I have been reading a lot about the new technology of using variable printing for personalized direct mail campaigns and how it will increase your response rates and ROI.  Well, be cautious here because it ain’t all its cracked up to be.   I don’t believe it’s worth spending extra $$ using it for prospecting.   The novelty of it is wearing off now that the marketplace is getting flooded with it.   I personally believe that it makes more sense to use VDP when sending relevant personalized direct mail pieces to customers or prospect where you KNOW their buying habits.  For example, if you are a travel business and you know that your audience is interested in a specific type of a cruise then it makes sense to make them an offer based on their interest.   But first, you have to know what turns them on before you offer them a hook.   You could also get them to go to a personalized URL where they can review your offer and click on to a link to book the trip.    I think it is a waste of time to send propects to a personalized URL if you don’t know what their buying habits are.   You are just throwing darts into a big black hole.    

Data mining is critical when using personalized direct mail.     By knowing what their past purchases were you can tailor a personalized direct mail piece with special offers that will wow them.    I hope this makes sense.  If not write a comment and I will give you my feedback. 

According to Canada Poste, Canadian consumers are feeling underserved by their respective retailers and are interested in doing business with American retailers.   Canadian consumers are paying top dollar to buy goods and services in Canada so the market is ripe for Americans to begin marketing their products to Canadians.    Canada Poste has begun working with many US retailers through its Border Free product. 

This product allows retailers in the U.S. sell to Canadians directly online in Canadian dollars without having to deal with taxes & import fees. 

Canada has only around 150 online or catalog retailers whereas, the U.S. has 13,000 or more.   

The Canadian dollar is now  worth $1.00USD so we can now compete very well against any Canadian retailer for the same product.    The demand is there so why aren’t more American retailers targeting the Canadian market?    Either they feel the market is too small or they have tunnel vision.  

Direct marketers would do well to mail into Canada with relevant products and services.   Mailing lists are readily available and it is a lot cheaper to mail into Canada than Europe.    

Please feel free to post your comments and questions regarding marketing to Canada.

Targeting the right list means understanding the demographics that you feel has the best chance of replicating your customers from rented or purchased mailing lists.   If you don’t know the demogrpahics of your customer base you need to find out.   Hire a database company that can analyze your data and report this back to you concretely.   It’s work the $$ to find this out.    The exception to the above rule of thumb is if you are selling pizzas, take-out, or hair cutting.   In this case everyone is a prospect so all you need to do is bitz-krieg your neigborhood.

There are thousands of mailing lists available in the marketplace so tread carefully and get as much information on the proposed mailing list and how recent it was updated.    Before making a big leap of faith I would encourage you test 3-5M names before doing a roll out.   Testing a list is a great way to know whether a list will work for your offer.    And make darn sure that you have an offer and not just an information piece.   Informational mail pieces are a waste of time & money unless you’re a library, politician or the government.   You must have a call to action.

For business lists I generally recommend using D&B, which has a larger number of records over InfoUSA  and for consumer lists,  I recommend Axiom.   They are proven compiled lists for most direct mailing campaigns. 

If you have questions about mailing lists in general please feel to post your comments here.  

With the increasing competiton in the restaurant business it is imperative to stand out from the crowd when conducting direct mail campaigns.  I get so many mondain menus that I just toss most off them especially the ones for Chinese restaurants.  They all look the same.  I swear they all use the same printer.   Some of the more egarious ones look like they came off a cheap copier.    So, how do you stand out from the crowd?  Use magnets.  They have a very high retention and get stuck on the ole refrigator or the a metal cabinent.    If you are going to use them then by all means be sure to attach at least 4 tear off coupons to the bottom of the magnets.   Consumers will definitely use the coupons to take to their favorite pizza joint or sub shop.   The smart restauranter will spend the extra dough a reap a much better ROI using magnets than sending out a cheap copy of his menue.   The magnetic coupons can be readily mailed at the cheapest postal rates by inserting into a #10 regular envelope.    Please post your questions or thoughts to this savvy marketing tool.

I was recently contacted by a prospective customer about getting small quanities for her labeling needs.    She had contacted another company but was told that she would have to buy sheets of labels and cut them individually.   That is assenine in my opinion.   With the new digital printing presses now one can order as few as 1 label, although it is a bit pricy.   With the need for on demand labeling in small print runs you don’t have to order thousands of labels anymore.  Small press runs printed in 4-color process ink is also possible.   All of this can be achieved on-line by going to my website and clicking on the custom label solutions.   If you have any concerns or questions about labeling please post them here or drop me an email.