The post #1 Six Critical Numbers to Know for a Powerful ROI and How to Calculate them first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

Customer Retention Cost Calculation:
Total cost of retention campaigns / Total # retention customer responses

See all 6 tips here

The post #2 Six Critical Numbers to Know for a Powerful ROI and How to Calculate them first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

Purchase Frequency Rate Calculation:

Total # of purchases over date range/total # of active customers over same date range

See all 6 tips here

The post #3 Six Critical Numbers to Know for a Powerful ROI and How to Calculate them first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

Average Sales per Purchase Calculation:

Total sales over date range / total purchases made over same date range

See all 6 tips here

The post #4 Six Critical Numbers to Know for a Powerful ROI and How to Calculate them first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

Customer Lifetime Value Calculation

Average Sales Amount and Purchase Frequency x Average Customer Lifetime in years

($20 spent per month x 2-year lifetime = $480 Lifetime Customer Value)

Use the chart to find the lifetime or number of years a customer stays active by converting customer churn rate to Customer Lifetime in years.  Divide 100% by churn rate = Lifetime in years.

See all 6 tips here

The post # 6 Six Critical Numbers to Know for a Powerful ROI and How to Calculate them first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

Conscious Decision-Making vs. Reactionary Choices

Conscious decisions are thoughtful; they are made prior to an event occurring, and not due to it. While it is inevitable that some decisions will be made based on unforeseen circumstances, consistent conscious decision-making is critical to the success of a business. What business owners want, and need, is to choose partner companies carefully, and consciously. Business owners need to seek out partners who will help them further their vision and help them meet their goals. So, how can a business make these important decisions well? By knowing and understanding their key metrics to ensure that decisions about expenditure, partnerships and new campaigns are made with the right information in mind. Here are a few important metrics to keep an eye on.

Sales Revenue – not just total $ but cause and effect

Sales revenue is a metric that measures income from customer purchases of goods and services, minus the cost associated with things like returned, lost/undeliverable or stolen merchandise. Further inspection of this metric provides key insight into the details of your revenue increases and decreases. This can be critical, as an example, for determining the success of advertising campaigns: does your business experience a marked increase in sales revenue during and immediately after a marketing campaign? Or, are revenues staying stable; even decreasing? Your answer to this question will help you make vital decisions regarding marketing campaigns. Perhaps your marketing mail isn’t making it to the intended destination on time. Perhaps the size or design is causing it to get lost in the shuffle. Maybe you’ve spent most of your efforts on online marketing, and let direct mail fall by the wayside. Whatever the case, by knowing this metric, and the implications thereof can help optimize your marketing strategy. Three Dog Logistics works with your team to help optimize every aspect of your marketing plan to reduce your cost of delivery, whether by drop shipping, employing direct mail strategies, tweaking mailer sizes to help ensure that both your spending and earning metrics are meeting their intended goals. This dedication to understanding metrics and making conscious decisions also allows Three Dog to make quick, nimble decisions that help you save money: help us help you!

Customer Loyalty and Retention

Getting customers in the door is one thing, but getting them to return time and time again is even more vital. This too will have much to do with your marketing campaign strategy, and can be measured through customer surveys, direct feedback at point of purchase or on an ongoing basis and purchase analysis. Knowing this metric will help you know which strategies pull customers in, and encourage them to make repeat purchases.

As mentioned above, Three Dog can be an invaluable asset in improving your marketing campaign results and decreasing costs. This also applies to premiums and samples, whether front-end or back-end: a classic customer loyalty and retention strategy. Whether a business or non-profit, Three Dog is ready to help you with parcel consolidation, mitigating the expense of premiums and samples, making both you and your customer happy. Our Premium Fulfillment service will pick up, package and get your premiums into the hands of your recipients and donors at the lowest possible cost. But knowledge of how your premiums’ strategy—or lack thereof— could impact customer loyalty is the necessary first step to taking advantage of these savings. With this knowledge, Three Dog can create a customized strategy that best help your unique needs as a business.

Cost of Customer Acquisition

Cost of customer acquisition measures the total cost associated with creating new customers, including all aspects of marketing and sales. Customer acquisition cost is calculated as total acquisition expenses divided by total new customers over a specific period. This will clue you in on whether your marketing and advertising investments are paying for themselves. If they aren’t, it’s time to make some careful decisions. We are all about the details at Three Dog: need to cut costs on postage of direct mail? We’re on it. What about the costs of shipping online purchases? We’ve got that covered too. If you get us the numbers for your marketing and sales costs, we can help you improve them—as far as postage and shipping is concerned.

Three Dog’s Pledge to You

Sound too good to be true? It isn’t. We want to help you slash costs for your postage and shipping needs, boosting marketing and sales metrics. Bring us the numbers, and we’ll find a solution. For more information, or a complimentary consultation, contact us today!

