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• Top 3 Marketing Trends of 2010:

  Dean Batson 12:27 pm on February 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Direct Mail (2), marketing campaigns, ROI, viral marketing

  Marketing campaigns need to adjust to meet the attitude of the audience. In times of economic stress and uncertainty these attitudes tend to be more cynical and value driven. In order to maximize efforts, campaigns must cater to the current climate by following these three trends of 2010

  1.  Knowledge Fire Sale

  A method to promote both new and existing business is to educate your customers…  and do it for free. If you offer customers direct and actionable bits of information, they will become less cynical toward purchasing and treat you as more of a valuable resource of information rather than just a provider of a service or product.

  On the next marketing drive offer valuable, useful and free bits of information. Clients will appreciate, respond and return.

  This style of relationship with your clients will not only give you that respect as a knowledgeable resource, but it will also lessen the focus on price as your company is now more valuable all around.

  2.  Word of Mouth Spreads Viral

  The phrase “people do business with people they know” has been uttered many, many times. It’s time to think of your customer base as hundreds or thousands of salespeople. Don’t just sit and hope they’re going to tell others about your product or service entice them to do it…. Now.

  Become that someone they know by setting up a referral program. This approach satisfies two important needs. It creates a system to reward your customers, by spreading the word, and it generates new leads from a trusted source.

  If the referral setup is simple and the enticement is worthwhile it will go viral.

  3.   Clarity

  In times of abundance, marketing messages often have the freedom to be subtle and clever and depend more upon the repetition afforded by increased media buys and direct mail efforts. Today, less is more.  While most businesses are trying to do more with less and to focus on ROI, marketing messages should shy away from the clever and vague and be the clever and clear.

  Review that direct mail piece and that email message. Is it clear and concise? Can your target audience grasp the message quickly?

  Remember, if your company offers 10 services you do not have to nor should you try and fit all those messages in one campaign.

  Stay Clear. Stay focused. Stay profitable.

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• True or false – You should expect a 1-3% response on your direct mail efforts?

  Dean Batson 12:21 pm on February 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Direct Mail (2), response rate, targeted list (2), targeted marketing (2)

  This is a common percentage thrown around the industry. The fact is that the answer is both true and false.

  The first question in any marketing effort should be: Who am I targeting? If you are sending a direct mail campaign to existing customers with a strong and clear offer you may well expect to receive a much higher response rate than 3%.

  However, if you are marketing to a brand new demographic that has no relationship with your company; you may need to build that relationship before you can see higher return rates.

  Furthermore, that new audience will require a different message than those familiar with your services. This means that your message needs to be tailored to your audience.  With the right message to the right audience, you will increase the response rate.

  The last piece is to track. In order to learn what works and what doesn’t, you will need to incorporate tracking mechanisms. This can be accomplished using special toll free numbers, pURL’s, coupon codes, landing pages and more.

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• It’s Cool and Useful:

  Dean Batson 12:17 pm on February 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: photo postcards, PicCard, postcards, Postino, print and mail, ShootIt, web-to-print

  Traditionally, recording vacation memories follows a path sort of like this: Take pictures during cruise, leave them on your camera for months and finally upload them to your computer where they sit indefinitely.

  Now…. imagine vacationing on a cruise ship, take a picture with your cell phone, add a personalized messaged to the picture, hit the send button and have a real, high quality postcard printed and mailed the next business day. Your vacation adventure is now shared and delivered before you return to port.

  Smart phone users can do just that by combining the picture taking ability of these devices with AmazingMail’s web-to-print engine to create real physical postcards – quickly, easily and inexpensively, from anywhere in the world, 24/7.

  Using mobile applications developed by leading companies (ShootIt, Postino and PicCard), this capability is now available on your mobile device.

  Basically, you snap a picture, add an accompanying message or draw it in some cases (i.e. your signature), enter the recipients address and send. That information is electronically sent to AmazingMail, who prints your high quality postcard and mails it the next business day.

  You get high quality, personalization and quicker delivery for a lower cost… hard to beat that combination.

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• Your Customers Are Hiding in Plain Sight:

  Dean Batson 10:52 am on February 10, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: AmazingProspects, data analysis, targeted list (2), targeted marketing (2)

  After years in business, after 1000’s of customers and after dozens of marketing efforts, many businesses often fall into a rut of repeating the same mistakes and are limited to the same successes.  With new data modeling technology there’s a way to easily stop those mistakes and create new success opportunities.

