There is a reason pet stores put kittens and puppies into open cages in the center of the main aisle. People who reach out and play with them are far more likely to purchase them. The same concept also works in print.
People who interact with a printed piece are more committed to responding to its message. It’s why “create your own brochures” are so effective. It’s not just because the resulting brochures are fully personalized to people’s needs, tastes, and wants. It’s because people create the brochures themselves and have a vested interest in them.
Consider the example of personalized college brochures. Colleges and universities send out mailers to high school seniors in the target demographic, inviting them to a personalized URL where they can get more information on the school. Students then select the course tracks, extra-curricular activities, and other information they are interested in. The school then prints and mails the brochures to the students, usually within the next 24 – 48 hours.
Not only are response rates to these campaigns higher than traditional campaigns, but the enrollment rates for the students who create these personalized brochures are consistently higher, too.
One marketer, Taser Corporation (of “zap the bad guys” fame), took this "create your own" concept to the hilt when it allowed police departments to log into a website where they could input specifics from their department and generate personalized quotes. The online ROI calculator estimated net costs saved, officer injuries avoided, and lives saved, among other estimates, all based on data input by the officer. The result was a tremendous investment in the process that yielded big returns.
Not every marketer has the budget for this, of course. Nor is such sophistication always necessary. There are lots of ways to get people to interact with print. Recipients can lift a flap. Press a button. Scan a QR code. Pull out a glued-on accordion-fold message panel.
The point is simply that once they interact with the printed piece (and there are lots of ways to do that), recipients are more likely to respond to the message because they have a vested interested in it. In essence, they “own” part of the message because they created it. That generates results.
Talk to us about how you can create a more interactive component in your next 1:1 print marketing piece!
