events

optilyz geht in nächste Runde BP

optilyz is stepping up the direct mail game

Combine different mailing products to run even more successful direct mail campaigns!

We’re excited to introduce our brand new booking funnel, a powerful way to create campaigns by combining different mail products into one envelope. This will have everything you need to elevate your game and make direct mail a highly profitable channel. As of now, you can do the following:

  • combine multiple items easily into one envelope
  • configure alle products according to your individual ideas
  • perform A/B tests on e.g. formats, incentives, and visuals effortlessly

Thanks to the new options, you are able to book extremely profitable campaigns in just a few clicks.

Combine multiple products

A single mail piece can quickly become a limitation and won’t provide you with enough space to correctly convey your message. Now with our multi-products selection you can easily combine letters, flyers, and postcards together in one envelope.

Benefit from advanced print products configuration

You won’t get a second chance to make a great first impression. The quality of your printed materials matters to us, therefore we’ve super powered the product configuration to let you personalise the touch and feel of your products.

Run powerful A/B tests

Creating an A/B test in optilyz is as simple as uploading two or more visual variations for a product. Start comparing how your target audience reacts to your designs, offers, or messages and uncover insights to improve your next campaigns.

We have also planned these exciting innovations for 2018

We are constantly developing our platform so that your direct mail campaigns will be even more successful in the future. Look forward to the following innovations for the year 2018!

Increase your delivery rate

The quality of your customer address data will significantly influence your campaign’s performance. To ensure that every address is valid, we are implementing a new data validation tool that will automatically spot incorrect addresses. If possible it will correct them and otherwise delete them. Once you have booked your campaign, you will be able to download the corrected addresses to improve your own database.

We have noticed that on average, 6% of uploaded addresses are invalid and will therefore not reach their destination. Every print material sent out to an invalid address will negatively impact your campaign’s results. Thanks to our integrated address cleaning tool, we enable you to avoid the costs of unsendable addresses and therefore save money.

Address your customers with relevant content

For a direct mail campaign to be successful, it’s crucial to address the appropriate message to the right audience. You will soon be able to leverage your segmented data by assigning a visual variation to each group of customers.

For example, if you decide to segment your data by gender, you can easily assign a particular postcard to your female audience and a different one to your male audience. The success of your campaign lies mainly in the quality of your data and the coherence of your campaign.

Get your print materials verified for free

Designing for print materials can quickly become a challenge, which is why we support you by providing design templates. To make sure your designs are respecting the postal service guidelines before you even book anything with us, we are introducing a new way for you to request a FREE design verification. Simply upload your designs onto the platform and request a verification. We will review them and get back to you in flash with feedback regarding the printability of your visuals.

So tell us, why are you still printing with a mailing house? It’s time to make a change and step up your direct mail game for good! The most innovative European companies enhance their direct mail success with optilyz. Contact us today for a free demo tour of our platform.

Salesforce BP

Live Communication – How to plan successful live campaigns

Throughout the past decade, online marketing has become of vital importance in the marketing mix for companies of all sizes. The rise of Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and other online networks gave advertising platforms the chance to emerge where marketers could perfectly target their audience. Online marketing became the silver bullet of advertising and marketing managers began to deprioritize traditional marketing channels.

As of today, the internet audience is overloaded with online ads. Ad blocking software is getting popular, and consumers are unable to focus on offers that are actually interesting for them. Online marketing metrics are distorted by click baiting tactics and botnets.

While many marketing channels have come to a saturation point, the methodologies in offline marketing have remained roughly the same. A balanced combination of online and offline marketing is the key to a successful marketing strategy. The challenge for marketing managers is to understand how to leverage different channels effectively to achieve high customer lifetime values by means of powerful brands and sustainable customer relationships. The close cross-linking of several channels into an integrated marketing strategy is frequently referred to as omni-channel marketing. Your customers don’t care about the actual channel, what they want is a floating customer journey across different media – no matter whether online or offline.

Next to optilyz’ powerful offline marketing channels, others are arising and gaining relevance. One of these channels is live communication. Live communication can be a powerful channel to deliver a lasting brand message and create sustainable customer interactions. While the outcome of live communication events had been difficult to measure, they always provided real life experiences for potential customers.

5 steps for successful live communication

1) Find the right location

Finding the right location is key to a successful live communication event. Companies need to define their target groups and find the location with strong potential to reach potential brand advocates. Customer footfall is the second essential factor when choosing a location. Finally, the timing of the event is vital. Seasonal changes can have a strong influence on both, customer footfall and peoples’ interest your product or service.

2) High-class booth concept

Your booth is the business card of your company. Based on your live communication display, potential customers will decide, whether or not they want to spend more time with your brand. Your booth is the physical counterpart to your digital touchpoints like your website and social media accounts.

3) Professional staff

The promotion staff is the center of attention for your customers and its significance is often underestimated. These people foster the direct interaction with your most important asset: your customers.

