This is the next post in our series on customers who won our Pageflex Customer Innovation Awards. The Standard Group was the winner for Best Self-Promotion Campaign. This cross-media self-promotion campaign fully demonstrated the company's range of capabilities, including cross media, customization and online ordering. This successful campaign was a fun and successful way for prospects and customers to gain firsthand experience of what those capabilities could mean for them and for their business.
Overview
The objective of the Variable Calendar Self-Promotion campaign was to use the Standard Group's full range of cross media capabilities to create an integrated self-promotion that shows by example how customers can use variable and personalization to effectively target, communicate and create a call to action.
In addition, the campaign gave customers the opportunity to experience the powerful capabilities of the Standard Group's Marketing Portal run by Pageflex Storefront. Once there, they could create and place an order for a free personalized wall calendar using their own photographs.
The target audience for the campaign included customers/prospects who might have a need for a marketing management portal or integrated direct mail with personalization and variable data. The list included marketing directors and managers as well as advertising agency professionals.
The project was done in two phases. In phase one, a direct mail postcard with email reminder was sent. Two weeks later, in phase two, a direct mail postcard with a personalized email reminder was sent to non-responders.
Each of the postcards were personalized with the recipient’s name, with the name of their Standard Group sales person, the sales person’s phone number, a pURL and a Personalized QR Code.
The campaign used three calls to action: call the sales person phone number, follow a link to a PURL and a Personalized QR Code. With the both the PURL and Personalized QR, tracking and notification were set up so that when a prospect visits the PURL or Personalized QR, a detailed notification is sent to the corresponding sales person and the VP of Sales.
Once on the Calendar promotional site, the prospect has an opportunity to view various case studies on the creation of marketing portals and storefronts. But ultimately, they are able to create their own personal three month format photo calendar for free. They have the option of selecting the photo layouts, background, and various hi-res photos or upload their own.
When a calendar order is placed, the sales person is again notified for follow up. The calendar is either hand delivered by the sales team or shipped to the prospect as selected by the prospect.
Results:
- The campaign was sent to a total 922 customers and prospects. The Standard Group received a 37% response rate of those who accessed the calendar website via the PURL and QR Code
- 26% conversion or those visited site and ordered calendar
- 23 "hot" leads
- 6 immediate leads
- Educated our sales team on using the marketing portal/storefront
- An additional 70 additional calendars were ordered by employees of the Standard Group
I asked Calvin Grucelski, Digital Solutions Manager at The Standard Group, about the project, and what he thought was the most challenging part? Also, what does he see as the most rewarding part of the campaign?
"The most challenging part of the project, without a question, was dealing with the data that powered the campaign. Producing the final product was the easy part, as it leveraged and highlighted our core competencies as a 100 year old print service provider and long-time Pageflex user. After defining our target audience, we began to filter and mine our own internal customer records and other data sources to create a mailing list comprised of current customers and key prospects. We quickly realized that there were numerous challenges dealing with the data itself: accuracy, consistency, freshness, and formatting were all key issues. This was complicated by slow adoption and integration of a new Customer Relationship Management software platform that was implemented to help our sales staff manage their customers and key prospects."
"The most rewarding part of the campaign was the fact that we were able to utilize almost all of the major components and core competencies within our company to execute the campaign. Our sales staff identified their prospects and customers; our mailing and database specialists to worked their magic with the raw data; our pre-press staff designed the creative elements; our pre-media staff created the variable templates and Storefront; our press and bindery staff executed what was essentially a “hybrid” solution that utilized both digital and offset print; and finally our fulfillment and shipping specialists completed packaging and delivery of the final product. It truly was a team effort that served to highlight our capabilities and expertise in a broad range of services within one project"
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