Personal Bests — Encouraging Returns

Browsing hasn’t become a Web-only activity quite yet. Shoppers looking to make a major purchase still tend to visit multiple stores and/or revisit the same store before making a buying decision.

Furniture shoppers are particularly apt to dither in light of the wide range of choices—styles, colors, fabrics, etc.—and often conflicting tastes. It’s easy for buyers to get confused about what they saw where and forget the finer points of an individual piece.

[ Program Objectives ]

The management of American Signature Furniture wanted a way to keep visits to its stores top of mind for browsers and to encourage them to come back. The company operates more than 80 furniture superstores that are part of the Value City Furniture chain.

Variable data marketing was still a new concept for American Signature when its vice president of marketing was approached by Marketing Services by Vectra (MSBV), based in Columbus, OH. Within a few days of the first meeting, the furniture retailer indicated it had enough interest to start a project. The concept piece MSBV developed enabled the decision-makers to quickly see how a personalized brochure would be an effective way to follow up with shoppers.

Part of the marketing company’s sales strategy is to follow the now common practice of starting at the top by targeting a prospect’s CEO or senior marketing person. MSBV’s approach differs from some, though, in that it looks to take concrete ideas into the first meeting. This is said to result in a fast sales cycle (about 30 minutes) and a close rate of around 95 percent, which enabled the firm to sell 37 programs in 14 months.

MSBV develops samples of marketing materials customized for a specific prospect because it has found people have a harder time understanding the potential of variable data when shown samples done for other clients. The company has extended this philosophy of investing in concept development by switching to a pricing model that includes free program setup so as to encourage clients to try different marketing approaches. To ensure there is a payoff, it targets prospects that have a high potential lifetime value.

[ The Solution ]

Shoppers who leave an American Signature Furniture store without making a purchase now receive a highly personalized and customized brochure within 48 to 72 hours. The text addresses prospects by name and images of each of the furniture pieces considered, or similar items, are included. Information is captured by the sales representative—with the customer’s permission—to drive creation of the brochure and populate the mailing database.

One panel of the brochure addresses the individual by first name and thanks the shopper for visiting the store. The copy also mentions the location of the store and the day of the visit. Another panel is personalized by adding the sales representative’s name, the hours he/she works and the store’s phone number. All information required for the mail drop, including the shopper’s name and address, is printed right on the piece in the same production step.

Another component of the program is ensuring every visitor receives a personalized “Thank You” note signed by the sales rep.

MSBV extracts records from the prospect database on a daily basis and uses the file to populate one of 130 variable data templates used in this program. It produces more than 200 pieces each day.

The company launched the program using an HP Indigo Press 3000 digital color press. It offers a full array of services, including offset printing (sheetfed and web), fulfillment, mailing and database management.

[ The Results ]

Receiving personalized brochures that reminded them of their original visits reportedly prompted 10 percent more of the browsers to make return visits to their local superstore. Additionally, those who receive a brochure and ultimately make a purchase have been found to spend approximately 40 percent more money in the store than shoppers who don’t receive a brochure.

This case study was derived from PODi’s annual Best Practices in Digital Print research, the largest collection ever assembled of successful digital printing projects. PODi is an industry initiative with hundreds of member companies including executive board members EFI, HP, IBM, Kodak, Pitney Bowes, Quark and Xerox. Membership in PODi is open to most organizations involved in digital printing. For more information on joining PODi or submitting your own case study, visit www.mypodi.org/pi1.

Learn From The Best

ROCHESTER, NY—Featuring 46 new case studies, the sixth edition of the “Best Practices in Digital Print Report” has been released by PODi, the Digital Printing Initiative. This annual collection of innovative, successful applications in digital printing covers 12 vertical markets and a wide variety of business applications.

The report is designed to offer printing and marketing professionals real-world tested ideas on how to leverage digital printing and variable data technology to get results. The latest edition has several special features:

The 2006 Best Practices award winners—in the direct mail, collateral management and fulfillment, transactional and small business (new for 2006) categories—share their success stories.

A small selection of especially strong digital print projects have been given additional in-depth coverage. Extensive interviews were conducted to capture details about the sales process, production, costs and pricing, when available.

Eight of the case studies describe projects produced using PPML (Personalized Print Markup Language), an industry-standard language for digital print production developed by PODi.

The full report is free to PODi members and available for purchase by non-members. All of the case studies are also now in the PODi online database (www.podi.org), bringing the total to more than 265 case studies that can be searched by application, vertical market and hardware. Non-members are charged a nominal fee to access each study.