Project: Printflow targets product awareness and new revenue streams following PAS 2020 accreditation

Business Application: E-mails / PURLS / Personalised brochures:With environmental considerations both an increasing concern, and an opportunity to fill a niche in the market, the company had made significant investment in this area, gaining certification for FSC/PEFC (Oct 2007), ISO9001 (May 2008), ISO14001 (May 2009), and PAS2020 (March 2010). Printflow wanted to significantly increase awareness of this service offering to their existing client portfolio, whilst highlighting the Cross Media service, which was also being offered by Printflow as an ancillary service. The campaign carried out in April 2010 was expected to generate sales activity for the sales and account management teams during the month, resulting in a new active sales pipeline, and quantifiable cross-selling opportunities in environmental direct mail. A similar campaign to cover new business prospects was also run concurrently.

Description:The campaign comprised of several elements. An initial personalised e-mail was sent, with the sender showing as a relevant sales/ account manager to maximise opening rates (in testing, it had been found that a generic e-mail from ‘Printflow’ did not generate the same response)

The e-mail was short in content, highlighting the key selling point of reducing landfill from the 1500 tonnes of paper despatched each day as direct mail, accompanied by a relevant ‘unflattering’ image of a landfill site.

The e-mail highlighted Printflow’s accreditation to PAS2020, and encouraged recipients to click on their own personalised website for more details.

The opening rate for the e-mail was over 40%, with 18% click through rate to the PURL.

Programme Objectives

• Brand awareness

• New sales pipeline

• ‘Live’ Software demonstrations

Results

• Positive Case Study

• Overall response rate of 13%

• Active sales pipeline

• 19 ‘strong’ leads developed

Direct Mail

Highlights

Cross Media Communications | t: +44 (0) 20 7689 8705 | f: +44 (0) 20 7689 8706Citybridge House, 235-245 Goswell Road, London EC1V 7JD

Cross Media communications

Project: New business and brand awareness

Business Application: Full service offering Cross Media makes full use of the entire suite of services on offer as the cornerstone of it’s sales and marketing plan. As well as being good business practice in itself, this also provides the company with the opportunity to analyse the effect of different technologies and different routes to market. In turn, Cross Media is able to offer a consultative approach to its’ clients, using first hand campaign experience, and elements of best practice to maximise results. Campaigns are run on a regular basis and are highlighted in turn on the website, showing genuine results, even when individual campaign targets are not met.

‘Not the Usual Suspects’ was a campaign utilising print, e-mail and PURL, aimed at a new prospect list, with introductory offers highlighted to heighten the impact of the campaign. Respondents were offered the opportunity of either a free audit of their current database, or a full demonstration of Cross Media based on a prospect’s current campaign.

Description:Data was developed for the campaign from two sources – an internal CRM package and purchased, targeted data. Cross Media used its’ data partners to produce specific data based on the following parameters:

Job title - the campaign was aimed at Marketing Directors, Managers and Executives.Location - to control final numbers and initial cost, this was limited to the London and Greater London areas.Size - To try to capture perceived significant marketing spend, only companies with turnover in excess of £3m were targeted.Industry - the initial campaign was targeted to marketing agencies and retail companies.

The final data count of 2300 was cleaned and suppressed, resulting in a final despatch of 2180.

Case Study

Cross Media Communications | t: +44 (0) 20 7689 8705 | f: +44 (0) 20 7689 8706Citybridge House, 235-245 Goswell Road, London EC1V 7JD

PURL

Case Study

The campaign itself, using a theme of ‘Not the Usual Suspects’, visually questioned whether companies were effectively targeting their marketing to maximize ROI, or whether communication was being sent to targets whose demographic did not lend itself to their services or products.

A visual was shown in all elements of the campaign, personalised to the company in question, highlighting five prospects who should not be targeted, and one ‘ideal prospect’ who had visited the relevant website yesterday. The message was that by using Cross Media’s services, this ‘ideal prospect’ would be the only one who would be marketed to, with the inference that ROI would be significantly higher.

The first part of the campaign comprised of a 6pp A5 enveloped brochure, which folded out to reveal the personal campaign image in full, with a call to action on the reverse, detailing a phone number for further information, and details of a PURL. On activation of the PURL, two further click throughs were available, to arrange a meeting, or to express interest in a free data audit. An e-mail alert was sent to the Cross Media Sales team whenever a PURL was opened, with further e-mails sent on activation of a further click through, with further verbal communication taking place once these confirmations were received.

Four days after the despatch of the printed piece, 3 sets of e-mails were sent to non respondents, with intervals of 7 days, following the same theme, but with different subject headers aimed at increasing opening rates.

Overall results of the campaign were as follows:

• 1.7% of PURLS (37) were activated within the first 72 hours of despatch of the brochure.• Opening rates of the first e-mail were 7% (150), with 28% then clicking through to the PURL (42)• Opening rates for the second e-mail were 2.3% (46), with 32% then clicking through to the PURL (15)• Opening rates for the third e-mail were 2.1% (41), with 61% then clicking through to the PURL.

In total, 16 requests for a meeting or data audit were received, with further sales activity generated from a ‘wash up’ verbal communication carried out by the sales team.

“ The Usual Suspects Campaign shows our service offering in

a relatively basic but effective form. By spending time (and

a bit of money) on data, and by deciding exactly who our

target market is, response rates throughout the campaign are

significantly higher than using other communication models.

Results from mailing carried out also show clearly that ROI can

be increase by utilising different media and conversing with

prospective customers on numerous occasions over a period of

time. Our analytics model also store individual responses to the

campaign, so our database is kept up to date and relevant, and

future campaigns can be tweaked accordingly, given historical

results.

Information provided by these campaigns gives our sales team

sufficient detail to contact prospects again, with the confidence

that a close is within their grasp. It certainly works for us, and is

proven to work for our customers”

David Timpson, Director, Cross Media