Loud & Clear Call to Action

Wondering why you may not be getting the ROI you anticipated from your latest campaign? As you can imagine, we at BPI Media Group see a wide variety of campaigns and direct mailers. While many of these pieces are aesthetically phenomenal, many are missing a key component: a clear call to action.

A lack luster call to action can leave your ROI falling flat, so avoid this common mistake by giving your customers and prospects more than one way to respond. Don't bury your phone number or website in tiny print at the bottom, instead make it very clear how one can get in touch with you or find you online (website and social media outlets). The best way to make your call to action clear, is for all of your communications pieces to be engaging. Another suggestion is to use multiple channels to reach your customers, each with multiple ways to respond. Sometimes, we all get so set in our ways that we forget to break out of the rut and do something different! Don't be afraid to try something different--especially if what you've been doing isn't yielding the results you want and need.

Here are a few reminders of ways to enhance your call to action:/

• Pair direct mail with email marketing campaigns.
• Include personalization with variable data (a simple way to lift response rates).
• Offer an incentive such as a coupon or reward in exchange for their inquiry or purchase.
• Make the offer relevant.
• Allow customers and prospects to respond online (it's so much easier!).
• Try using a sms text message campaign.
• Drive responders to a PURL (aka, personalized landing page) where you can gather useful information and follow up.
• Provide a QR code for those tech-savvy responders and when it's appropriate for the audience.

While there's no sure-fire way to guarantee a 100% response rate, mixing up your communications with integrated campaigns, 1:1 marketing messages and a variety of channels and ways to respond will offer you more opportunities for your target audience to answer the call to action. Just make sure that CTA (call to action) is loud and clear.

If you'd like to learn more about ways to improve your call to action, these are some great reads:

• 12 Ways to Strengthen Your Call to Action
• Ballantine Corporation Explains How To Enhance the Power of Direct Mail
• Not-for-Profits Raise Response Rates With More Relevant Solicitations

Until next time...Elizabeth

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Why Not Text It?

One of the things I love most about my job is that no two days are ever the same. Projects change on a daily basis, deadlines are always always staring you in the face and technology is constantly offering a new way to communicate with customers and prospects.

While most people ask me if I'm afraid print will eventually go away, I can confidently say "No, this is not a concern for me or BPI Media Group." Why? Because we have embraced the technology and married it to our print capabilities to offer more ways you can reach out and have better, more meaningful conversations with customers and prospects. Just this morning, I met with a sports marketing professional who was looking for ways to boost attendance at events and engage the fans before, during and after events. My suggestion? Try introducing a text message campaign. It can be as short as a winner will be announced in the last inning, quarter, period, etc of the game or it can last a week, month or quarter depending on your plan. These type of campaigns can be great for give aways which help promote brand awareness and loyalty through promotional items. The key is that a sms text message campaign requires an immediate call to action with almost immediate response.

Click here to view a short video explaining a little more how a text campaign can work, how you can use it to gather leads and follow up with them via other messaging (email, direct mail, text, and don't forget the ancient technology called the telephone!).

Until next time...Elizabeth

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Keep Your Eye on the Prize

What exactly is the prize? The customer or prospect to gain, retain, persuade or thank, that's who is the prize. We each have these prizes in our scopes on a daily basis (I know I sure do!), so how do you keep the focus on them and market to them in the way that will be most rewarding? We at BPI Media Group have a few tips on how to stay focused on the customer and learn which channels they use and which ones are used for various things.

So, you know your customers are on facebook, twitter, shop online and have email accounts and mailboxes. How do you know which messages or offers to send through which channels? Here's a short list of 5 ways to help with this marketer's pain point and keep your eyes on the prize(s) of customers and making them happy and engaged customers.

1. Do your homework. You've got to research to find out who is your target or idea customer. You can do this by creating a customer profile and then break that down into segments. Doing so provides valuable insight into how to reach them and what types of messages and offers work best for each segment. For example, when I'm calling on prospective customers, I break them into vertical markets (manufacturers, education, banking, service, etc). This helps me know what has worked well in the past for reaching out to customers who are in these vertical markets. BPI's data mining services can be a real asset in lead generation and conversion once you've identified your ideal customer.

2. Customize your strategy. Of course you wouldn't want to send out mass mailers to all customers and hope for the best, so you come up with a marketing strategy that involves several channels using the channel for each message and prospect that seems best based on your homework. Carefully consider which channel is best for the segments of prospects and which digital printing method would best fit. Segmentation and personalizing your messages are key to keep the communication strong with your customers and prospects. Click here for some of the benefits of personalized print and how relevant and engaging messaging can help boost your ROI.

