June 20, 2011
Is Your Direct Marketing Campaign Ready for High Impact Variable Imaging
We recently attended a webinar that focused on emerging print technologies dedicated to the full capabilities of variable data printing, including the application of variable imaging.
Presenters Dustin LeFebvre, executive vice president marketing at SPC (Specialty Print Communications), and Mark Capps, account director at Hacker Group, reminded us of some of the reasons that variable imaging holds so much promise for marketers. Here are key points from their presentation:
- Customized, data-driven imagery is affordable and is poised to transform direct marketing.
- Words are the core of all direct marketing communications. Any word conjures up images, so – combined with images – the direct marketing message becomes more compelling and meaningful.
- As with words, the key to effective imagery is matching the image to the needs of a specific recipient. Therefore, as with all VDP, make sure the variable images are specific to the person.
- The five primary data drivers for connecting to any recipient are found in the individual’s demographic profile, interests, life stage, economic profile, and buying behavior. For example, life-stage data can visually place your recipient in a significant life event (for instance, a graduation, wedding, birth of a child, or retirement). Economics can help a marketer speak to a recipient’s shifting financial circumstances, or depict the recipient enjoying the finer things in life. And so on…
- All vertical markets respond to variable imaging techniques: financial services, associations, travel and hospitality, technology, etc. Carnival Cruises, for example, has successfully used variable imagery to create 27 brochure versions, six core letter versions, 4 to 8 tests per drop, and variable treatment of the recipients’ region, audience segments, itineraries, etc.
- Personalization and variability improve the performance of most verticals. Loyalty program marketing also responds well to variable imaging innovation.
- Variable data imagery can begin with the simple personalization of name and geography, and move up to reflect purchase history, product ownership, etc. Also emerging are variable images that reflect how customers, individually, are using the product.
Can marketers get “too personal” with variable imaging, somehow making the recipient feel he or she is being scrutinized? LeFebvre and Capps acknowledge that potential, but note that consumer familiarity with variable marketing practices generally is changing perceptions. “Consumers are getting used to their name on the front of mail pieces and in subject lines,” Capps notes. “Those practices have raised the bar [to make variable imaging seem commonplace, too].”
Source: April 27, “Hybrid Imaging Transforms Direct Marketing” sponsored by SPC. For more information on variable imaging, visit EU Services website, where you can gain immediate access to our personalized image gallery.
