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The primary advantage of VDP is that it increases the responsiveness of a promotional or direct mail piece, sometimes even doubling or tripling the response rates. Research by Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (PIA/GATF) found that adding color and personalization to a direct mail piece increases responses by 134 percent.

Individuals who receive a piece that has been tailored to their personal situation and interests are more apt to not only pay attention to the piece, but also react to the call-to-action. According to InfoTrends, a market research firm for the digital imaging industry, personalization and color have been tested and proven to boost results, not only through increased response rates, but also resulted in increased revenue, repeat order rate and larger order sizes.

5. Leveraging PURLs (Hint: It’s Not a Necklace)

Adding another layer of personalization, digital printing has enabled the use of PURLs, or personalized URLs. A personalized URL is a landing page with a personalized Web address (e.g. www.ProspectNameHere.com) containing content unique to the recipient, such as demographics, marketing preferences and marketing history.

PURLs have been gaining popularity because of their potential to generate amazing response rates. If the campaign is direct mail generated, each mail piece is printed with a personalized URL that drives the prospect back to the personalized landing page. This same level of personalization can also be applied to e-mail campaigns. PURLs double typical lead response rates.

6. A New Way to Measure ROI

Many marketing directors and communications managers are used to calculating the return on their marketing collateral investment based on the cost per piece. But since they typically track the number of responses to the marketing piece and aim to ultimately tie responses to increased revenue, the calculation we encourage your client to use is cost per response.

The cost per response measures the cost of producing and mailing a piece, divided by the number of responses. Since they will be employing more personalization to increase the response rates, the cost per response should decrease over time. And that’s something your client will appreciate, particularly in a tough economic environment.

Andrea Alstad is the brand manager for Wausau Paper’s Printing & Writing sector. For more information, visit www.wausaupaper.com/DigitalSpace.