Social Versus Print: Why These Two are Friends – Not Enemies

Social versus print. If you have read the news in recent years, these two platforms are often pitted against one another and media outlets suggest we should place our bets on one or the other.

Print is the classic, trustworthy marketing medium we have always known and that we are already used to. Social is the cool new guy in town; mysterious and with capabilities brand new to the world.

But do we really have to see social and print in binary opposition? Do we have to place our bets on one or the other?

No, we don’t – and we shouldn’t. The most prudent realization is that both are integral and critical platforms in marketing.

Just three months ago, we published a blog on Integrating Digital with Direct Mail. We made numerous suggestions as to how brands can integrate digital marketing plans into their direct mail.

We also came across this article detailing Twitter’s latest move in social marketing: “Twitter is in the process of testing a new advertising functionality through Twitter Cards. If successful, this may give direct marketers a process to generate leads directly from tweets.”

This functionality is great for advertisers since advertisers will be able to deliver their message directly to people, and will get feedback directly. Can this be directly integrated with direct marketing? Yes, and this is only one example.

As time moves forward, so does the progress in social and print marketing efforts and emerging avenues for integrating the two. While many already understand and fully utilize available resources for social media and print marketing plans, many still see social and print as enemies, a sort of “good and evil” where one will eventually vanquish the other.

Whoever is most successful today and tomorrow is the person who sees social and print as complementary efforts.

Having a strong, persistent social presence is no longer an option for brands – it’s a mandatory means for success and survival. Social media leverages a powerful concept - word-of-mouth viral communication – to increase sales, strengthen customer relationships, and keep your business top-of-mind as the “go-to” source for your product or service.

At Tray, we can make you social and grow your brand. We represent a wide array of print equipment and service options, combined with the skill and flexibility to help you communicate your brand in the most attractive, efficient way possible.

From social to print, we are going to take you places. Contact us to get started today.

The Tray Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.trayinc.com

Start Today: Tracking Your Print Marketing ROI

Do you know where your print marketing money is going or which of your print marketing plans has been most successful?

It is not uncommon that we meet people who believe keeping track of print marketing ROI is impossible or at least very difficult. Keeping track of ROI is not only important to know which plan has been most successful in the past, but also because advertising budgets are shrinking across the nation.

Before you can track ROI on printed marketing materials, establish the sought after response and include a call to action on all your brochures, flyers, and other promotional material that allows you to measure the response the material is designed to generate.

Popular and successful strategies to track the source of sales and leads include voucher or coupon codes tied to special offers and allocated to different print media and contact channels, customized website landing pages, and QR codes.

What’s the strategy?

Track the ROI of all print materials and see which campaigns are profitable and which are not. 

When the time comes to reorder, keep the best performing offer, use that as a control, and make changes to under-performing materials using a new code.

Replace campaigns which don’t perform as well as the control, making one or two small changes and unique codes for each variant. At the end of the new campaign, if the control still outperforms it, you make more changes and try again. If the campaign outperforms the control, it becomes the new control and you keep that campaign and run another alongside it to try and improve response rates and ROI further.

Here are some ways to do that:

Postal order forms
Tracking the source of orders or leads from postal order forms is relatively easy, as you can include a tracking code on the form itself.

Phone orders and inquiries
By allocating voucher or discount codes to each brochure, flyer or leaflet, identify which items are generating results and calculate the value of each before ordering reprints. Also, train customer service and sales staff to ask where customers who don’t provide a code heard about the company, and track these.

Website responses
Track website responses through the use of personalized landing pages (PURLs) including codes customized for each customer. This ensures their exposure to your offer remains constant between printed and electronic media (using the same look and feel, the same headings and call to action, etc.) and reduces consumer confusion, thereby increasing conversion rates.

You can also use analytics packages such as Google’s analytics to track which pages customers view before ordering or abandoning an order, and use this information to reduce leakage and increase ROI.

Using response codes
Use QR codes or discount coupons and vouchers to track responses. Ideally, include a text code in the URL for your website that matches the discount or offer code collected by phone staff, and include a QR code for those who want to use them.

Response codes that aren’t tied to a special offer give the consumer no incentive to share the code with you, so always add value to the code in some way; whether it’s a discount, a free bonus, or extra product to encourage customers to use the code.

If you hand materials out at trade shows, use location specific codes so you can see which regions are more responsive to which offers.

Action without a plan is rarely successful. Know where your print marketing money is going.

The Tray Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.trayinc.com

Direct Marketing with a Small Budget

At Tray, we serve non-profits, national brands, sports teams, and universities. In general, any organization with a need to deliver their marketing message in print or electronically, in B2B or B2C environments, can take advantage of all Tray has to offer.

But what about an organization with a small marketing budget? You may end up feeling like you’re playing a game without a full team on the field.

A small marketing budget can seem like a major hindrance to a successful marketing campaign. As you are already probably aware, direct marketing is ideal because it can be targeted, is trackable, and you can see exactly what ROI you generate for your business.

So where do we go from here? First, establish your budget and consider the following questions:

1. How many mailers am I sending?
2. Will I need to rent a mailing list? How much will that cost?
3. What is the optimal size and format for the mailing? What postage will it require?
4. Should I outsource my creative, printing and mailing tasks? What’s the cost of doing so?
5. What quality of materials do I want to use? Will I be using custom photography or stock images?
6. What kind of testing will I run?
7. Will I include a special offer? What costs will be associated?
8. Will I need to hire help to handle responses from the campaign?
9.  What are the costs of other media I may use to complement my direct mail efforts?

If you have a tight deadline or a limited marketing budget that is ok. Our highly skilled staff has decades of experience helping customers complete their most challenging projects on budget and on time.

Whether you have complete answers to the above questions or still need some figuring out to do, contact us today. We can help you strategize and mobilize a successful direct marketing campaign so you can feel like you’re playing with a full team.

The Tray Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.trayinc.com