A New Year – A New Marketing Plan

With the turn of the New Year, there is good news on the horizon. It appears that we are slowly working our way through the bad economic situation of The Great Recession and are officially on the rebound. While the pace at which we recover may be slow, the growth is an opportunity to move forward in our marketing goals for the coming year.
Getting Back to Growth
While the economy changes will help, growth still comes mainly from putting into action a marketing plan that will carry you upward. Now is the perfect time to leverage technology to push that growth even further!
Maximize the Return
One of the best ways to get the most out of your marketing budget is to implement technologies and strategies that stretch your marketing dollars a long way. One of the best is relevant personalization. The return on investment when you speak to your clients as individuals is huge! Caslon, an affiliate of the Print on Demand institute release a report on response rates. Just implementing relevant personalization in a lead generation campaign moved response rates up to an average of 8.2% - compare that to an average standard addressed direct mail response rate of around 2%. Adding a personalized URL moved the average lead generation program up to 10.6%. That’s real money in your pocket!
Customer Loyalty
We know that keeping a customer is much cheaper than earning a new one. Well the good news from that report is that implementing relevant personalization and a personalized URL in a loyalty campaign generated an average 36% response rate – that means some campaigns performed even better than that. Talk about effective use of resources! I can’t think of a better reason to make sure you are looking at your existing customer base than that kind of results.
If you would like to read the full Response Rate Report, give us a call at 303-286-7200 and we’ll get a copy out to you right away.

Multiple Media
One thing studies have shown is that people have preferences on how they like to be communicated with. Some people prefer email while others prefer traditional mail. By implementing several media in the same campaign, you can reach more people the way they prefer and in turn have more people listen to what you have to say. Our technology can make it painless to include relevant personalization in many media at the same time including print, email, web and SMS messages.
Get More from Your Next Tradeshow
As the economy begins to improve, you’ll start thinking about heading to more tradeshows again. Relevant personalization and personal URLs can have a HUGE impact on your next tradeshow. Imagine being able to reach out and engage your clients prior to the tradeshow and get them planning to come to your booth long before they even arrive in town! Couple that with creative use of scheduled email blasts, and you can remind people to visit you while they are the tradeshow floor. We can schedule a fully personalized email to each client or prospect that is scheduled to deliver, say 3 hours into the first day of the show, and then a reminder 1 hour before the close of the first day. With the number of people that now have smart phones; they will be receiving your messages while they are right there!
You’re Not Alone
Think Big would like to be your marketing partner. We do not have a canned product that is one size fits all – we work with you to design just the right solution for your situation and your goals. We can help you not just set up a relevant personalized campaign, but we can help you get the most from that campaign with services such as finding and analyzing data to personalize with, understanding how to communicate with your clients in the most effective manner, and how to build an effective direct response, multi-channel campaign.
Improving Efficiency
What better way to make an impact than to improve efficiency when the economy is on the upswing? For many customers, web-to-print technology can be a massive improvement in handling the printing of corporate and marketing materials across the organization. The ability to not just set up a campaign once and let your organization do the work in placing orders, but to also have total control over what information stays the same and what can be change makes your job so much easier! Think Big Results can craft a custom recommendation for a web-to-print solution that fits your organization just right.
Make 2011 a Great Year
By coupling great technology and a business partner that is interested in your success, your relationship with Think Big Solutions can start to bring back the good years that were just becoming a fading memory. We succeed when your campaigns succeed. Let us help you grow your business year after year – starting this year.
Matthew Davies is a 20 year veteran of the printing and graphics arts industry. He has spent over 10 years specializing in digital printing and personalized digital communications. In addition to a freelance writer, he now works as a portrait photographer in Boulder, CO. You may contact him at matt@daviescreative.com.