The post The Value of Knowing Your Business at a Metric Level first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

The holidays are not far, and that means it’s time for holiday marketing campaigns to entice and excite shoppers. Direct mail is a wonderful way to personally deliver information about your newest products and services right into the hands of your target audience. And now, with the help of drop shipping, you can get your campaigns to them faster and more efficiently, all at a competitive rate.  

Delivery Time is Shortened

With drop shipping, delivery time of your direct mail is drastically reduced. Drop shipping bypasses multiple postal facilities, allowing mail to go straight from you to a postal facility much closer to your target consumers. Depending on the distance traveled, mail could arrive at the consumer’s door days faster than traditional postal methods! While other businesses are sending their campaigns via slower mailing routes, your marketing material will already be in the hands of your target audience—the early dog gets the bone!

Saves Business Money

If saving time isn’t exciting enough, saving money should be even more thrilling—and drop shipping does just that. Drop shipping is inherently money-saving because mailers spend less time in transit, and are collected together efficiently for specific regional areas. Companies (like ours) that presort, use bar-coding and transport mail as close to the intended destination as possible will receive the largest postal discounts. Delivery to the destination bulk mail center or sectional center facility can save $33-42 per thousand pieces, respectively.

Reduces Chances of Error and Damage

The more hands your mail goes through, the more chances of it being bent, torn, lost or ruined entirely. With drop shipping, your direct mail marketing spends less time in the hands of the post office, and more time in the hands of your target audience—in the way you meant for them to receive it. First impressions count, so make sure your marketing campaign arrives looking as good as the day you sent it out!

Better Predict Arrival Times

Having a last-minute holiday sale? Want your target audience to receive your marketing mailer before your promotion has begun, but not too soon before so it’s still fresh in their minds? With drop shipping, delivery and arrival times are easier to predict, making it easier for you to ensure your target audience receives your mailer right when you wish them to. Of course, no mailing system can get mail exactly where you want it at the exact time you want it, but drop shipping comes pretty close.

Special Benefits for Non-Profits

The perks of drop shipping direct mail are obvious for businesses, but for non-profits, they’re even more enticing. Non-profits need to keep costs low, get their campaign out to a massive array of people and meet their goals in a timely manner. Drop shipping allows all of this to happen, and the large audience of non-profits will accrue even larger savings for non-profits as well: the more mail you drop ship, the bigger the discount!

How Three Dog Logistics Can Help

At Three Dog, we understand how critical the holidays are for businesses: getting your direct mail out quickly, efficiently and at a great rate will help your holiday season be a fruitful one. That’s why we use all the tricks in the business to ensure you get fast delivery times, great rates and overall postal optimization. Drop shipping is all about the details, and the details are where Three Dog shines—for more information about how we can help you with your drop shipping and other postal needs, contact us today!

The post How Drop Shipping Can Improve Direct Mail Holiday Campaigns first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

If you just read this and think I’m crazy, good. I’ll take this opportunity to share why direct mail has a leg up on email and other digital forms of marketing. Better yet, the use of direct mail as part of an integrated digital campaign consistently delivers higher ROI and response rates than digital efforts alone. If all your eggs are currently in the digital marketing basket, I’d strongly encourage you to reconsider the seemingly odd partnership of direct mail and digital that together produce significantly better results.

Direct mail campaign goals have changed a whole lot over the years. It used to be that a direct purchase was the only successful outcome, now success is measured by driving traffic to your web site or store front using multiple medias and various touch points. This transition makes direct mail so effective when paired with digital, it acts as a catalyst for action that’s difficult to drive using digital mediums. What’s the primary reason digital outlet response rates are lower than direct mail? The consumer doesn’t see or interact with the message. Keep reading to learn why direct mail should be a regular tool in your marketing arsenal.

Why Direct Mail is More Effective than Digital

Junk Email Boxes and Spam

While email had its day, now people ignore them or they’re re-routed straight to a junk folder. Almost everyone I know has two email accounts, one for promos/email sign-ups and the one they actually read. Efficient yes, but it means they probably NEVER see your email unless they go in search of something they don’t know they received – pretty sure that’s not the case. Add in spam and other reasons email is rejected, the odds increase for non-deliverability making it tough to respond to a message never received. On the other hand, direct mail is trackable, delivered every day, and sits on your counter staring at you.

