citizens of New York.
* Re-read the mangled syntax: ". . .called for the repeal of the pension of any public official who resign their office in disgrace to face legal charges."
-". . . any public official who resign their office. . ." (should be "resigns")
-"their office in disgrace" (a single public official does not resign "their" office. It should be "his" office-or "his or her office." Personally I despise "his or her" and would simply use "from office.")
Desirée Rogers, White House Social Secretary
The story in today's New York Times that caught my eye was Peter Baker's piece titled "Obama Social Secretary Ran Into Sharp Elbows." It described the internal White House struggles of an unhappy Desirée Rogers, a long-time buddy of the Obamas, who became social secretary, screwed up big time, was fired and whined that her side of the story "had been lost in the swirl of hearings, backbiting and paparazzi-like coverage."
I knew two prior White House social secretaries: Letitia (Tish) Baldrige (Jacqueline Kennedy) and Mary Jane McCaffrey (Mamie Eisenhower)—both classy, extraordinarily efficient and wonderfully hospitable people who did their jobs to perfection by staying in the background and allowing POTUS and FLOTUS to shine.
I first became aware of Desirée Rogers from the 3,700-word story in the April 30, 2009 issue of the glossy Wall Street Journal magazine, WSJ. How could anyone not be aware of this stunning woman staring out at you from the cover wearing a black designer dress, her ringless left hand placed front and center on her shapely knee and a come-hither look that said, "Hey, guys, I'm not married."
Rogers positioned herself as "Brand Obama" and hobnobbed in the fashion world, where she was frequently photographed in borrowed outfits and six-figure jewelry.
I was frankly bothered by her. Whatever anybody thinks about this new president and his wife, it cannot be denied that they hit the ground running and are working their butts off, while this smoky bimbo was upstaging them.
When the Obamas threw their first state dinner, Desirée Rogers failed to set up a secure screening operation and attended the affair as a guest.
The eyebrows of TV viewers were raised when a glam couple sashayed hand-in-hand past the assembled press corps—he in de rigueur black tie, she in a stunning diaphanous red and gold sari-like outfit—where they paused for photographs and then beetled off for the pre-dinner reception.
Most of our raised eyebrows were for the drop-dead gorgeous blonde, but the eyebrows of a few media insiders shot up to their hairlines when they recognized Tareq and Michaele Salahi, a couple of crazed publicity hounds and world-class phonies from Virginia horse country.
The following morning, the two people in charge of the affair, Desirée Rogers and Secret Service chief Mark Sullivan, discovered they had been made to look like chumps by an outrageous pair of rapscallions.
Rogers, Sullivan and the Salahis were invited to testify before a House Homeland Security subcommittee. The White House, in violation of its promised transparency, exercised the old separation-of-powers ruse and Rogers failed to show. The Salahis also were no-shows.
That left an abject and humiliated Mark Sullivan to take the fall and be subjected to withering examination by the members of congress. "It's the Secret Service's job to take a bullet for the president," said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-PA), "but not the president's staff."
It was really O.K., the committee was assured by Sullivan, because the couple had passed through a metal scanner that would have detected the presence of non-plastic firearms. "I'm confident that there was no threat to the president," Sullivan reiterated many times in many ways.
However, the caper had a sinister side when it was pointed out that the couple could have emptied their pockets and purse of anthrax, killing 337 of the most important people in the world—including the president and the next two people in line to succeed him, Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
This would have elevated the president pro tem of the senate, 92-year-old Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, to the presidency of the United States.
Some takeaways to consider:
* Don’t change the subject of a press release and turn it into a vehicle for personal redemption.
* Get someone who knows the English language to go over the spelling, syntax and punctuation of all documents released to the public, so you don’t look like an incompetent jerk.
* If you find publicity hounds on staff that are getting too big for their knickers—and are becoming the face and brand of your company—don’t wait for a screw up or real damage. Assemble a paper trail and can them.