Offline: The 100% Open Rate with Unboxing Experiences with Dru Carpenter (episode 154)
by April Buencamino-dyToday’s Offline marketing expert is Dru Carpenter, the co-founder at Slippy.io – an amazing tool for creating personalised print inserts to put in your parcels. We talk about the power of print inserts and how their 100% open rate can have a huge impact on your customer retention.
Listen now for free:
Subscribe to Keep Optimising on your favourite Podcast App
Why You Should Consider Personalised Inserts
Dru says the current trend is that brands are looking more and more into offline marketing, especially with privacy concerns in the digital space.
The unboxing experience is the only time you can target every single one of your customers, so it’s really worth getting into. Inserts come with the products consumers purchase, and they may not be relevant to the end user for now, but you can always personalize them and make the content relevant.
Inserts as an Education Piece
Educational content is a priority. This is what makes inserts valuable, and Dru suggests that brands start with this type of insert.
And for Dru, education is not only about product tips and recommendations but also covers the story of the product that was purchased.
There’s also potential here for repurposing your email marketing content when doing inserts, so there are a lot of possibilities you can cover.
Inserts as a Sales-Driving Strategy
Dru says inserts can work as a sales-driving initiative in different ways.
For a referral or affiliate program, some Slippy clients do include business card-style inserts that customers can keep in their wallets. These have dynamic QR codes with a referral link already embedded. Inserts can also drive customers to local retail shops that carry a brand’s products, with directions on how to get there.
Essentially, inserts can link to a variety of things that will drive more sales for your brand.
The Personalisation Potential
There’s so much personalisation potential in inserts, and people can become overwhelmed by the endless possibilities.
Dru suggests that you start with simple campaigns, and experiment and expand later on. What’s exciting about inserts is that you know who you’re targeting and when your customer is going to see the content. This enables you to make your campaign really targeted.
About Slippy
With Slippy, the key to running a successful marketing insert campaign is personalisation.
They integrate with your sales channel and your marketing stack to get a relevant set of customer data for personalisation. They will also integrate with your fulfillment stack to make sure that the fulfillment process remains seamless.
This may not be something you can sign up for and use immediately, but once implemented, it can be a great marketing channel for any brand.
Insider Tips
If we’ve inspired someone to take their first step with offline marketing – what do they need to know to give themselves the best chance of success?
Don’t get overwhelmed by personalisation when you’re starting out with offline marketing. Identify the key priorities for your business, and then focus on those initial use cases first and expand later on.
Once you’ve started of course you’ve got to ‘keep optimising’! So what’s your favourite way to improve offline marketing performance?
Keep experimenting. Expand the use cases you’re working on and run new initiatives. To do this, make sure you have your basics right, track results, define what success for you is, and then go from there.
If someone listening wants to learn more about offline marketing is there one cheap/free resource you’d recommend?
Dru recommends three of their partners as resources:
Check out all three for blogs, webinars, and podcasts on offline marketing.
Crystal ball time – what’s coming up in the next 6-12 months that we should be getting ready for in offline marketing?
Aside from wanting to see personalised unboxing experiences become more widespread, Dru says acquisition and prospecting are going to be more prevalent for Shopify stores.
It’s becoming more important for brands to diversify their acquisition strategy and look at other channels, and Dru is looking forward to that.
Interview Links
Dru on Social media:
Sponsored by…
Slippy enables eCommerce brands to turn the unboxing moment into a personalized marketing channel.
Marketing teams can design beautiful inserts on our platform that print automatically during pick and pack.
Personalization flows match each customer with the relevant template and can drive retention, reviews, referrals & much more.
Claim your three month free trial now
Attention Marketers! Tired of generic messages that fall flat? Stretching your digital spend with no success?
Say hello to Paperplanes – the programmatic direct mail revolution! 🚀📫
With advanced analytics and personalised triggers, we deliver targeted messages that get noticed.
No more wasted resources, just cost-effective, sustainable marketing that hits the bullseye! 🎯🎉
Join us and unleash the power of modern direct mail. Contact us now and elevate your marketing game with Paperplanes! 💪
GOODBYE SNAIL MAIL, HELLO SMART MAIL!