Our Multi-Tasking World

So, I’m not a doctor, but I feel comfortable diagnosing consumers with electronic-induced ADD, a condition that makes it virtually impossible to capture attention for more than a few seconds. Checking email is a multi-tasking battle, between social media pop-ups, web ads, texts, and other distractions that cross our devices, most people only read the email subject line, and that’s if you’re lucky. The mailbox at your home only has one purpose, mail. This lack of competition for attention helps direct mail stand out with almost no effort on the recipient’s part. 79% of consumer’s act on direct mail immediately vs, 45% of email recipients, these statistics suggest the recipient is paying attention and actively engaged.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Let’s face it we all take the path of least resistance, it’s inherently human. Which means if we must open, read, and print out an email it feels like too much work. If the email was received three days ago forget about it, another sad victim of the giant inbox vortex. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Compare this to direct mail, which if a postcard, doesn’t require opening and then lays around till action is taken. QR codes on printed matter increase the likelihood for action using a mobile device without having to take any extra steps, genius.

Hackers and Suspicion of Online Media

Thanks to hackers, trust in electronic communication is quickly eroding. Links are now a way strangers can see what you’re doing, capture your passwords, and harvest personal information to sell to even more bad guys. Email attachments are even worse, only download if you like computer viruses.  Since people are now wary and careful in the online world emails are suspect and links to act seen as a threat. Obviously not good for email response rates which currently stand at a paltry .012%. Printed matter is in no way affiliated with danger, even if the call to action is online, typing URLs directly into a web browser is considered safe.

Response Rates and ROI

A recent study by Royal Mail found that response rates and ROI for direct mail is far superior to email and that 92% of recipients are driven to online or digital activity. The direct mail response rate of 4.4% stands in stark comparison to the .012% of email. When it comes to financial results, integrated campaigns with direct mail deliver a 57% ROI against 45% for digital only efforts. If money is important to your organization, and frankly I don’t know many who would say it’s not, then direct mail is the obvious choice.

Personal and Emotional Connection

Since childhood, mail is built into our memory bank and has a special place in our psyche. Holiday packages, birthday cards, even exciting direct mail. By its nature, DM is more personal than email making it a great vehicle for your message as part of an integrated campaign. Mail also integrates more senses than just sight including touch, encouraging the recipient to engage with the message on a deeper level.

Variety Required to Capture Attention

Even with new formatting tools, emails pretty much all look the same. Simply put, the canvas is limited making it easy for readers to gloss over the message. Going back to the consumers with ADD, variation and the ability to shake things up regularly is crucial to get their attention. Mail options are only limited by your imagination. From postcards to letters, “lumpy mail,” booklets, or parcels, changing the WOW factor including size, shape, and look grabs attention and increases response rates.

Now that you know how effective direct mail can be, why not give it a try? Remember the role of direct mail now is to be the enticing messenger, not the pushy salesperson. This is where the “new direct mail” looks nothing like its old self, strictly designed to work as a cog in the integrated machine instead of the solo selling technique. Be bold and creative, your customers will show their appreciation with impressive results.

Ready to develop an integrated marketing campaign that includes direct mail? At Three Dog Logistics, our consultants will help develop a plan that delivers client solutions at the lowest cost and fastest delivery speed possible. Remember, we take the bite out of postage and freight. Visit www.threedoglogistics.com or call 410-284-5494 extension 220 to schedule a complimentary consultation today.

The post How Direct Mail Succeeds Where Digital Doesn’t first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

How International Direct Mail Can Be a Smart Choice for Your Business

Naturally, the larger the market, the larger the potential reach. However, there is a benefit to international direct mail that is a bit less obvious. International consumers receive very little direct mail overall—it’s simply not used as often in international markets, with international consumers averaging only 15-70 direct mail pieces a year. For context, consumers in the United States receive an average of 290 direct mail pieces a year! This means massive amounts of untapped potential for your business, with consumers who are excited to receive your offers, and much more likely to open and view the direct mail you’ve sent. Take advantage of this fresh enthusiasm by marketing internationally!

Why Must Your International Marketing Strategy Differ from Your National Marketing Strategy?

Many things change from country to country, from language and packaging preferences to shipping execution and laws. Understanding the full breadth of changes prior to initiating your campaign will set you up for success.

The initial change that most companies focus on when moving internationally, is language. However, a change in language should only be one small part of your change between national and international marketing. While marketing in a country’s language is important (and ensuring translations actually convey the message, both implied and stated, you wish to present—see Pepsi’s debacle in Taiwan for an example of a slogan that got lost in translation), international marketing is also hugely impacted by the demographics, cultural values, market saturation and buying habits. For example, hotdogs sold in the United States are often marketed as “All-Beef”—but such a marketing strategy in India, where Hindus revere the cow as sacred, would fall flat. Nuances and implied meanings can play a major part in your international marketing’s success or failure.