  Your current customers are hiding a wealth of information and hold the key to new opportunities.

  With services such as AmazingProspects, companies can now accomplish two things that were previously available only to large corporations with in-house statisticians: One, uncover hidden insights about their current customers and receive a revealing data analysis. And, secondly, get an accurate and targeted list of prospects that match all the attributes of your best customer.

  This exciting new service gives all businesses the ability to quickly execute highly-targeted marketing campaigns that will deliver real responses.

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• AmazingMail.com 101 - The How To Guide

  Dean Batson 8:24 am on August 13, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  Before we were all swamped with buzz words and acronyms that flooded our vocabulary, there were actually simple, effective services or products that these buzz words were created from.

  Web to print, multi-channel solutions, integrated solutions and PURL are all solid and useful services that may get lost or diminished because of buzz word over kill. AmazingMail.com (AMI) has a handful of innovative and critical services that suffer this fate.

  So, AmazingMail 101 is born.

  First, we’ll start with the core service that every business and consumer can and should be using: AMI’s Web to print.

  AmazingMail 101 – Web to Print

  Web to print is pretty much how it sounds. Users go online and create a postcard (in a variety of sizes) by uploading their own images and/or logos, add their message, input the recipient(s) and send. The real postcard is sent the next business day… Amazing!

  Here’s how anyone can use this service:

  Home and Family Uses:

  • Someone in your life have an upcoming birthday? Is mother’s day coming up? Or any other special occasion? Go to AmazingMail.com, choose from one of our many cards, add your own message and even images if you want, and then send a real card the very next business day
  • It’s that easy. Plus you save the cost and time from traveling to the store, buying a card, getting stamps and then mailing it out
  • Lessen the stress of wedding planning – choose from 1000’s of images or upload your own, upload your guest list and send out real, high quality cards the next day reminding all to save the date
  • Traveling soon? There are a couple iPhone applications (Postino) that allow you to take a picture with your phone, type a message and send a real postcard that’s in the mail the next day
  • These are only a few of the unlimited uses for our web to print technology

  Business:

  • Send out 1 or 1 million high quality postcards tomorrow to your clients or prospects
  • Create a “thank you” card and after each sale, referral or meeting and send one postcard (yes, just one if you need)  to thank them
  • And, schedule a second reminder postcard to go out in a week or a month

  That’s just a simple overview of one of the amazing products from AmazingMail.com

  Next AmazingMail 101… trigger based marketing

  Dean Batson  |  Marketing Manager  |  http://www.AmazingMail.com

  Office: 480-281-4829  |  Cell: 208-651-0121

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• Seven Tips To Make Postcard Marketing Work For You

  Stephen Barron 11:40 am on July 31, 2009 | 1 Permalink | Reply
  

  So you’ve figured out that direct mail postcards can make an excellent addition to your marketing mix. You’ve learned postcard marketing is affordable, versatile, proven and easy to measure. But you also need to consider that to maximize effectiveness, direct mail postcard campaigns need to be optimized. So to help you ensure you get the most bang from your postcard marketing spend, here’s seven tips that will help you make your campaign work for you.

  (More …)

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    Travis 3:41 pm on August 24, 2009 Permalink
    

    Good tips, well written! Thanks

• Driving Revenue Using Direct Marketing In A Down Economy

  Dean Batson 7:49 am on July 30, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  With marketing budgets being cut and advertising spending limited, economic pressure is forcing everyone to market smarter. “Spray and pray” mailers are no longer delivering the results businesses need, whether you are a large or small-to- medium (SMB) business. Effective business marketing today requires both personalization, and automation.

  In my role as VP Marketing of AmazingMail.com, Inc., I was invited by the Phoenix CEO-CFO Group, at its July 27 luncheon, to address 50 of their C-level members about how new direct marketing tactics and capabilities can drive revenue in a down economy.

  Drawing on advice published and broadcast by other, better-known marketing experts I made the case that the key to effective direct marketing in today’s world boils down to careful targeting and personalized, focused and integrated multi-channel campaigns.

  This is why AmazingMail has made a major investment in developing a new, automated multi-channel marketing platform called AmazingCampaigns that delivers trigger-based, text-to-print, text-to-mobile, digital direct mail, email and personalized Web page (PURL) campaigns.

