Are your customers churning at a higher rate? Spending less? Contacting the call center more often? If this sounds familiar, it’s time to reexamine your marketing campaign, paying special attention to these key areas: design, product information, targeted educational content, cross promotion and customer care.

Kodak did just that prior to launching its Play Ball campaign, which offered recipients a chance to win a trip to the pro baseball championship in exchange for registering at a landing page that collected survey information from respondents.

5 direct mail messaging techniques Kodak used

Here are five techniques Kodak used to help its messaging resonate with targets:

1. Variable design promoted the campaign’s baseball theme by incorporating one of 28 great stadium images with the Kodak brand elements and logo. Respondents received an image of the baseball stadium closest to their geographic location.
2. The mailer included the value proposition for the KODAK NEXPRESS and KODAK DIRECTPRESS Solutions for a specific vertical market, such as education or health care, based on the recipient’s area of interest.
3. Copy focused on a topic based on the vertical market. For the education market, for example, the lead emphasized that educational institutions face competition in recruitment as well as budget pressures that require any print solution to come with a solid ROI. The content focused on opening the door to data-driven communication using digital solutions from Kodak.
4. The mailer spotlighted two solutions, but also identified other services from Kodak, including business evaluation, business development and training services.
5. Woven through the narrative was the concept of Kodak as the best partner to help grow your business. The partnership concept is the lead on the website landing page and continues in the messaging of a follow-up reminder e-mail for those who do not immediately respond.

The results? Kodak closed more than $5 million in revenue and added more than 500 leads to its database while opening the door for opportunities for other KODAK Solutions, including workflow and proofing.

P.C. (Pat) McGrew, EDP, is the Data-driven Communication Evangelist in the Business to Business Solutions Group at Eastman Kodak Company.