Category

Print Marketing

NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Print Marketing, Direct Mail

Integrating Direct Mail Into Your Digital Marketing Strategy for 2018

Direct mail has long been one of the most trusted tools in a marketer’s arsenal. But as the digital revolution in marketing continues to grow and evolve, so too do the possibilities that direct mail presents. By understanding some of the newest and hottest trends in integrating digital and direct mail marketing, savvy CMOs can position their brands for ongoing success well into an unpredictable future. That’s according to Jason Sullock of IT Pro Portal, who breaks down a few of the most promising trends in direct mail for 2018.

Omnichannel Integration

It may be surprising to think of direct mail as a way to unify your multi-channel digital marketing efforts, but it’s actually a fantastic opportunity to do so.  By incorporating printed QR codes into their direct mailers, marketers can make it extremely simple and convenient to direct recipients to the landing page, product demo, or special promotion you want them to see. You can also include unique URLs linked directly to your mailers. That way, when your customers visit that URL, you can track the fact that the mailer sent them there, and you can better measure the impact of your direct mailing efforts

thinking girl with digital shopping symbols

Programmatic Personalization

Programmatic mail links your direct mailing efforts to each customer’s specific online activities, but in the opposite manner of the omnichannel integration we discussed above. By using digital tracking and analysis of customer behavior – things like what pages they’ve visited, what products have they’ve searched for, and what items they’ve abandoned in their shopping carts – marketers can then send direct mailers that speak to these specific interests and talking points. An email reminder to complete your online checkout? Easily ignored and deleted. A colorful, eye-catching piece of mail delivered right to your front door? That’s much more effective at converting shoppers into customers.

Augmented Reality

As more brands try to provide a truly unique and engaging customer experience by venturing into augmented reality (AR), the possibilities for using AR to supplement direct mail, and vice versa, are growing. Marketers can design even rudimentary AR apps so that when a customer scans a QR code included in a direct mailer, the brand’s logo appears or a product video plays. In more advanced versions, scanning a direct mail QR code in an AR application can display three-dimensional virtual versions of your products, creating lasting and meaningful impressions.

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Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Marketing Strategy, Retail Trends, Print Marketing

How to Sell More with High-Conversion Retail Displays

mall-shop-high-conversion

Online shopping and e-commerce continue to shift the way savvy retail marketers approach their business models, especially as they pertain to the optimization of brick-and-mortar retail stores.

That’s according to Humayan Khan at Shopify, who explains that more and more retailers are treating their physical storefronts as “experience centers,” designed to use “visual merchandising best practices to help the products sell themselves.”

Khan takes a look at some of those best practices, as well as how agile marketing operations and supply chains can help create high-converting product displays that catch shoppers’ attention and sell more.

Show Your Customers, Don’t Tell Them

Customers want to be able to truly envision how they could use your product in their lives, and they don’t want to have to guess. That’s why creating effective displays that show what life with your product looks like is so important.

Kitchenware stores, for example, don’t just feature the kitchen counter tile that is for sale. They build out an entire display kitchen, featuring their beautiful countertop at the center of it. “Can’t you imagine hosting a cocktail party in this kitchen?” they ask. “Wouldn’t your life be so much more stylish with this countertop tile?” Displays sell a lifestyle, a vision, not just a product. Use your in-store visual displays to create this compelling experience for your customers.

three female shoppers-retail

Engage Their Senses to Draw Them In

The key to immersive shopping, Khan says, is to create a “multi-sensory experience,” which he calls “sensory branding.” While customers consciously associate your brand with your visual marketing materials, like colors schemes and logos, they also subconsciously associate your brand with their four other senses, as well.

Sight

This is the most important sense to capture. The average customer spends no more than eight seconds looking at a display. Leveraging captivating and engaging visual cues like lighting, symmetry, and contrast all factor into the visual effectiveness of your marketing materials.

Sound

A movie is only as compelling as its soundtrack, and the same goes for retail stores. Slower, more relaxed music facilitates a slower shopping pace, while Top 40 hits engage the attention of teenagers and the 18-34 demographic. Further, if you have an exciting new product you can’t wait to share with your customers, pair its display with equally exciting, dynamic music. Trying to convey the premium, luxury factor of your products? Classical waltzes and “upscale” music help convey your brand essence.

Touch

Touch is extraordinarily intimate, and tied strongly to memory and recall. If at all possible, retailers should feature physical samples and examples of their products within in-store displays so customers can touch it, hold it, and feel it. Even the best-designed marketing emails can’t move your product from abstract to tangible in the minds of your customers as quickly as tactile interaction.

