Digital Logic: BoysTown
Selling lottery tickets in the not-for-profit sector can be a hit-or-miss endeavour. A respondent might answer positively to one mailing. Next time around, a tight household budget might mean the same person will pass rather than purchase, even if it means missing the draw for that luxury beach house on the Gold Coast.
That was the problem facing youth charity BoysTown, which runs large-scale lotteries to give away luxury homes all over the country. But the group was determined to set up a more regular interface with a select group of 12,000 lottery customers.
“A challenge for most not-for-profits is trying to get annuity or regular income from lottery buyers,” says Terry Messervy, sales manager of Melbourne variable-data and cross-media specialist Digital Logic.
The firm started as a pre-press bureau in 1990. As variable-data printing (VDP) and cross-media technologies developed, the business evolved into Digital Logic in 2002 and now employs a staff of 20. Dipping a toe in the digital waters years ago with a Heidelberg QMDI, the Moorabbin-based business now has a stable of Xerox kit. As well as a Color 1000, there are two iGen3s and a Nuvera.
“We have had an ongoing relationship with BoysTown for some years, so we sat down with them to discuss their goals. The aim was to establish regular revenues and increase ticket sales by encouraging customers to become subscribers of BoysTown,” says Messervy.
Digital Logic’s consultants Matt Tangey and Alan Quin worked with the charity to develop the campaign. The creative department developed a one-piece colour A3 butterfly folder/envelope that was personalised to the customer. Apart from the addressed envelope, the personalisation extends to an image of keys on a keytag – with the recipient’s name on it – which appears on the front. The text inside the keytag reads: “[Name], don’t ever be locked out again”, an allusion to that dream villa the lucky winner will unlock.
A personalised URL (PURL) in the letter takes the recipient to the ordering page and payment gateway on the BoysTown website. The landing page features a virtual tour of the home that can be won and a referral section so that recipients can refer a friend to receive a personalised email linking to the PURL. People who don’t respond receive a personalised follow-up email with the ‘key’ imagery repeated to enforce the message. SMS messages are also part of the campaign.
Digital Logic’s digitally printed a Butterfly Mailer for BoysTown on the Xerox iGen Color 1000. The VDP component is a breeze for Digital Logic, says Messervy. “A high degree of personalisation and cross-media has been our core strength for many years. We can take data in any format – we’ve got the skillset under the roof.”
BoysTown reports that return on investment on the campaign has been “significant”, with year one ROI at 5.4 times the initial investment, while projected ROI in year five is forecast at 22.1 times the initial investment.
Digital Logic’s chief financial officer, Chris Proc, tells ProPrint that his company uses personalisation software XMPie, integrated with its own proprietary software. But the XMPie relationship goes deeper. Dan Doron, the developer of XMPie, is also the chief executive of Digital Logic Asia Pacific, under a licensing initiative that develops automated marketing software for partner printers in the region.
Digital Logic is now running online marketing tool Social Tango with all its multimedia and VDP campaigns, which creates peer leaders among customers, who introduce other customers via sites such as Facebook, Twitter and on SMS. Customers’ marketing experience is fully trackable online by stakeholders, with data capture for future campaigns.
Computershare: Emerald Group
Emerald Group is one of Australia’s leading grains commodity managers, providing a number of grain marketing options to producers. It needed to streamline the way it generates and sends more than 50,000 mail packs a year to its customers. The company also wanted to remove in-house processes that were wasting time, money and resources, as well as improve the presentation and clarity of its grower communications to cut down call-centre inquiries and dissatisfaction among growers.
In addition, Emerald felt the overall presentation of the communications did not reflect the professionalism of the company, says Ayhan Oguzhan, Emerald’s commodity administration coordinator. “The print quality and paper differences from using multiple suppliers were also starting to impact our brand.”
To reinforce this feeling, Emerald’s call-centre operators had been receiving numerous calls from growers explaining their dissatisfaction with the document layout. It was hard to read and understand, they said. It was also important for call-centre staff to have better access to grower information to respond to queries efficiently. Moreover, growers themselves needed to access their own information held by Emerald. If they could do it themselves, it would help lessen the number of call-centre queries.
In came Computershare Communication Services, the print and distribution arm of the global share registry giant. In discussions with Computershare, several goals were identified. Emerald wanted more professional print for its transactional collateral. It wanted to take the pressure off its call centre. It wanted to streamline print and mail costs and it wanted to improve the way grower information was provided to its call centre.
Ross Ingleton, sales director at Computershare Communication Services, says senior Emerald executives had seen Computershare’s impact at previous workplaces and were keen to involve the cross-media giant in providing Emerald with an outsourced solution.
Computershare and Emerald set up a workshop in which communications consultants worked with Emerald’s key stakeholders in marketing, technology, operations, finance and legal areas to align its communications with its business objectives. The outcome – further refined through presentations and subsequent workshopping with Emerald’s customers – was a functional design document that outlined the design structure, layout and tone of Emerald’s communications. This involved business rules, brand, compliance and personalisation elements. The process, from the first workshop to the completion of the new designs took around six weeks.
