Statement Printing

Sending certified mail pieces can be a costly and time consuming process for any business. Because copies of signatures are often required, many businesses chose to complete certified mail projects in-house, but it is possible to save time, money, and effort by outsourcing certified mail projects.

A good provider of certified mail services will make it easy on their clients- as simple as sending the file. Once a file is received, it is important to ensure that your certified mail vendor provides a quick turnaround time so that your critical mail pieces can get to the recipients as quickly as possible. To make it easier on their clients, certified mail service providers should provide the manifest of Entry and Article Numbers for your mailings so that the pieces can be easily tracked.

Basically, a business wants to find a vendor who can provide certified mail services that are fast, simple, and secure. By outsourcing certified mail, a company can save on the costs of ordering special certified mail forms and envelops as well as time and effort on preparation of the pieces.

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Now that social media marketing- blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.- has become an important aspect of most companies’ marketing strategies, the question of how to reach your customers has more answers than ever. While it is tempting to just add a video or survey on your website or blog and hope your customers see it and then respond, these marketing strategies need to be well thought out and planned for success. Email marketing can still present the challenge of breaking through the “clutter” to reach your customers because most people receive so many emails that they don’t pay attention to every email in their Inbox.

This brings me to the original question: what is the best way to reach your customers? The answer is through a combination of traditional marketing and newer media. One way to do this is to send a direct mail piece to your customers with a discount or offer for now and an additional invitation to join an online club or to register on your website for more discounts. This method gets your customers’ attention now with a direct mail piece that has a call to action for the present and gets their attention later with a call to action for a future time. The benefit for your company is that many customers will respond now because of the direct mail piece and then respond again online allowing you to build a database of those customers you can reach via email or through online promotions or for future direct mail campaigns.

Many companies are taking a “wait and see” approach regarding new media for marketing or completely adopting new media and forgetting about more traditional methods, like direct mail, but the answer to reaching customers is a marketing campaign integrating the different forms of media that will generate a response to your company’s call to action.

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Companies in high-volume service fields, such as banking, brokerage, credit lenders, and insurance, often have customers with multiple accounts. Multiple accounts often mean multiple pieces of mail sent to the same recipient. It is possible, through householding, to combine all those documents into a single piece of mail. Householding can instantly save a company thousands in wasted mail costs. One company saw a savings of $5,000.00 per month through householding their statement mailing.

Householding is a simple solution- combining all correspondences for a recipient into a single envelope- that can result in significant savings for a company. As an example, if your company normally sends three pieces of mail at the end of the month to the average customer, combining the mail into a single envelope can cut mailing costs by more than 50%.

Some companies may be concerned about implementing householding without disrupting their workflow. One solution is to work with a print and mail company that can set up the process for you. Working with an outsourcing company can make the transition smooth and effortless on the part of your company. The benefits are instant postage savings, eliminating duplicate inserts that result in wasted materials, and reducing the costs of envelopes. Now that more and more customers are concerned about the environment and “going green”, householding can also have a positive effect on the image of your company in the mind of your customer. Overall, householding is a simple solution that has many positive results.

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In a recent blog on FohBoh, Jose Riesco talks about how these “times of crisis are times of opportunity” for marketing, especially in the restaurant industry. It’s true that people are spending less and dining out less, so now is a good time for restaurants to re-evaluate their marketing programs. It’s time to eliminate programs that don’t work and invest in programs that produce results.

A good exercise for restaurants is to make a list of every single marketing expense, then evaluate which ones can be tracked. In the example on Riesco’s post, his client found that 80% of his marketing expenses were non trackable. This client found that he had no way to measure how many customers his Yellow Pages, local newspaper, and other restaurant catalog advertisements were bringing into his location. Riesco’s advice was to eliminate those marketing expenses that cannot be measured.

Riesco also suggested adding a discount coupon to the existing advertisements reasoning that if customers really did come into the restaurant because of this ad then surely they would bring a discount with them on their next visit. If this does not prove these programs are effective, then they should be eliminated.

One way to redirect marketing funds is to update the restaurant’s website to include a sign up for capturing visitors’ information and offer them a “welcome discount”. Another type of campaign that is 100% trackable is a card mailer with a magnetic strip. These mailers can be integrated with a restaurant’s existing POS system and work in the same way as a gift card. Card mailers allow restaurants to target specific potential customers through direct mail, then track who redeems the offer.

Tracking marketing campaigns is essential to measuring their success, so it might be time to re-evaluate and re-think existing campaigns and replace them with campaigns that your restaurant can accurately track.

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