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Back in Sept. 2009, Printing News did a profile article on Magjak, a printing company and 1:1 printer located in Port Chester, N.Y. About the same time, I was independently looking at a campaign mentioned in the profile, Magjak’s Club ABC Tours campaign.
In this column, I want to take a closer look at this campaign because it contains fascinating details critical to making 1:1 tick. These kinds of “under the hood” mechanics make or break the success of 1:1 campaigns, and they are details 1:1 printers and their clients need to understand as they seek to develop their own expertise in 1:1 printing.
Club ABC Tours, a travel membership organization operating in the New York Tri-state area, was looking to acquire new members and encourage travel among existing members. Working with Magjak, it decided to forgo its traditional method of printing large, undifferentiated brochures and test a personalized campaign designed to encourage people to travel despite the economic climate.
Why Three Cover Designs?
Ultimately, the travel club developed a highly creative, data-driven mailer segmented into three cover designs: the club’s base creative (this was the control), a more contemporary design featuring a bright red suitcase against a striking green background, and a more standard, industry-wide look with generic images of varying destinations.
Immediately, I wanted to know, “Why the three themes? Were they targeted to different groups? Or was the travel club simply testing different creative?”
The answer was that Club ABC Tours did, in fact, want to test the effectiveness of different creative approaches. Although the marketing messages were also personalized based on past purchases and a variety of demographic factors, before these variables were applied, the list was randomly broken into creative segments to test the effectiveness, not just of the personalization, but of the creative itself.
Although Magjak did share the results with me, I will not publish them here. What’s important is that they tracked the three creative approaches and found that there were noticeable differences between them. Knowledge of these differences was subsequently incorporated into future campaigns.
Precise Target Demographics
Unlike previous campaigns, which were largely undifferentiated, Club ABC Tours decided to focus its efforts on high-value targets in the Tri-state area. This meant recipients fell within a target age demographic and matched other demographics, such as home ownership and income.
With each of the three cover themes, the campaign was further personalized by demographic and past purchase history, if any. The travel message varied depending on whether the recipient was a current or prospective customer (for example, “Heidi, are you ready to travel again?” Or “Heidi, we miss you.” Or “Heidi, Join Club ABC”). The mailer also included a fully personalized correspondence, with offers ranging from two-for-one membership rates, to discounts on future purchases.
Other variables included a short letter from the owners of the organization; variations in offer, which discounts based on various “buckets” determined by the club; and, of course, everything was personalized by name.
