When Alerus Financial, a North Dakota banking institution, wanted to boost its loan applications, it turned to 1:1 printing.  While many marketers might think case studies from financial institutions don’t apply to them, there are some missioncritical lessons here for all 1:1 marketers, regardless of vertical market.

The first thing Alerus did was divide its mailing in half. It wanted to test the value of 1:1 printing against static printing. It used the same creative from the 1:1 marketing program, but without the variable content. The 1:1 program started with segmenting the mailers into three age brackets and tailoring the message to each. Alerus then personalized the message to each individual, asking them to log into a personalized URL (pURL) to view the offer and see how a lower interest rate would affect their mortgage.

The pURLs allowed recipients to respond to the offer immediately by clicking through a link. They could not create the same level of personalization in the mailer itself, although would have had to seal the mailer to protect the recipient’s private information.

Alerus used online tracking and trackable 800 numbers to gauge the response to both the personalized and non-personalized campaigns

Response to the static campaign was less than 1%. Response to the personalized campaign varied by age segment, ranging from 2.64% to 3.98%.  More importantly, Alerus found that 59% of the new loans came from the variable mailer, while only 30% came from the static mailer. Eleven percent could not be attributed to either mailer and were assumed to have come from other sources, such as word of mouth. Nearly 60% of the loan applications came from new customers.

All of these factors not only told Alerus that it spent its money well, but it learned a tremendous amount about how to go about its next direct mail program.  For example, it found that the highest response rate came from the 25-to-36 demographic. Thus, next time it might want to increase its emphasis on the 25- to-36 age bracket, since this is where its return was the greatest.

In this, Alerus exhibited some of the best practices of 1:1 print. Regardless of vertical market, these are lessons that every marketer ought to take to heart.