Recently, I sat down with Lois Brayfield, CEO of J.Schmid, to chat about challenges and opportunities around brand position across channels. During this conversation, she mentioned the phrase, “Print is the New Digital Champion” and how they are using this in their client conversations. That discussion and Brent Niemuth’s video resonated with me so much that I asked to use it for this article. (She said YES by the way!)
Digital overload is perhaps the biggest challenge facing modern retailers along with combating an ever-shrinking consumer attention span. It would be simple to view this as a contemporary technology battle. The truth is, we aren’t so much as competing against technology and diminishing attention spans as we are against brands using technology better than we are!
Since print is part of the technology discussion, I’ll say it like this: #printisthenewdigitalchampion.
So, How Do You Get Your Customer’s Attention?
In the age of fake news, online bots and trolls, print can garner trust, authority, and credibility that sometimes plagues digital marketing. Print also engages the ever-increasing importances of haptics that marketers are returning to in droves. As crucial of a role that digital marketing plays, haptics is one experience that the digital experience cannot provide. (What is haptics, you ask? Check out this video by Sappi) However, by marrying the sophistication of digital with the power of print, we create essential opportunities for brands to deliver targeted, 1:1 communications through lucrative postal retargeting.
Print and digital are complementary channels, and each has its strengths. There are many “push and pull” campaigns that drive the top of the funnel, as indicated in this chart. As visitors move down the funnel and drop off, traditional digital channels attempt to re-engage customers utilizing traditional re-engagement digital tools. It’s at this point that postal retargeting becomes a critical, secondary re-engagement tool to augment digital efforts as they potentially get lost in the digital noise.
Use Digital Behavior and Retarget with Print
Since nearly 96% of web visitors fail to make a purchase, marketers need to be strategic and tactical around efforts to re-engage a web visitor. As an example, let’s take retargeting. To unlock incremental revenue opportunities, brands should consider using modeled digital browse behavior to deploy dynamically-printed, high-quality postcards. The content and messaging on these postcards are specific to individuals with relevant content and messaging. It’s impressive how it’s kept customers and prospects engaged!
At CohereOne, we see extraordinary responses to postal retargeting programs using NaviStone and LS Direct’s Boomerang program. In comparing several of our recent results versus traditional digital targeting, one can immediately see the astonishing contribution difference between the programs. While it costs around 58% more to market via mail, at an average contribution order basis, the postcard retargeting program outperformed digital by 2X. On average, digital retargeting contributed $27 per order, whereas postal retargeting contributed $47 per order. Now you know why we believe, “PRINT IS THE NEW DIGITAL CHAMPION!”
The power of digital behavior combined with print communication is worth evaluating with regard to where your remarketing dollars should be applied. With so much focus and bandwidth used to keep digital channels optimized and operational, marketers are failing to innovate around the new power and opportunities of print. If you are working in a siloed organization, it’s essential to encourage greater cross-functional collaboration. Brands win as they shift focus from channel view to the health of the brand and orchestrating a better customer experience.
Believing in the power of print, creating quality print postcards, and sharing with your customers and prospects is a huge opportunity. The results say so. The experts say so. Moreover, now, retailers say so, too.
The time for talk is over. Let’s do something. I would be happy to discuss your programs, just email me at mhouston@cohereone.com