Whoever said print is dead is wrong. I know what the trends are, but who is to say that people do not enjoy picking up a magazine, a postcard, and maybe even a newsletter and reading it front to back. Print lost its touch because it was so impersonal, but now, with the advent of advanced technologies such as CRM and marketing automation, print is going to come back with a vengeance.
Strategy Analytics Research shows that print marketing has the third largest US ad spend after TV and digital, making it a preeminent tactic for today’s marketers. If you don’t believe that, here are some other stats you might find surprising.
Personally, I believe that people are becoming increasingly desensitized to digital marketing, making print marketing and advertising almost a novelty. They have become a unique way of reaching your target audience. No, I am not talking about the mass amounts of coupons you receive in your mailbox everyday, I am talking about clever print ads and educational direct mail campaigns personalized and created with your customer in mind.
Direct mail died out because of its lack of targeting and tailoring to its audiences. We are now able to get all the information we need about our audiences to serve them the exact type of content they want and need, which now includes print marketing again!
I don’t know about you, but I wake up with about 15 promotional emails in my inbox, and guess what, everything seems to be 20% off! Instead of reading ANY of those offers, I delete them all. Why? Because they seem impersonal and the sheer volume is completely overwhelming. Now, if I walk out to my mailbox and pick up a coupon for an oil change and a 10,000 mile checkup (my car has approximately that many miles), I am very likely to use it.
So, what’s the difference? The difference is that this oil change coupon is tangible and therefore more meaningful and ‘sticky’ in a lot of ways. There is now less noise in my mailbox than anywhere else, therefore those print campaigns tend to stand out more than they would in my email inbox.
Side note: This is not to say that email marketing is not the highest converter, BUT you have to make it relevant and targeted towards your audience.
So, what does this mean for marketers? It means that print is not dead and all of us should be thinking about it as a piece of our multichannel marketing strategy. Of course, you need to make sure that print resonates with your audience, and of course you have to make sure you have the data to personalize your campaigns. So, if both of those check out, then go ahead and get thinking on creative ways you can incorporate print into your strategies.
Integrating print into your strategy opens up more opportunity to hit your target market. For example, GreenRope sends a printed postcard to each of our new accounts with pertinent contact information and help resources. The idea is that they can have something to put up at their desk (visible to all) that they can quickly reference when they would like to get more information from us.
Little touches like this improve the customer experience and improve our reach for who is seeing our brand.
Physical birthday cards are another great way to stand out and show your customers you care. It is like receiving a hand written letter, which we all know are far and few between these days.
All-in-all, finding creative and simple ways to utilize the data you collect in your CRM, along with marketing automation, enable you to easily incorporate print in an efficient and effective manner.
For more information about Print on Demand, read about GreenRope’s latest integration with Quantum.