Rhonda Basler
Eight Secrets to Using Personalized Landing Pages
Integrate online and offline direct marketing efforts with PURLs. Ever since PURLs (or Personalized URLs) hit the scene, the integration of offline and online media has become a powerful way to improve direct marketing results. Now, direct mail and email can link to a...
Seven PURL Mistakes You Might Be Making
Don't risk alienating your audience by using a PURL inappropriately. Personalized URLs (PURLs) or personalized landing pages are definitely a game changer for direct and database marketing. With PURLs, all that great data you've collected about your prospects or customers can be used to...
How to Develop Triggered Customer Life Cycle Communications
Using business intelligence along with triggered communications is the new rocket science behind digital and direct marketing. Identifying prospect and customer activities and behaviors that indicate the need for more or less contact, business intelligence is what makes everything else happen. For example, using strategic...
Four Ideas to Put Love in Your Loyalty Program
Ever been disappointed by a gift? You're not alone. 73% of consumers participating in loyalty programs have received promotions for products and services they already own (CMO Council). Irrelevant offers and messages alienate customers and reduce the love in the Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI)...
Reach and Engagement: Email Marketing’s Big Challenges for 2011
Discovering new ways to reach and engage audiences with email will be a key challenge for direct marketers during 2011. Theoretically, a marketing department should be constantly testing, reviewing their budget, and moving money to the best performing initiatives. Unlike other forms of media,...
All Aboard! It’s Time to Engineer the Marketing Process
Marketing operations process engineering should be initiated out of marketing. Throughout the past year, I have attended or presented at a variety of conferences such as the Marketing Profs B2B Marketing Conference, the Integrated Marketing Summit, the DMA's National Center for Database Marketing conference, and...
One-to-One Marketing Campaign Tips for 2011
You have to be on your toes to develop better cross-channel campaigns. The combination of using variable data direct mail, email and PURLs (personalized URLs) together can be an overwhelming proposition. But, with many statistics to support the financial results of one-to-one cross-channel campaigns,...
The Be Thankful Challenge: Business Edition
The economic challenges of recent years have revealed may opportunities, skills, and relationships that we, the business community, should be thankful for. I'm sure many of you are participating in one of the many "Be Thankful Challenges" that are widespread through social networks. My...
Six Keys for Marketing Automation Success
In most B2B marketing environments, one of marketing's main responsibilities is to create conversations and support the sales process. Using marketing technology to automate the process to build customer relationships requires six key elements to be in place and working together. Because these...
Halloween Special: Using Direct Mail to Destroy the Environment
Earlier this week I posted an article about being an environmentally friendly mailer. Unfortunately, I have witnessed companies who don't have a clue about how to use direct mail in an environmentally-friendly way. In the spirit of ghost, goblins and Halloween, I...
Direct Mail: Destroying the Environment or Improving the Economy?
Mail less by targeting more. You'll be green environmentally and financially. I work in the ultimate green environment: the world's largest underground business complex. Yes, Mail Print's building is located in one of Kansas City's nine underground commercial real estate parks. It's...
Nine Ways to Decrease Direct Mail Spending While Improving Results
Looking to decrease your direct mail investment and improve revenue at the same time? Here are nine ways to reach your ROI goals. ROI (Return on Investment) is a function of cost and revenue generated. Any change in either one impacts your ROI. It...
News Flash or Not: The USPS Has Problems
DENIED: The Postal Regulatory Commision rejected a proposed postage rate increase yesterday, putting the blame for USPS' financial shortfalls on "long-term structural problems" and not the flagging ecconomy. In the last 24 hours, I have been inundated with requests for a blog post regarding yesterday's...
Higher Education Marketing: Why are 98% of Colleges Missing the Largest Growth in 40...
According to research, 2% of colleges and universities are accomodating half of the recent enrollment boom. Why aren't more colleges and universities getting their piece of the "increased enrollment" pie? According to a report released in June 2010 by the Pew Research Center, college enrollment...
Overcoming the Fear of Losing Control to Field Sales and Marketing
"Free Puppy with Every Purchase." Great offer or a bad case of brand deconstruction? I have to start with a quick story… I use to work for a corporation with over 10,000 locations world wide. Some of the locations were corporate owned, some were owned...
Building a Roadmap for the Buying Decision Process
Map out the buying process and help prospects and customers navigate their way to a buying decision. Today's decision makers have changed. They scrutinize buying options more carefully. Their expectations are higher across the board. They wants to understand the opportunity costs of making a...
Enhancing Transactional Email Marketing to Improve Customer Engagement
Did you know that 25% of the people who never open your emails will be among the top 10% of your customers? – Email Experience Council In a recent BtoB Magazine Online post Karen Bannan says, "transactional messages can help you reach out to...
New Aberdeen Research Shows Print On-Demand Improves Customer Retention
According to new research by Aberdeen Group, Print On-Demand (also called POD, web-to-print or print automation) provides a dramatic improvement in customer retention and ROMI (Return on Marketing Investments). As an underwriter of Aberdeen's research, we're pleased to provide exclusive access to their findings. From...
Variable Catalogs Delivered On-Demand: An Interview with Jason Kort
An effective catalog has been proven to increase sales, both online and offline, by countless sources. Throw in variable data, variable imagery, on-demand printing and image generation, and an easy ordering interface, and you have a sales and marketing dream come true. I recently...
Marketing Asset Management: How to Get Best in Class Performance
So if you could improve your ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) by 32%, would you do it? The Aberdeen Group has recently published a research study Marketing Asset Management: Managing Brand Compliance in Distributed Marketing Environments that highlights this significant increase in ROMI by...