Turbo-charging your sales with print catalogs and data-driven marketing

Harvard Business Review recently ran a scientific experiment with a retailer to compare the impact of email marketing only vs. email and print catalogs over six months. It tracked response rates, sales orders, order size and ROI.

The results were compelling. Compared to a control group of prior customers to whom nothing was sent:

• The email-only approach resulted in a 77% increase in inquiries and a 28% increase in sales.
• The email + print catalog approach did even better, with a 125% increase in inquiries and a 49% increase in sales.
• Adding a print catalog resulted in a 600% marginal ROI.

Impressive? Sure is. Even more impressive? We can help you achieve significantly better results with an interdisciplinary approach. Here’s how.

The study in question targeted repeat business from a luxury retailer’s list of 28,000 customers. Mailing to existing customers is a good place to start. Even better, mail to an optimized prospect list to target and acquire new customers.

With Holland Litho, not only can we print and mail to your existing customer list, we use cutting-edge technologies to build an additional, optimized list of qualified targets for new customer acquisition. How? By relying on the arcane world of multivariate statistical analysis.

Depending upon the industry and positioning, we might recommend using the existing list of 28,000 past customers to create an optimized profile. Large data companies such as credit bureaus store thousands of transactions on every single consumer in the United States, including these 28,000 contacts. When taken together, an individual’s transaction data paints a picture of who they are. Where do you live? What categories and brands of items have you purchased? What style of auto do you prefer? How big is your family? What are your hobbies? Do you travel? The portrait is both broad brush and incredibly granular.

With multivariate statistics, we evaluate your existing customers: What do they have in common? What traits do they share? Which are the most likely predictors? High speed computer platforms evaluate all existing customers against thousands of data points, to see which traits in combination with others, predict the highest likelihood of purchase, the highest rate of return. This becomes the profile.

Next, we rank every single U.S. consumer, scoring each against your profile. Want to mail an additional 10,000? We choose the 10,000 consumers who score the highest, who most resemble your existing customers.

This is a concrete example of data mining: start with a multivariate statistical analysis to reveal the hidden traits common among existing customers. Then apply ranked scoring to identify a targeted list of your best prospects.

A great many marketers today are using keyword-driven online Google ads combined with email marketing to reach existing customers. The HBR study provides compelling evidence that a print catalog can improve your results. Add to that the power of profiling, and you’ve got a formula for revenue growth from both existing customers and a statistically-optimized pool of new ones.

Don’t worry if this all seems complicated: your sales rep will hold your hand every step of the way!