Remember last year’s USPS QR Code promotion? During the summer of 2011, the Postal Service offered mailers a 3% discount on Standard Mail and First-Class Mail® letters and flats that included a mobile 2D barcode, including QR Codes, SnapTags, Microsoft Tags and other mobile barcodes that, when scanned, can direct an otherwise passive customer to take immediate action – make a purchase, register for an event, or download a coupon. Readable by a smartphone with a 2D barcode reader app, these mobile barcodes make print interactive. The promotion ran during the months of July and August 2011.

Well, there is a proposal afloat to repeat the promotion again in 2012. The exact nature of the program is still being developed and needs regulatory approval. According to a recent article in Direct Marketing News, USPS VP of domestic products, Gary Reblin, said, “We’ve studied best practices; we’re going to take what we learned from the last one and be more specific.”

Last year, according to the report the USPS submitted to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), the primary intent of the Mobile Barcode Promotion was to generate awareness of how mobile technology can be integrated into mail campaigns. The report further states, “Customer participation in the promotion greatly exceeded the initial expectations of the Postal Service, meeting the primary goal of increasing awareness.”… Read more »

In the early days of smartphones and mobile communications, consumers were happy to be able to access websites with their mobile phones. When was that, two years ago? Things are moving fast in this space, and expectations have changed dramatically in this short time.  Now consumers want mobile-optimized websites. And this doesn’t mean you just move your existing web content to a different format.

The first stage in this transition was to have a mobile-friendly website.  This meant sensing the device being used and presenting the same content in the appropriate form.  It also meant streamlining content so it is more digestible in the smaller screen format. Now, however, the trend for an increasing number of marketers is a “mobile first” strategy.

What does this mean? The key difference between PC users and mobile users is that mobile users are focused.  PC users are generally multitasking, between work, play and casual research. Mobile users are on the go and want fast answers. They are also usually transaction-oriented. They may be looking to buy a specific item, compare prices, find a location nearby that carries something they are interested in—and they are not willing to dig through layers of web content to get that information.  If your site doesn’t offer what they are looking for, surely a competitor’s does!
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Have you made personal and professional New Year resolutions yet, in the spirit of the season?  I’ll leave the personal ones to you. Professionally, New Year resolutions—or at least specific and measurable goals for 2012—are of critical importance, especially in today’s dynamic and often disconcerting business environment. Here are a few suggestions you might want to take into consideration.

• Are you making the most of your existing customer base?  Common wisdom says that mining existing customers for more business costs six times less than acquiring a new customer, yet many businesses place an undue amount of focus on customer acquisition, letting customer retention/expansion efforts fall to the back burner. Do the research on your best customers.  What are they doing differently these days? What are the key trends in their respective industries? Who are you working with inside each company, and how can you best expand beyond those group(s)? Don’t let valuable existing customer relationships languish. Make sure they know about the full range of your offerings, and don’t be shy about asking your best contacts for internal references.
• Another way to grow revenues is to work on growing the average revenue per sale for your business…. Read more »
  

QR Codes are becoming a prominent technology in marketing today. They can catch the consumer’s eye essentially anywhere, and really drive people to respond. When used correctly, QR Codes can deliver a great response rate.

There are common mistakes that have been made in the past with QR Code marketing campaigns, such as: broken links, no mobile-friendly landing page, complicated design, or part of artwork in a location with no cell phone signal. These mistakes can leave consumers unhappy because they don’t get the results they expect from scanning, or leave them confused thinking they did something wrong.

Check out Matthias Galica’s article from Mashable about how these mistakes have been incorporated in QR code campaigns:

Mistake 1: Not Testing The Code

Common sense right? Until you’re able to read a QR code just by looking at it, you should always test the proofs with a variety of smartphones and scanning apps before you release a campaign.

This is the simplest way to spot scanning problems. For instance, a small placement (less than an inch) will often be too dense to scan if you’ve encoded a longer URL, but using bit.ly or goo.gl to automatically generate a short URL QR code is an easy fix.

Since QR codes feature up to a 30% error correction rate, there’s flexibility for creative branding and tweaks. But if the designer accidentally overdid it, test-scanning is an easy path to being the office hero that day…. Read more »

Determining a marketing strategy for a client’s campaign can be the biggest challenge faced by the Marketing Services Provider. Many times, campaigns are launched will little or no strategy, with disastrous results. (See my other posts on Three Common Mistakes in Cross-Media Marketing on this topic.) The good news is, determining a strategy is easier than you think. In this article, I will review the three basic marketing strategies. One of these three strategies can be applied to almost any cross-media marketing campaign to promote the client’s product or service.

Low Cost Leader – The low cost leader in any market has a competitive advantage that is easy to convey to the consumer.  Examples of the low cost leader strategy might apply to an auto dealer who uses a cross-media campaign to guarantee they will beat any other dealer’s lowest price. Another example of the low cost leader strategy does not reflect the cheapest price at all. High margin services such as invisible braces can afford a larger marketing expense due to the low cost per sale of the item.
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One of the challenges in making the transition from a print service provider to a marketing services provider lies in understanding how to charge for—and sell—new services. This is not an issue that is exclusive to the printing industry by any means. Anytime a company makes a business shift such as this, there is also a cultural shift that must happen.

Conventional printing sales are generally priced using a cost-plus model.  That is, all of the costs are added up, a margin is added, and voila! You have a price. The cost elements are fairly straightforward, and the margin is determined by taking a number of factors into consideration, including how competitive the bid is.

While this model can certainly be applied to cross-media services, companies who do so are likely leaving money on the table.  Why?  Because deployed right, cross-media services bring more value to the customer than a simple printed piece.  What’s more important is that the value is measurable. Can you double or triple the response rates the customer has been receiving by deploying a personalized, multichannel campaign? There is certainly value in that.  Can you improve the customer’s return on marketing investment (ROMI)? There is significant value in that as well. These and other metrics can generally be improved when cross-media campaigns are deployed…. Read more »

Are you one of the printing firms that has yet to dip its toes into the cross-media waters?  If so, we are curious about why.  Industry pundits—and not just from our industry, but across the board for marketers—consistently stress that now is the time to engage in cross-media. Print volumes are declining as marketers use… Read more »