10 Steps to Squeezing More out of your Marketing Budget

10 Steps to Squeezing
More Out of Your Marketing Budget

Why does your marketing budget
always seem to run dry by the end of the year?
No matter how hard you’ve tried to cut costs, enhance ROI and streamline
the efforts of your team, it never goes far enough. Chances are, you’re looking at the wrong things.
More Out of Your Marketing Resources

For
Instance... Did you know for every dollar you spend
on documents, it’s costing you as much as
$10-$20 to produce, store and manage them?
How often do you think of your
marketing documents?

The cost you pay to vendors is just the
top of the stack, the part you actually see.
It’s what you don’t see that’s costing you the most.

And it’s more than expenses;
it’s the costs of missed
opportunity.
Such as...

• The cost of time better spent on something
that directly impacts your bottom line
• Upsell opportunities you’re missing
• Customers you aren’t reaching

If you apply the Pareto Principle to your
marketing department, 20% of the budget
is probably producing 80% of the results.
The same is true for your time.

The key is to reduce or eliminate the things
that don’t matter much so you can invest more of
your time and resources into what does.
We’ll show you how to do both.

For most companies, that
starts with taking a hard look
at your campaign assets
and how you’re managing
them.
First, let’s cut
the fat from
your marketing
campaigns.

Assess your current process and identify the
biggest expenses and inefficiencies.
One

If this sounds complicated, start with
the finished product and work backward.
Distribution Packaging Printing Formatting Document Approval
Data Consolidation and Verification Solicit Bids from Vendors Creation

Document Management Success Story
A large North American financial institution with more than 100 print
suppliers, over 3,000 printed items and document workflows wanted to
reduce its print costs and streamline its process.

Document Management Success Story
The company moved to a single-source solution for managing
documents, print, production and logistics.
This move saved the company thousands of dollars.

Convert Paper Documents to Digital
Two

• 7.5% of all document files are lost
• 90% are shuffled among multiple locations,
leading to lost time and frustration
• Marketing pros spend 50% of their time looking for
files but only 5-15% of their time reading them
(Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers)

Every extra stack of marketing materials costs money not only to print,
but to ship, store, shred and recycle.
What Is Paper Really Costing You?
For large organizations, that can add up to hundreds
of thousands of wasted dollars!

Converting your marketing collateral to digital assets that
can be printed only when they’re needed reduces the total cost
of document ownership by 25-35%.
(Source: DATA research)
The Solution: Printing On Demand

Advantages of Printing On Demand
• Lower cost of ownership
• Faster communication with less lead time
• Smaller, more segmented print runs that can be
targeted to specific markets and tested
• 30% reduction in waste on average*
• More sustainable business practices
(*Averages based on DATA research)

Printing On Demand Success Story
Consider the savings two
major financial institutions
achieved by adopting a print
on demand model.

Automate Document Processes
Three

• Obtaining necessary approvals for marketing
documents can take weeks or even months
• The costs of missed deadlines can be
substantial, especially for seasonal marketing
campaigns

• Streamline document approvals by building in
notifications and maintaining online records
• Create workflows to automate ordering
• Set up online inventory tracking
• Use data to determine volumes and reduce waste

Examples of Automation at Work
A financial institution needs a better way to manage and
track its direct mail, welcome packages, loyalty materials and more.

By creating an online portal to manage and track its
marketing materials, the company can easily replicate
campaigns across multiple regions with minor revisions
that can be made digitally.
This reduces the time involved in reviews and
approvals and the costs of execution.

Consolidate Your Vendors
Four

• 55% of C-level marketers said their biggest
challenge was lack of resources to execute
campaigns
• 73% said they would consolidate vendors if they
could achieve the same or better ROI.
(Source: 2013 NetFinance Marketing Automation Trends benchmarking report)

Questions to Consider When Consolidating:
• What was the total cost of using vendors in the previous year?
• What specific services did each provide?
• Where are the areas of overlap?
• How much time did we spend managing them?