Major Components of Preparing for An International Marketing Campaign

As we said, the language of your marketing materials is just the beginning of your overall translation from national to international. Here are some key components to focus on as you prepare your campaign:

• Market Research
  A strong understanding of the market in which you are preparing to sell will go a long way to preventing problems down the line. Look at the market for similar products in the region, and focus on its size, popularity, and ease of entry. Focus on regions in which your product or services can satisfy a previously unmet need. Become familiar with any regulations concerning packaging, disclaimers, mailers and other written marketing components. Understanding the possible challenges you may face, along with any potential opportunities, will help you decide whether a specific international market is worth the effort (and if it is, how to execute it well).
• Product Localization
  This is where research is distilled into a cohesive, culturally appropriate marketing strategy. Besides ensuring messages are conveyed accurately in the appropriate language(s), highlight key factors that will appeal to your specific audience: In Southeast Asian marketing, for example, Pepsodent had to forego highlighting that their toothpaste would whiten teeth, as some locals used betel nuts to blacken their teeth, and therefore the message would not resonate. Every detail counts: do certain colors convey certain messages in the target culture? Does a style of packaging (gaudy or very simple) send a positive or negative message? Are certain words or phrases considered too aggressive? Every market has different beliefs and needs; localize yours accordingly.
• Laws of the land
  As you develop your overall strategy, it is essential to delve into the specific regulatory climate as it could majorly impact both how and what you market. Many countries have specific (and well enforced) laws about the appropriate content for a campaign and the claims or specials which can be promoted in it. For example, in America, we have a relatively loose standard about using terms like “best in the market” or “top selling product,” but on continents like Europe and Asia, this type of verbiage is much more strongly restricted.
• Direct Entry is Key
  Direct Entry provides improved delivery because mail is sorted based on the receiving countries postal requirements.  Also, transit times can be carefully monitored.  Direct Entry means it is processed in the USPS and taken directly to the receiving country’s postal system via air, land or sea.

• Partnerships Are Invaluable
  In most cases, the best guidance on a new country’s regulations, cultural nuances and preferences comes from those who are already deeply engrossed in that country. Consider forming partnerships with firms in that region or individual consultants to assist you in understanding the unique business climate of that country.
• Trial and Error Is Your Friend
  Employing surveys and observing marketing metrics can help a business determine whether their international marketing strategy is succeeding, or requires some re-working. Take advantage of failures and criticism as a learning tool: it will help you remarket your product in a way that better appeals to your target audience. Some international markets are difficult to break into, and as such a certain level of trial-and-error is required.

How Three Dog Logistics Can Help

Once you’ve decided on the most effective plan for your international marking, Three Dog Logistics can help you facilitate your printed marketing campaign. Whether fliers or packages, magazines or postcards, Three Dog Logistics is here to help you and your business ship and mail international pieces quickly, efficiently and at a cost-effective rate. We are ISAL and IPA certified; IPA which is faster and ISAL which is less expensive. For both, we can offer the most competitive rates available. All of our international mail originates in the US – not foreign post offices. Still the overall benefit is that we take care of all the hassles of international.

We are excited to partner with your business to help increases your profitability and reach—for more information on our international services, please contact a member of our Three Dog team today!

The post The Basics of International Marketing first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.

According to the 2015 DMA Response Rate Report, direct mail response rates outperforms all digital channels combined by almost 600%.

How do you know they’ll open the envelope?

Every April, you might notice more solicitations for mortgages, credit cards, or insurance offers arriving in your mailbox in a plain orange #10 envelope. You see, April is tax refund season, so those still receiving a paper check will be on the lookout for those orange envelopes carrying their tax refund. Marketers are taking advantage of the situation by placing their solicitations in the same important-looking orange envelopes, and you better believe those are getting opened immediately.

It’s important to design a mail piece that will stand out in the mailbox and ensure your prospects are listening to what you’re offering. 90% of the battle is getting them to open the package. The reason why direct mail consistently produces a greater ROI than digital marketing is because it’s tangible and right in front of them.

While most of the time it’s not advantageous to send your mail piece in a plain orange envelope, there are many cost-effective designs that can be created depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Be creative and/or work with a supplier that can assist in the design to ensure your message is being heard.

You’ve created the perfect package, but is what’s inside as good as the outside?

Have you ever gotten a present with cool wrapping and a crazy bow, only to be disappointed by what’s inside? If you have, then you know that regardless of how exciting the outside of your direct mail piece is, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

To take advantage of the above statistics, the content and/or premium inside the package needs to wow them. Use technology like barcodes, QR codes, and URLs to offer free gifts and personalization when presenting your offer. Keep in mind the USPS offers Promotions & Incentives when integrating direct mail with mobile technology. Or contact Three Dog Logistics for more information by calling 410-284-5494 x250.

The post The Beauty of Direct Mail – How to Get Your Mail Pieces Opened first appeared on Three Dog Logistics.