3. Break the mold. Don't just do what's comfortable and what has always been done. Sometimes it is a good thing to change up your messaging as well as the channels in which they are delivered. When you review your customers buying patterns, you'll most likely be able to tie the actions to some sort of message or offer. When did mail work best? Email? Social media? Landing pages? By reviewing customer history, you learn more than just how many orders were placed in a time frame, this info can serve as a valuable tool in planning your marketing.

4. Shhh...and Listen to the data. Were the responses to your messaging and channels in which they were delivered well received, opened, responded to? If the answer is yes, then do more of the same to that segment; if the answer is no, are there similar segments who responded better to direct mail or email messaging? With BPI's integrated marketing campaigns, you can alter your messaging on the fly. Need to change the art because it's just not working? No problem. Need to add an email blast to accompany the direct mailer? No problem. That's one of the biggest benefits of digital printing with BPI.

5. Measure! This last step is just as crucial as any of the previous four steps, if not even more so. By tracking what works, you can keep up with the evolving way your messages need to go out and to whom. Since there's no one sure-fire way to reach ALL customers and prospects, we have to mix it up and measure what works best and alter the plan from time to time. Tracking the ROI for each campaign and its channels are key in knowing not only how, but when to deliver your messages and offers. BPI's online dashboard even has a built-in ROI calculator. I'd be glad to show you how this works!

Using these steps can help in creating your content, timing, frequency, channel, etc. of your marketing messages. Please give me a call or leave a message here if you would like to know more about how BPI Media Group can help utilize our solutions to yield a better ROI for your company. To read more on 5 Ways to Focus on the Customer, click here.

Until next time...Elizabeth

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While travelling home for Thanksgiving to visit family, it is so easy to get caught up in the holiday hustle. Instead, I am trying to reflect on this past year and ways to improve both personally and professionally. I am a firm believer that if you grow in one area, you will prosper in both. Key point: prosperity doesn't just happen; it takes planning and hard work.

So, this week, I am going to share some tips I have found that help me in sales and in life in general. While this blog is typically speaking to the marketer, this week, we'll shift focus to our partners in crime: the sales team. If you have some tips to share, please pass them along! I am a firm believer that we should learn from one another because chances are, someone else has faced the same challenges you're facing and overcome them! Whether that challenge is a tough sales call, closing a deal, meeting deadlines or struggling to reach the top of the hill when you're 10 miles into a half marathon, the same principles apply. BPI Media Group is committed to helping you reach those goals with your company as our partner!

As a sales person who is also a runner, I tend to approach sales like training for a race. The road work training is difficult, but the more miles you log, the better prepared for the race you'll be on the big day. The more sales calls made in a day or week, the easier it is to cold call and the percentage of accounts you'll land goes up with each call made. For those of you who are fellow runners or, like my boss, Alan Davis, President of BPI Media Group, you know when training for a race that you have goals each week of how many miles you'll log. It doesn't matter if it's cold, raining or 100 degrees, you'll find a way to reach those goals each week. Why? Because NOT reaching that goal is NOT an option! We can apply the same principle to our sales for ourselves and for our companies that we each represent.

In planning for 2012, here are some things that will help me stay on track and put together an achievable goal that I can confidently work toward and be proud once the year-end goal is reached. Consider BPI as your partner for the long run because who you partner with in training makes all the difference in how you reach your goals.

Tip 1: Map My Run. Anytime I'd go out for a longer run, I would use this handy online tool to plot out a course. The key in this is that you have to identify how far you want to go & what exactly you're wanting to achieve. When planning the direction of your company or your sales tactics, consider it the same way. Map out a plan of action to help you achieve the end result. BPI's sales team along with our creative department can help you plan out a way to reach your goals in a way that both cost and time efficient. Planning out an online storefront is a great way to do this. This maps out how the sales team (and other staff members) can order collateral and s.w.a.g. to assist them in their daily tasks of boosting sales for the company. Or consider, mapping out a direct mail campaign with staggered drops of mail and email messaging--a sure way to boost ROI!

Tip 2: Persevere, Train and Regroup. When you start out on course you've mapped out, you know quickly that it takes a great deal of diligence to persevere and not give up. This is the case when you've called 5 prospects in a row and either gotten screened or sent to voice mail all 5 times. Sure, it'd be easy to turn around and give up, but perseverance and training will only make you better and stronger. With each task you mark off your list, each contact you make, the better you get and the closer you are to reaching that goal. Preparing the sales team for how to handle the leads they'll be fed to keep the sales funnel full requires a team effort. This is where sales and marketing have to team up to generate leads, nurture those leads and convert them into long-term customers. BPI's online campaign dashboard is a great way to manage a campaign--whether it's using a purl, curl (personalized or campaign url), SMS text messaging, email marketing or QR code implementation, you can see how each piece of the campaign is working. If the course isn't going well, it's time to regroup. Modify your plan of attack and map an alternate route. Our cross-media campaigns allow for on-the-fly changes. That's the beauty of digital printing too!

