Personalized Marketing Programs for Customer Acquisition and Retention

Now more than ever, consumers live in a highly customizable society, often without even realizing it. Shopping apps and websites use browsing history to control what content is fed to consumers consistently and it works. 90% of consumers 18-64 find personalization appealing (Epsilon), and 86% of consumers say personalized marketing leads to a buying decision (Infosys). Many brands and corporations find it easy to personalize online, but how do you translate that to customers’ mailboxes, and should you?

The short answer is yes, money spent marketing to your customer base, whoever they are, should be personalized whenever possible and it’s not as difficult as many think. Having worked with leading national brands of all shapes and sizes, our team has had the opportunity to personalize millions of pieces of mail. We have an ongoing program with a national retail/pharmacy company where we customize each postcard in one run (printed all together at the same time!) with the customer’s local store address with a map, store or pharmacy hours, coupons based on purchase history or preferred promotions, requested delivery date for their Postmaster, and the best part? It is all in their preferred language! Customers often do not realize all of these little touches, but it’s far more cost-effective for the company to have it all printed at once, they do not waste money printing coupons that are less likely to be used by that customer, and they ensure consistency in foot traffic with a program that runs consistently.

It’s not just retail and pharmacy chains that can take advantage of personalized postcards or marketing pieces either. Infosys found that at least half of consumers are highly in favor of personalization in several sectors including grocery, entertainment, health and beauty, clothing/apparel, pharmaceuticals/prescriptions, and furniture, home improvement DIY (do-it-yourself), and gardening.

Any type of mail piece or packaging can be customized. From postcards to letters, envelopes, fulfilled kits, stickers, and more, the sky is the limit. The same goes for what you can personalize, and you do not need to have data on your target customers to do it. Without customer data, you can personalize:

• Location (Maps, directions, distance from their home, photo of the local store, school names, sports teams, landmarks, and more)
• Name (Recipient’s name, local manager, store owner, or agent)
• Phone number (different phone numbers for language, location, etc)
• Language (marketing can be translated into any language)
• Promotions (based on the local target market, weather, local vendors)
• …and more!

When you do have data about your customers, you can take it one step further and customize:

• Preferences (brands they tend to purchase, favorite food(s))
• Recommendations (based on past purchases)
• Birthday or anniversary promotions, celebrations, or coupons
• Loyalty rewards
• Reminders (services due, annual purchases)
• …and so much more depending on what you can collect!

At Kirkwood Direct, this is the type of work that gets us excited and we love to sit down (virtually or safely distanced in our office!) and brainstorm with our clients on their personalized marketing (often referred to as Variable Data Printing or VDP) programs to increase their revenue and retain loyal customers.

For any questions and to start your marketing campaign with Kirkwood Direct, please call us today at 978-642-0300.