Climbing ahead with targeted data

Printing World, 01 May 2008 (Andrew Woodger, Adare)

Direct mail is evolving, with tailor-made campaigns increasingly being implemented. And, with the latest wave of developments, the sector is beginning to take personalisation to previously unimaginable levels, writes David Waller.

A piece of direct mail drops on the doormat, with the recipient's name written in spaghetti letters or in the neat lines of a mown lawn. They're less likely to throw it straight in the bin; they may even be intrigued enough to open it. But personalisation now goes much further than DM and a fashion for quaint script.

"I may smile when I receive a piece of print featuring my name written in snow," says Chris Hopwood, founder of Telekinesys software. "But it doesn't increase the power of the offer." These days, companies are using the personal touch for more than just novelty to deliver what customers actually want.

Personalisation technology allows you to tailor your communications at a deeper level by ascertaining and targeting a customer's tastes. Consider a luxury car dealership. A would-be customer expresses interest in a certain model, mentions they like green, and that they would need alloy wheels and a high-spec stereo. Maybe they don't make a purchase, but with this information, you could still create a bespoke brochure with full-colour images of this exact car, complete with pricing plans based around their preferred method of payment.

Clearly powerful stuff.

Unique and personal

Carphone Warehouse recently welcomed customers to its TalkTalk broadband service with a 16pp booklet in which every page was personalised. The packs each contained more then 250m possible permutations, and were rolled out within 24 hours or purchase.

"Our philosophy is to give our customers a unique and personal service," says Michelle Henderson, DM director at Carphone Warehouse. "This ensures they feel understood in a largely impersonal marketplace." The results are impressive - nearly three-quarters of recipients reported feeling valued by the company, and use of its call centre halved.

Driving this wave of personalisation are developments in digital print technology, which enable the creation of bespoke pieces on the fly. Colour-variable print campaigns with millions of images can now be run with increasingly short lead times. Amending a four-colour image on a litho press, meanwhile, would involve changing all the plates, then ensuring it parried up with all the relevant data.

The print technology has been around for some time - it's the software behind it that's changed. Print buyers have myriad options: licensing software to run in-house; employing a third-party to handle the infrastructure; or adopting the increasingly popular software as a service (SAAS) model, through which a company can create an account for any number of users, accessing the software online from anywhere. The choice depends largely on budget, and how ambitious you want the campaign to be.

Aiming higher

Tools such as XMPie, DirectType, DirectSmile and Telekinesys' Equator suite offer a range of modular off-the-shelf products, making it easier to manage the data, design and print aspects of a personalised campaign in-house. Such personalisation can range from basic name writing to fully integrated cross-media campaigns.

But those aiming higher with their personalisation may find it more economically viable to work with a third party. Such companies use off-the-shelf software, but combine it with their own marketing expertise and tech developments to create something truly interesting. "There's not a lot that's not achievable now," says Andy Bailey, head of sales and marketing at Inc Direct.

Bailey's company has been working with Sony to promote the latest Rambo movie. When a customer pre-orders the DVD from Play.com, they receive a link to a microsite, hosted by Inc Direct, which allows them to personalise the DVD sleeve.

It is clearly enticing for the customer, but, says Bailey, there's a real benefit for Sony too: "When someone buys a product from a retailer, Sony doesn't know who they are. Here they can collect names and addresses of Rambo fans, instead of losing all contact with the customer." And they can use this data to hone future campaigns.

Additional benefits

But personalisation isn't just about customer communications. It can be used internally too. A simple example is the business card. "You can't get more personal than that," say Telekinesys' Hopwood. He describes a recent rebrand by Cable & Wireless, which required customising the business cards of tens of thousands of employees. Telekinesys's Equator suite was the only practical way of pulling it off. "The software paid for itself many times over with just the business cards alone," say Hopwood.

M&S recently sought to revamp how it communicated staff benefits, doing away with the old system where information on salary, bonuses and pensions came in from different sources on separate bits of paper. "We took data from nine different departments, handled by six different external companies," says Fraser Church, business development director at direct communications giant Dsicmm. "We then produced personalised saddlestitched booklets telling each employee of their specific benefits, through graphs and colour pie charts."

As the M&S example shows, data is key. Of course, the same goes for customer-focused personalisation. And if you have someone's name and address and know their buying habits, you don't actually need vast amounts of data to customise a piece.

External providers sell data collected from the public domain, like census reports and other opted-in sources. Such services can suggest behavioural trends among customers, often based on postcodes. But according to Andrew Woodger, head of Adare's data management division, this is rather missing the point. "It's frustrating," he says "Why buy in data? Within your own organisation, stuck in various cubbyholes, you have a load of information on your customers that your rivals aren't privy to. It's all about knowing what you already know, and turning that into actionable knowledge."

Limitless possibilities

Companies like Adare collate information from various corners of a client's business - from buying habits to previous spending patterns - and aggregate them to produce a 'DNA' of each customer. They can then use the information to tailor campaigns.

This data is more relevant than that bought in from external sources. It's also likely to be more up to date. And this is crucial. "If you don't have the right data, you may as well not bother doing anything," says Church.

In the current climate of data security fears, and outcry among the public and media about lost discs, many will be hesitant about leaving customer data in the hands of a third party. Only work with accredited data firms.

"Printers and external data handlers should have systems in place to comply with the Data Protection Act," says Richard Higginbotham, of data management firm CDMS. "A commitment to ISO 27001 ensures that data is kept secure at every stage by a process of encrypting and password-restricted access." And don't just leave it to them. Every time you send data to a third party, ensure it's encrypted.

When the right data is handled in the right way, there really is no limit to where personalisation can go.

Case study

TUI ticket books

The owner of Thomson holidays, TUI, had been using the same communication method for 20 years - no surprise that it began to feel a little old. The company gave Dsicmm a clear brief: to improve the clarity and personal feel of the ticket books going out to holidaymakers, and drive incremental revenue. This not-so small challenge involved delivering booklets to 1.5m customers, across 22 different brands and 8,000 travel agents, using data from a 20-year old database. Without increasing the budget.

Data on customers' flight routes was used to publish personalise maps, directions and offers the airport they were flying through; flight number data meant they could provide an aircraft layout for customers to pre-book specific seats, and print duty-free offers specific to that airline. The result: booklets featuring tailored resort maps, and luggage tags with their data already filled in, produced using fully variable, colour digital print technology.

TUI's customers got an easy-to-read, fully personalised portable booklet; travel agents simply had to hand over these ready-made packs, personalised to their agency; and TUI gained incremental revenue from including targeting offers based on individuals' trips as well as a boost to third party advertising.