4) Measuring the success of live communication

It is common practice to measure, evaluate and optimize marketing campaigns. Measuring the effects and the success of live communication events is naturally more difficult, but has become possible through modern tracking technologies. Companies like store2be allow their customer to track and measure similar metrics such as those used in online marketing.

5) Scaling live communication

For a marketing channel to be successful, it needs to be scalable. Live Communication is transformed in a scalable channel when it is provided as a one-stop-solution. Companies like store2be provide such a service.

By organizing staff, exhibition booth and the right locations from one partner, marketers are able to plan and execute their live communication events more efficiently. The concept of a one-stop-solution for live communication allows companies to create physical customer touchpoints in multiple locations at the same time or successively

This article was written by Dr. Marlon Braumann, founder and managing director at store2be. The mission of store2be is to build a global market network that enables brands to book targeted, measurable and scalable live communication events. The team of store2be helps you to find and book the perfect location, promotion staff and high-quality booths for your live communication event.

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How to run Offline Performance Marketing

There’s a few reasons why online marketing no longer is considered the silver bullet in customer acquisition (or was it ever?) – mostly it’s about significantly increased CPMs & CPCs (it’s getting crowded out there), the rise of Ad Blockers (25% of Germans and over 15% of Americans use those) and the fact that many advertisers are realizing that not every audience is efficiently targeted online (we’re not just talking about B2B marketing).

Offline marketing in comparison however does not fare too well either: Booking is intransparent and still very manual (isn’t it annoying to email back and forth with a bunch of service providers?), supplier quality is hard to (if at all) monitor and, last but not least, performance optimization is difficult (due to the lack of established methodologies and proper tools).

In the following, when we talk about offline marketing we’re not talking about stuff like ads in publications or out-of-home advertising. While these have their place and use, we’re more excited about offline channels that can be measured and optimized more comprehensively. Direct mail, maildrops, package inserts and flyering are some of those channels that we believe are often highly underrated, since they’re not only some of the most old-fashioned advertising techniques, but also still widely used. Why? Because they still work extremely well. While these channels face the same challenges any outbound channel does, i.e. that some perceive it as annoying (just like hardly anyone I know likes ads in social media or banners on websites), they remain very effective and are actually growing in volume.

Having said all that – how does one benefit from the good while reducing the bad? It’s about bringing the best of online and offline marketing together: By implementing comprehensive tracking and then taking a data-driven analytics approach, one can optimize offline marketing just like one improves the efficiency of online marketing campaigns. Systematically driving down customer acquisition costs thus makes offline marketing a viable addition to online channels – which may be worthwhile bringing into your marketing mix.

So here’s what you need to do: The times of running campaigns and hoping for an impact or simply attributing them to “branding” are (or should be) over. Online marketing has taught us how data-driven one can be and it’s time to put these learnings into action in offline marketing as well.

1. Define goals

Offline activities should systematically strive for clear goals, such as raising awareness, educating customers, building a brand or generating conversions. The times of disconnected campaigns are over – the upcoming era is about continuous and gradual optimization, to achieve clearly defined goals.

2. Leverage what you already know

While what works online does not necessarily work offline – it’s certainly a useful indication which direction to go into. It’s important to leverage all available data to set up high-performance campaigns. Looking at the visuals, taglines and incentives that worked in online marketing is usually a great starting point.

3. Figure out your targeting

The best campaign is useless if it doesn’t reach the proper audience. Put in the necessary (hard) work to ensure you minimize scattering loss. You should for example generate insights from current customers, like assessing who they are and where they live. Other data sources include demographics and the like.

4. Use conversion-driven design

When you create a new website, you know what conversion drivers are crucial (such as trust seals). The same is true for offline marketing: any flyer that is not designed in a conversion-driven manner will underperform. When you set up an offline marketing campaign you need to leverage those insights.

5. Consider statistical significance

Only testing one visual is not what one would do online. Also, in online marketing a campaign will always be set up in a manner where volumes are large enough to achieve statistical significance. The same has to apply for offline channels. Just testing one visual for instance will not enable performance optimization.

6. Track everything

Online marketing derives its power from data – which is generated via comprehensive tracking. Do the same in your offline campaigns: you should know exactly what design, with which tagline and which incentive was distributed where and when. Remember that “no data” always means “no optimization”.

7. Iterate and optimize

You are never “done” optimizing. Constantly assess your data and figure out what works best. Just like online marketing this requires a proper tool (rather than just an Excel file). If you want online marketing-like performance, it’s essential to also put in the same kind of effort and obsession about constantly improving.

Final remark: We’re not saying that offline marketing is for everyone. There is no such thing as a universally useful channel. It’s crucial that one carefully assesses the up- and downsides in order to figure out whether it makes sense per se and how optimisation can take place. Direct mail will also rarely be the only channel that advertisers use – in the end, it’s about figuring out the marketing mix that ensures that customer acquisition takes place in a scalable, cost-effective and systematic manner.