Personalized Direct Mail Marketing

Also called digital printing

Personalized Direct Mail

Personalized Direct Mail, also called digital printing, can really raise your response rate for your mailer. Here you'll learn ways to personalize your mailings, how to find a digital printer, and what questions you need to ask in order to get the job done right.

We're starting the conversation. Give advice about personalized direct mail (the industry calls this different things, including digital printing). And read what other people say by using the tabs on this page. The MarketingZone Editors will use this input to continuously update and improve this article.

With the introduction of innovative new technology and digital presses, commercial printers can now cost-effectively offer offset quality print jobs for small print runs. So instead of printing thousands of direct mail pieces, a small business or non-profit organization can print smaller quantities and test different creative approaches. The technology also allows marketers to customize “batches" of direct mail for different groups of people or even personalize individual direct mail pieces.

Marketers using personalized printing claim response rates from 5% to as high as 50% for very targeted business-to-business offers. There is a lot more work involved to set up these customized direct mail programs and the cost per printed piece is higher, so you'll want calculate if this is a worthwhile approach as a way to increase your response rates.

From our experience: Personalized direct mail printing mirrors what effective sales people do. They tailor their message to the different people versus "blasting" the same message/offer to everyone.

Examples of how companies use personalized direct mail

Read the tabs above for more advice and examples from the MarketingZone community
Customizing 3-5 different elements of the direct mail to be most relevant to different groups of customers
- For instance, a college asked prospective students some basic information online (what majors they were interested, what they liked to do in their free time) and then customized the follow-up direct mail brochure to include information only about what they were interested in. Students interested in liberal arts major who liked sports received a different brochure than other students who were considering a business major and liked music/the arts.

Creating different versions of your direct mail
- For instance, you may want to send different direct mail messages and offers to existing customers, your best customers, customers who haven't done business with you for a while, prospective customers, new move-ins or new businesses in your area. Digital printing allows you to do this.

Personalizing each direct mail piece
- An effective technique is to customize different elements of the direct mail so it will be most relevant to the respondent based on what you know about them and adding a pURL (personal URL website address) to direct the individual to a website “just for them.” This is a very effective approach for high-priced products or services with a longer sales cycle like for cars, high-end travel, financial services, universities, manufacturing equipment, and professional services for businesses.
- Learn more about personalized URLs (website addresses): pURLs

With digital printing you can

Address a mailing to a specific individual and incorporate their name throughout the direct mail piece

Print a unique pURL, personalized URL on each direct mail
- The pURLs generally use the same visuals and copy from the direct mail piece the customer received and include the offer information the customer received.
- pURLs allow the marketer and their sales teams to track specifically who responded, when, to what offers, and it makes the customers, or prospective customers, feel very "special."
- A commercial printer that specializes in digital printing can set up these personalized web sites for you.

TIP: You may want to experiment with personalized printing to see how much it increases your response rates by creating a mailer using a template that you can ,and changing the mailer to personalize elements and printing the mailers on your office printer. It won't look nearly as professional as the print quality from a digital press, but it will give you an inexpensive way to test if this works and to learn what you can change to personalize your direct mail.

Who can help you with digital printing?

Know this: Many commercial and most online printers have not invested in the digital press equipment to be able to offer personalized printing. Personalized direct mail (digital printing) requires both expertise in computers to integrate the customer files and graphic files along with understanding how to operate this new press equipment. You want to find a commercial printer with as much expertise in this as possible to take advantage of their experience.

Check MarketingZone's find experts to hire. Look for commercial printers who have indicated they have experience in personalized/digital printing. Then look at what advice they've given and look to see examples of the personalized printing they've done.

PODI is an industry group of commercial printers who have digital press equipment. They have a "find a service provider" listing tool. What's helpful about their tool is you can look to see how many digital presses a printer has. From our experience, if a printer has several digital presses, they will have more expertise and people who know about digital printing versus a commercial printer who has just one digital press.

Another resource is The Direct Marketing Association’s vendor search tool for digital printing services
- This is like a online listing with no information other than the company's name and contact information. Check references!

Next page: what to ask a digital printer

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