Making Direct Mail ‘Irresistible’

Want to make your direct mail irresistible? Take inspiration from The Standard Group, a print marketing and logistics company located in central and eastern Pennsylvania that recently won the 2017 Irresistible Mail Award from the United States Postal Service.

The USPS Irresistible Mail Award is a quarterly contest that recognizes innovative and effective mail piece designs. According to the USPS, “Some mail pieces are effective, some are engaging, and some are even beautiful. But very few can be fairly coined ‘Irresistible Mail.’”

The Standard Group’s Holiday Inkling Mystery Game was all four.

Not only was the Inkling game a highly creative and effective campaign (earning 22% response rate and 63% overall engagement), but it was also a self-promotion piece that was concepted and produced internally by The Standard Group. It showed that not only can they talk the multichannel talk, but they can walk the multichannel walk.

The Holiday Inkling Mystery Game leveraged direct mail, email, social media, and mobile to engage customers, prospects, and employees with an online experience inspired by the board game CLUE. The Standard Group sent out 2,500 personalized invitations featuring 16 customized elements, including a pop-up cube with a picture of the customer's sales specialist dressed as a suspect in the game. (Now that will get your attention!)

Recipients were directed to their own personalized web pages, which acted as the game board. There they could interact with the game, pick up clues, tools, and win prizes, and learn about The Standard Group’s full range of services along the way. They could directly go to their personalized websites (pURLs) or use a personalized QR Code that led to a customized mobile version of the game.

Each day, players were directed to a new room, revealing a new character and new activities. Active players received daily email reminders to continue to play, investigate the mystery, and win prizes. Reminders and invitations were also placed on the company’s social media channels, and participants were encouraged to participate in an Inkling social media contest, as well.

In total, the campaign used six channels: direct mail (including variable data and digital printing), personalized websites, email, social media, mobile, and promotional products.

Cracking the case

Here’s how the campaign all came together.

The objective was to engage customers and prospects and entice them to learn more about The Standard Group’s services in a way that allowed them to have fun at the same time. So Thanh Nguyen, CMO at The Standard Group, assembled a team of employees from different departments throughout the company to create a multi-channel mystery game.  

“We asked our customers, prospects, and employees to explore our online board game and to solve the disappearance of the character ‘Roi,’” Nguyen says. “Each day another suspect, room, and tool were revealed, allowing users to search for clue cards. By process of elimination, the user was able to determine what happened to Roi. In the process of searching, the customer learned more about our capabilities and the tools we use.”

Static suspects were:

• Colonel Cyan: The Maestro of Marketing;
• Miss Magenta: The Countess of Creative;
• Professor Yellow: The Pro of Procurement; and
• Dr. Green: The Agent of Advertising.

The sixth character, Mr./Ms. Black: The Shining Star of Sales, was variable, played by the recipient’s sales rep.

“While all the suspects were played by our employees, Mr./Ms. Black was a variable element played by our sales and account team and was personalized to the customer throughout the game,” says Nguyen. “This included on the pop-up cube, the inside of the self-mailer envelope, in the reminder emails and the personalized website.”

The Standard Group had customized versions of the Inkling game for their customers, prospects, employees, and TSI Associates [their promotional division] employees.

The “rooms” in which the clues were hidden represented The Standard Group’s areas of service, including the Press Room, the Marketing Management Room, the Warehouse and Logistics Room, the Direct Mail Room, and the Promotions Room.  While in each room, participants could click on icons that led to elements of the game or tips and tricks of working with the company or that educated them about the company’s full range of services.

The “tools” used in the game were carefully selected to simultaneously entertain and educate, as well. They represented the company’s tools of the trade, including:

• Ink can, representing offset, digital, and dimensional printing;
• Computer mouse, representing marketing management, and automation;
• Packing tape gun, representing warehousing, fulfillment, and logistics;
• Letter scale, representing direct mail; and
• Trophy, representing promotions and apparel.

At the heart of the promotion was a self-mailer with an interactive pop-up cube (representing a game die), personalized with fun photography of all the Inkling suspects.

The direct-mail piece was designed with more than 26 variations and 16 personalized elements unique to each customer. Personalized content included the character photo of each recipient’s salesperson, personalized website address, personalized QR Code, sales contact info, and more.

Another highly effective element of the game was the integration of the promotion with the sales team. The Standard Group provided tracking on participant activity to assist the sales team with follow up. Although the company tracked all actions by the customer, including each time a recipient accessed each personalized URL and personalized QR Code, it emailed alerts when participants took major actions such as:

• The first time the participant accessed their personalized website;
• Each time the participant collected a prize (there are six total prizes); and
• When they solved the mystery of Roi.

“We also lead scored the customer actions and delivered the results to the sales team for follow up, prioritized by customer engagement,” says Nguyen.

Prizes were spread out throughout the online game board. Customers found them by clicking on the Inkling “icons.” Engagement was defined as the percent of people clicking through pages, trying to solve the mystery, and earning prizes. Prizes included a USB charger, car charger, and Bluetooth ear buds, among others. Only by correctly guessing the Mystery of Roi were customers able to collect the Tech Case. “Crack the case and you get the case,” says Nguyen.

To encourage more buzz and social sharing of the promotion, The Standard Group created a social-media photo contest in which customers and employees could submit their best Inkling Game suspect submission for a chance to win a free catered party for them and up to 20 of their co-workers.

Outstanding results: ‘the first thing I did every morning’

The results of the campaign were outstanding. TSG mailed more than 2,500 direct mail pieces and emailed to a list of nearly 2,000.

• Response rate: 21.68%
• Percent engagement: 63.97% (defined as people who participated in the game and won prizes)
• 54.7 page views per unique visitor

“We had a huge number of page views and engagement,” says Nguyen. “Customers enjoyed the creativity and game experience. And learning about our product offering is just bonus.”

The Standard Group also collected a wide variety of positive comments about the game. Things like, “I really enjoyed the Inkling Game… It was the first thing I did every morning!” and “What a fun promotion!” They also received a number of requests for creating similar promotions for their own companies. “A lot of people were thinking, ‘Can we also utilize the same framework?,’” Nguyen says. “That was the whole intention – to create a turnkey solution that allows us to turn any product or service, any prize, and any industry, into an engaging and educational game for your company.”

As a quarterly winner of the USPS Irresistible Mail contest, the Holiday Inkling Mystery direct mailer will be showcased at the 2017 National Postal Forum in Baltimore, Maryland. The mailer will compete against three other quarterly winners for the chance to become Grand Champion at the National Postal Forum on May 22, 2017.