The Power of Consolidating Vendors
A financial services provider wanted to reduce the risks, time and
costs involved with using multiple vendors to print, kit and ship its
marketing materials.

By moving to a single provider that could
consolidate two shipments into one, the company
trimmed an average of 3 business days off its
process and saved $7,000 in packaging and freight
costs per campaign!

Centralize Campaign Management
Five

The costs of inefficiencies is exponential when
multiplied across hundreds of locations.
Individual locations need the ability to easily
customize marketing materials.

The Power of Centralizing Collateral
A credit card issuer wanted to increase marketing
efficiency among its 280 locations and lower production
costs.

By moving to an online portal, the company can maintain a
central database of marketing documents and other
materials that can be tailored to fit the needs of each
individual site.

This saves thousands of dollars each year in production
costs while enabling greater transparency, flexibility and
brand consistency.

You’re doing all you can to reduce costs, but that’s only
half of the equation.
What about growing revenue?
Hang tight...it’s time for the second act!

Boost Loyalty with Targeted Campaigns
Six

Yet many marketers still
struggle with this.
Why?
We all know better
targeting builds
customer loyalty and
strengthens the
impact of your
marketing
campaigns.

5 Common Targeting Hurdles
1 Inability to consolidate data from many sources
2 Difficulty accessing data
3 Lack of resources to analyze data for insights
4 Difficulty executing campaigns across channels
5 Inability to effectively analyze results

Putting Targeting Into Action
A multi-national retailer of industrial tools and
equipment wanted to entice its Canadian customers to
shop online. These customers had no online account or
an outdated account.

Using DATA to analyze existing customers, the company
identified the 7,000 best possible prospects and sent
them direct mail or an email encouraging them to visit a
microsite and register their account.

The company even offered a free emergency phone
charger or digital camcorder with minimum purchases as
incentives.

Results
• 1,500 online orders
• 17% direct-mail response rate (industry average = 4%)
• 13% contact centre response (industry average = 8%)
• $500K in sales (10 x the investment!)

Analyze Promotional Spending
Seven

• What customer groups and regions have had
the best response to your latest campaign?
• What was the ROI of your direct mail?
• Which channels were most effective this year?
• Least effective?

Every marketer wants to answer these questions, but it’s
difficult when you’re receiving feedback from multiple
channels...managed by multiple vendors...across multiple
regions.
How do you bridge the divide between you and your
customer data?

By moving all your marketing campaign assets and
customer data into a single, integrated database,
you’ll have all the information you need right at
your fingertips.

This will enable you to make better decisions
about how you allocate spending.

Use Data to Identify Upsell Opportunities
Eight

• Who are your most loyal customers?
• Which additional products or services are they
most likely to purchase?
• What messages or promotions will they be
most receptive to?

Using Data To Upsell Works!
A health services retailer did this by using Canadian Census
data to identify household demographics within target areas
and using third-party retail data sets to determine which
products they were most likely to buy.

The retailer discovered its actual customers were much
younger than the people they were targeting.
After adjusting its messaging accordingly, the retailer saw a
considerable lift in sales.

Increase Brand Awareness & Perception
Nine

Boosting Brand Awareness on a Budget
• Educate your customers with great content
• Find opportunities for cross-promotion
• Look for earned media opportunities
• Increase social media engagement
• Encourage customers to write reviews

Align Marketing, Sales and Services
Ten

Tips for Improving Alignment
• Establish shared goals and KPIs
• Ensure a consistent process for communicating
with customers
• Increase transparency and collaboration by
ensuring everyone has access to the same data
• Use a scorecard to measure results

Using a single database to manage customer data, content
and communications allows you to do all this in a more
scalable, cost-effective way.

To learn more about how our solutions can help you squeeze more juice out of your
marketing resources, contact us today.
DATA Marketing Communications has the technology and
expertise to develop customized solutions to streamline your
document management and enhance the ROI of your marketing
campaigns. We do this by consolidating your data, content and
communications into a single digital warehouse.

10 Steps to Squeezing More out of your Marketing Budget

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