Precision Marketing

What is Precision Marketing?
Precision Marketing combines personalized marketing messages with must-read statements, invoices, and other documents to help you accomplish two important, measurable results: increased revenue and retained customers.

How does it work?
With Precision Marketing, you can turn each step of your integrated marketing campaigns into an opportunity to strengthen and grow customer relationships. Instead of plain statements and messages, you can create personalized, customer-centric communications that can help you:

• Strengthen brand image and create competitive distinction
• Improve bill clarity and reduce call center traffic
• Use special offers to up-sell, cross sell, and drive business results
• Generate revenue by selling advertising space
• Use personal messaging to build brand loyalty
• Strengthen and expand multi-channel marketing

Precision Marketing Features & Benefits

Precision Marketing Technology

Precision Marketing FAQ

Q. What is Precision Marketing?

A. Precision Marketing is a form of business-to-consumer direct marketing that leverages the power of personalization (one-to-one marketing) on transactional documents. The name comes from the combination of "transactional" and "promotional." Personalized messages and offers are added to the documents, which are customer communications such as statements, invoices, policy notifications, hotel guest documents and product delivery documents. Precision Marketing can be implemented throughout an enterprise – essentially anywhere there’s a customer touch point – and integrated into existing channels such as e-mail, Web, telesales and customer service to complement multi-channel marketing campaigns. Above all, Precision Marketing is a shift in perception – transactional documents as a source of substantial value-add versus a cost of doing business.

Q. What are some of the benefits that companies are seeing with Precision Marketing?

A. Results from Precision Marketing vary. Different companies want to accomplish different things, such as increasing revenue, improving customer retention rates, or reducing cost. It’s important to assess your opportunities by identifying current customer communications, data mining capabilities, and potential offers and messaging. We recommend that companies start small and build the program over time, like you’ve probably done with other direct marketing programs. Here are the top opportunities we’ve identified as a result of our work with Precision Marketing:

• Turn a cost center into a profit center – for example, personalized marketing utilizes onserts versus inserts to save weight and postage and white space can be sold as an additional revenue stream
• Increase revenue through customer spending when they respond to offers that cross-sell or up-sell services and products
• Support loyalty programs
• Reduce costs related to inserts, postage, preprinted forms, handling and call centers that handle customer inquiries
• Increase customer touch points and selling opportunities via multi-channel marketing (leverage Precision Marketing across e-mail, mail, Web and customer service, for example).
• Reduce accounts receivable cycle

Of course, the more you personalize communications and expand customer touch points, especially across multiple channels, the more you reinforce your brand and maintain competitive differentiation.

Q. Why does Precision Marketing work?

A. Timing is everything. Marketers are looking for a simpler, more cost-effective way to increase revenue and retain customers, especially in view of recent postal increases, and the documents affected by Precision Marketing are generally already being produced. Precision Marketing affects content and appearance. In addition, consumers appreciate personalized communications, prefer to receive sensitive information in paper form, and expect loyalty programs in which they can participate. More important, consumers open transactional documents and read them. Studies also show that when you combine personalization and color, you can increase results significantly. Last but not least, it’s far less expensive to market to customers, a captive audience, than it is to attract and win new customers. For more information, including research and statistics, read our Precision Marketing white paper.

Q. What are some examples of Precision Marketing?

A. A mortgage company can identify a subset of customers whose loans are within six months of a rate change and present a refinancing offer on the monthly statement. A credit card company can identify a subset of customers who stay frequently at a particular hotel chain, sell white space to the hotel company, which places an ad or coupon on the statement. At check-in, a hotel reservation agent can present a guest with a key folder that is personalized with loyalty points and a coupon for hotel services. A retailer can include a personalized e-mail offer that sends the customer to a personalized Web page. Alternatively, the consumer can place an order by telephone with a customer service representative. Either way, when the product ships, the retailer can insert in the box a personalized delivery slip that contains another message such as "thank you for the order" and another offer. There are many opportunities to apply Precision Marketing; it’s very important to approach Precision Marketing as a direct marketing tactic….try, test and measure.

Q. What do I need to start implementing Precision Marketing?

A. Pick one transactional document and a single offer that is easy to track and design a pilot or small project. You’ll need to be able to do simple data mining to come up with a targeted customer list, and you’ll need a composition tool to design the document. If you don’t have the composition and/or printing capabilities in house, you can outsource the project to a service bureau. You’ll also want to have a database to capture results and a tool that helps you analyze and model results. We recommend outsourcing to start, whether your project is color or monochrome. Find a service bureau or contact us. We have a Precision Marketing production center in which we run pilots and tests for customers.

Q. Are there privacy issues with the use of customer data?

A. The integration of marketing messages on regulatory documents is legal. Whether you produce Precision Marketing documents in house or with the help of a service bureau, you want to be sure that your company or your service bureau can comply with the relevant regulatory agencies’ data privacy and security requirements. We also recommend that you have a data privacy policy available for customers.

Q. If we want to produce Precision Marketing in house, what are some of the issues we should consider?

A. We recommend that Precision Marketing be a cross-functional, collaborative effort because it involves IT, production printing and marketing. It’s important to discuss the concept first and gain buy-in. Prepare before-after samples so people can see the difference. Then you’ll need to have extensive discussions about technology and infrastructure, vendors, budget, data mining and analysis capabilities, compliance issues, training if you have a call center, and campaign management. The decision to use color, for example, affects not only budget but also decisions related to staffing, testing, network storage and bandwidth, and disaster recovery. There’s a readiness checklist in our Precision Marketing white paper that may be helpful.

Q. Who can we contact for more information and samples or to schedule a meeting or demonstration?

A. For more information about Precision Marketing, email us at lee.gallagher@infoprint.com.

Precision Marketing Resources