Smell

Scent is the sense most closely tied to memory, and it is a powerful tool to keep your product and your brand top-of-mind with your customers. Whatever attitude you are trying to convey – ruggedness for outdoor equipment, coziness for furniture, deliciousness for baked goods – pair it with a scent that conveys it directly to your customer’s brain. There is an entire field known as “scent marketing” which focuses on the psychology of scent, and marketers who understand it can leverage it to their advantage.

Taste

Obviously, this is more practical for consumable goods, but allowing your customers to sample edible products is exactly the same as allowing them to try on clothes. It is a massively effective best-practice.

Change and Adapt, Always

As society changes, so too will your customers and their demands. To stagnate is to die in retail marketing, and agility and adaptability are the keys to longevity.

Brands that can not only execute on the above, but do so frequently, and to new and different specifications over time, can continue to meet their customers’ needs. This way, they remain indispensable to their customers, and win their long-term loyalty.

*****

By partnering with a trusted marketing supply chain expert like NVISION, your brand can leverage the power of high-converting in-store displays and win more revenue.

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Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

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NVISION Insights and Innovation Team
In Retail Trends, Print Marketing

In-store Displays

Shopping mall with signs and stores-Featured

E-commerce and online shopping may be the hot channels getting the majority of media coverage these days, but cultivating engaging in-store experiences for customers is one of the most important keys to continuing to drive growth in brick-and-mortar revenue.

That’s according to FierceRetail’s Jacqueline Renfrow, who cites new research which suggests that in-store displays, decorations, and promotions all critically contribute to both shoppers’ preference for brick-and-mortar shopping, as well as up to 54% of in-store impulse buys.

The research, which surveyed over 11,000 consumers in the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia, found that promotional displays and in-store visuals not only create a more pleasant shopping atmosphere for customers, but allow stores to create their own unique brand identities and help put consumers in the “mood” to shop there. In fact, 54% of U.S. shoppers reported that in-store promotions are the “biggest influence on their impulse buys,” while 37% of U.S. shoppers cited a store’s ability to make them “feel in the right mood” as their biggest impulse buy driver.

people walking in the mall - retail continuity

But it’s not just promotions that allow retailers to make their in-store experiences stand out to customers. In-store visuals, like displays, end caps, standing booths, hanging decorations, branded apparel, and print materials all contribute heavily to the atmosphere of a store, and 70% of consumers surveyed reported that those visuals help them “connect to the brand.” Further, a full 84% of consumers claimed that said visuals make the in-store shopping experience “more enjoyable.”

In fact, when a store adds marketing materials to the in-store experience like smells and visuals, 59% of U.S. shoppers surveyed are more like to revisit that store. That number leaps to 72% for shoppers ages 18-24, and those same Millennial shoppers reported being 60% more likely to shop for longer each time they visit.

As Renfrow explains, even in an omnichannel world, each specific channels has its advantages and appeals. For the brick-and-mortar channel, the appeals are ancient: instant gratification, and overall entertainment. Yes, we may have grown beyond our teenage years, loitering at the local mall, but the fact remains that in-store shopping is still a form of entertainment for most of us, and we reward those brands that invest in creating a dynamic, entertaining in-store experience with our hard-earned dollars.

“Consumers, particularly younger consumers, aren’t just buying a product when in-store; they’re buying an experience. And their expectations for a positive, emotionally engaging experience are quite high. Those businesses who deliver an elevated customer experience witness greater repeat visits, a greater number of recommendations, and longer in-store dwell times,” says Scott Moore, global vice president of marketing at Mood Media.

And while crafting these compelling in-store experiences is crucial to retail marketing success, they require a highly-optimized and efficient supply chain to ensure each promotional material arrives on-time, in-place, and on-budget. Further, companies need to have insight into which marketing materials are actually driving revenue, and which are detracting from their carefully cultivated brand image. The proper in-store marketing materials are powerful; the wrong materials are ineffective and overpriced, and the right materials delivered too late are worthless.

Brands that take their in-store promotional and visual materials seriously stand to claim a powerful advantage over their competition, and those that understand, prioritize, and optimize their marketing supply chain can realize unprecedented success.

Subscribe to the Blog

Why NVISION?

For more than three decades we’ve partnered with Fortune 500 companies to deliver marketing operations solutions. Led by a strategic account management team, we’ll help you develop, procure, fulfill and distribute printed collateral, signage, point-of-purchase displays, direct mail, branded merchandise and much more.

LEARN MORE