Tip 3: Log Efforts and Results. After any run, write down or record your time, pace, energy level, etc. Some folks keep a journal; some folks use online tools through their iPod synced a gps device. Either way, measuring your results is key to knowing if you're getting closer to your goal. Same goes for your marketing campaign. How do you know if it's working for your company and your sales team? With the help of our online campaign dashboard, you can access campaign info in real time. This allows you to see your ROI as the campaign progresses. There's even a ROI calculator to help you stay on track and document the results.

Tip 4: Reap the Rewards. When you're on the last mile, that last stretch before the finish line, the feeling of accomplishment is within reach. Then, when you take that last step across the finish line and receive your finisher's medal, there's no denying a great sense of pride. The same holds true for landing a new account. After numerous calls, possibly even mail drops of a targeted campaign and then a few meetings to hammer out the details of the deal, once that "hand shake" to seal the deal is made or the contract is signed, you can report to your boss the good news that you won!

After going through the training process a few times for a big race or for a big meeting, you learn a little each time, accumulating an arsenal of tools to get a little better each time. I'd really like to hear how you plan your campaigns, track your results and celebrate a victory. Even better, I welcome the opportunity for BPI to be a part of your team in training for the next challenge your company faces: boosting sales in 2012!

Happy running and good sales all around. Until next time...Elizabeth

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Coming to a City Near You!!! We Deliver.

You all know that I am here, there and everywhere in the Southeast these days, so you're not surprised when you call and hear me say "I'm on the road today." Being on the road is part of my job, and I don't mind it one bit (although the place who cleans up my vehicle probably does mind becuase of the insane amount of french fries under my seat!).

(That's really not my car, but it very well could be!)

In travelling, even after several years, I still get excited to see our very own delivery truck on the road and wave frantically at our drivers. To keep with our updated brand of BPI Media Group (formerly Boaz Printing), we had our delivery truck wrapped with our new logo. Look for this delivery truck in your area, or better yet, on your dock unloading your printed pieces. Our delivery guys don't get enough credit for the long hours, many miles and hard work they put in, so here's a huge THANK YOU to them for all they do for BPI.

In terms of delivery, I've put together a few ideas on how BPI can help you deliver your message.

• 1. Mail: We can help get your catalog or direct mailer into the mailboxes of your customers/prospects. By partnering with BPI to handle your mailings, you can take advantage of discounted postage rates because of barcoding through automation. (What does that mean? It means we run your mail list through software that sorts it by zip code, applies a barcode and addresses them in that manner to make it quick & easy for the postal system which results in a lower postage rate for you.) We can also do list purchases, data cleansing and data management.
• 2. Fulfillment: Our distribution department can handle a wide variety of pick and pack orders (in all shapes & sizes) to ship to your customers or prospects. We ship everything from printed material to beanie babies to caps & t-shirts. Our warehouse can hold these materials and save you a bundle in storage costs as well as on shipping and distribution.
• 3. Email: BPI's email campaign solution offers a way to pair your printed message with an email message. By complementing print with online messaging via email, you'll boost your response rates and ROI.
• 4. Web: One of the biggest ways you can deliver your message to your target audience is through your website. Are you using your website as your vehicle of choice (i.e., a Cadillac) to reach customers and prospects? Or, is your website a pinto that you don't promote because it needs that face lift you've been putting off a little too long? Don't fret! BPI is offering a website review for $175. This review & analysis is done by our resident web guru, and then we'll sugest improvements (if necessary) and provide a quote. If you want to upgrade your pinto to the Cadillac of websites, we'd love to help you make your website the most useful method of delivery for you.
• 5. Socially: Tweeting and sharing relevant info via facebook or LinkedIn are excellent ways to drive your message to the masses. Word of advice: make it timely, short and sweet! With social messages changing every 5 seconds, your message has got to get noticed to deliver the punch you desire. Don't have a social media whiz on your staff? No problem. We can help put a plan together to help you get started and cruise through the madness of the social media craze.

Regardless if your budget is more like a Prius than a Lexus, we can help you deliver the message in an efficient way. Let BPI help you plan for ways to reach your customers and prospects. I'd love to chat with you about ways BPI's solutions can be used to drive the sales through the roof!

Until next time...Elizabeth