  (More …)

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• How Better Targeting Can Turn “JUNK MAIL” Into a Sale

  Dean Batson 4:01 pm on July 21, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  Sure, everyone has an opinion about “Junk mail”, and most of them are negative. However, most consumers don’t understand the intention of companies that advertise their services via this channel. So, before passing judgment, it might help to review the facts.

  First and foremost, no company that advertises direct to the consumer has any desire to send a direct mail piece that is of no interest to the recipient. There’s a significant cost to each mail piece and if it’s directed to the wrong demographic that has no affinity or interest in the offer, it becomes wasted money.

  Second, most consumers don’t realize that our entire US Postal Service is funded in large part through the revenues produced by standard class mail. It’s a fact that the direct mail you receive ensures the delivery of your personal mail on a daily basis.

  So how do we reconcile this dilemma? It’s obvious that we need to get better at targeting the right offer to the right person at the right time. Let’s start with the basics. My first name (Chris) is ambiguous, so it could be male or a female. If I received an offer for a craft magazine, I’d dump it straight into the circular file. However, if I received a golf magazine offer (or any other golf-related offer for that matter), I’d open it immediately given my addiction to the game.

  (More …)

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• Postcard marketing offers 100%-plus margins for iPhone, BlackBerry, smartphone developers

  Dean Batson 5:06 pm on July 8, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  By Nathan Rudyk

  “Thinking of you” has gotten a whole lot easier and fun for iPhone users with PicCard and Postino apps. PicCard and Postino let anyone send an in-the-moment postcard to anyone in the world with a few clicks on iPhone. And now AmazingMail has announced it’s opening up its Web-to-print platform to the imaginations of smartphone developers worldwide.

  

  Postino smartphone app driven by AmazingMail Web-to-print engine

  AmazingMail’s CEO Chris Lynde stated in a press release today that “Postino and PicCard are fabulous examples of how developers can generate margins of 100% or more with our Web-to-print engine.

  We’ve already seen both of these apps evolve their feature sets in a matter of weeks based on iPhone user feedback. We’re also excited to talk to other developers from the iPhone, BlackBerry and other smartphone communities about how they can use our patented batch processing and limitless digital print capability to build new, exciting direct marketing applications for industry verticals.

  Real estate, automotive, financial and high-end retail markets have proven highly receptive to tactile, timely and personal communication that can quickly turn a prospect into a customer.”

  Key features of AmazingMail’s Web-to-print service include:

  · Print and mail the next business day
  · Super high quality card printing
  · Automatically standardize recipient addresses for maximum deliverability
  · Mail internationally via any mail service in the world
  · Environmentally-friendly mailing options
  · Enormous flexibility in personalizing text and images for each recipient
  · Easy-to-use HTTP submission method
  · Automated emails to the calling platform on mailing status for tracking updates

  Developers interested in engaging with AmazingMail.com’s Web-to-print capability can find out more by contacting Gene Scholes, the company’s Director of Interactive Marketing, at (480) 281-4836.

  (Nathan Rudyk is CEO of market2world communications inc., a tech PR and product launch company, and works with AmazingMail.com, Inc.)

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• Direct mail is the new email

  Dean Batson 5:05 pm on July 8, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  

  Guest Post By Dennis Yu

  People send emails because they are effortless and cheap. And plentiful as they are, people still buy cards to say “Happy Birthday” or “I love you” in some other way. When was the last time that you got a physical piece of mail from a friend? I’ll bet that it was a surprise, the same way that long distance phone calls were 20 year ago – “Hurry up! It’s long distance,” your friend would say, enough to bring you running from across the house.

  Consumers and businesses can bring back that moment. Because AmazingMail allows you to send personalized postcards in a snap – just load an image, write the message and select the recipients from your address book. What you can do with email is now possible with postcards:

  - Doctors can remind patients that it’s time for a check-up.
  - Forgetful husbands can look great in sending automated anniversary reminders
  - Mom can send family members pictures of her latest trip with a single click
  - A non-profit can alert members to a charity fundraiser coming up
  - And the list goes on…

  Have you tried out AmazingMail to get your 10 free postcards this month, just for trying out the service?

  (Dennis Yu is an internet marketer, CEO and co-founder with BlitzLocal.com)

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