The collateral is printed variably in full-colour on Computershare’s flagship machine: a Ricoh InfoPrint 5000 continuous high-speed inkjet line. It runs 92gsm Inkjet Bright paper that is Carbon Neutral Certified and PEFC endorsed. Computershare’s proprietary web-based Dynamic Content Publishing platform provides the VDP component, with more than 50 variable fields.
Ingleton says: “Emerald Group was dealing with different and inconsistent paper and print quality from different suppliers. By Computershare managing the production process from start to finish, greater consistency can be achieved.”
In fact, an increasing ratio of Computershare’s printing is now performed on its two IP5000s, one in Melbourne and one in Sydney, although it retains its Xerox black-and-white laser platform, says Ingleton. The company was the first in Australia to acquire the high-speed continuous inkjet technology.
“With high-speed inkjet, there are no lead times. With pre-printed shells and laser overprints, it used to take around a week to print and lodge Emerald’s documentation, now it takes around one day,” he says.
Mailing issues were also confronted. Emerald used non-standard envelopes, so the cost to mail the 50,000 mail packs was extremely high. The newly designed communications could easily fit within a DLX-size envelope, a standard envelope as recognised by Australia Post, saving on mailing costs.
Ingleton expects that after the NBN comes on stream, the print component of Emerald’s transactional data will reduce, as far-flung growers, some in areas that are not presently serviced by high-speed broadband, learn to go online for their statements, as well as receiving information by email and SMS, where appropriate.
Emerald provides a variety of essential payment communication to growers. Each document includes variable information ranging from grower details through to commodity type and payment information. A variable marketing segment enables Emerald to provide information to specific growers such as next payment date and company/joint venture updates. Variable messaging has also been used to remind customers that they can log in to view their statements online rather than contact the call centre to resend.
To address the need for better informed call-centre staff, Computershare’s Enterprise Content Management central archival system made it possible for staff to view documentation online in real time, and for this also to be available to growers where access is granted.
Emerald quickly realised a significant ROI. It was able to reduce its printing and stock costs by 30%, increase its communications speed to market from one week to one day, and it saved on personnel resources at its call centre by not having to employ temporary or casual employees during peak periods. Meanwhile, permanent employees now have more time to focus on other business activities.
Clear edge/Blue Star: FlyBuys
FlyBuys is Australia’s first and largest shopping rewards program, covering brands such as Coles, Kmart, Target, Bi-Lo, NAB, Budget and Jetset Travelworld. The group wanted more targeted audiences for member statements, involving multiple versions of the statement. It was in search of more flexibility with communicating targeted offers from the participant brands, duplex variable messaging and shorter lead times.
Melbourne agency Clear Edge was asked to redesign the statement, based on the creative work it was already doing for FlyBuys, as well as its strong understanding of loyalty programs, data management and variable printing. As a result, these two-page A4 and four-page A3 Points Summary Statements are now printed at Blue Star DM, with the VDP element handled by XMPie and the work printed on the group’s HP T300 colour inkjet web press.
Participant brands now have the opportunity to move from communicating to a mass audience to highly targeted offers, says Catherine Howarth, design director at Clear Edge. Personalisation on the statements included membership details, such as name, membership number, total points, points collection by brand, points expiry, and email address status. Variable components included FlyBuys program news, participating brands offers and participation brands’ coupons.
Howarth says the VDP component of the Points Summary Statements increased significantly from the August 2011 edition to the subsequent November edition. While the FlyBuys ‘Program News’ section remained at one cell with three kinds of variable assets for both August and November, other sections of the statement, focusing on participating brands, are now far more VDP-focused.
The ‘Participating Brands Offer’ section increased from two cells, with five kinds of variable assets, to two cells, with 33 kinds of variable assets (five offers with targeted variations). And the ‘Participating Brands Coupons’ section, while only eight cells with 11 kinds of variable assets in August, jumped to eight cells with 39 kinds of variable assets in November (18 coupons with targeted variations).
While FlyBuys’ ROI on the project is unavailable, Howarth says “the move to a fully variable, digital statement has been a success, with member response rates that FlyBuys are happy with. This is reflected in the increase in the number of variable assets created from the initial edition in August to the second in November.”
Event agency vs agency
The Australian Direct Marketing Association took inspiration from ABC’s The Gruen Transfer when it ran its ‘agency versus agency’ pitch-off last Christmas. Two teams – one comprised of agency The Hallway (pictured) and the other a joint effort of fundraising group 2 Evolve and agency DM101 – were tasked with coming up with a campaign for the Smile Foundation charity.
The project was backed by Dscoop, the HP Indigo user group, and Sydney-based printer Satellite Digital donated $10,000 worth of printing for the winning entry.
As befits the face of modern direct marketing, both teams took a distinctively multi-channel approach. In the end, the joint effort from 2 Evolve and DM101 was chosen by the charity as the winner, in no small part because it harnessed the power of multiple media channels to deliver the best results.
ADMA chief executive Jodie Sangster says this is what the event was all about.
“First of all, it was to demonstrate how mail can be used as one part of the direct marketing mix. It is not just about doing a mail campaign, but about how mail sits with the other channels to get truly multi-channel marketing. For charities and not-for-profits, mail is still heavily used as a way of soliciting donations.
However, while “mail can still play a crucial role”, times are changing, she says. Where mail used to form the foundation of marketing campaign, the website now sat in the centre, with mail just one of the channels being used to drive a response.
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