I’m also signed up for USPS Informed Delivery emails, so I get an email each morning that contains details of what we’ll be receiving that day in our mailbox.
The catalogs we receive typically end up on the end table in our living room to browse through. In fact, at this present moment, we have about 10 catalogs that we plan to look through again this weekend so we can place some Holiday gift orders. I also have a number of direct mail offers I’ve kept as well and I have those in an organizer in the corner of our kitchen cupboard.
As I was walking down my driveway the other day to get my mail, I started wondering about my mail habits and how closely they match other people’s habits. So, I decided to do some research.
According to a recent update from USPS, over 20% of U.S. households are now signed up for USPS Informed Delivery and the subscription rate is growing with over 350,000 new subscribers weekly. 79% of Informed Delivery users are engaging with the daily emails and 82% of these users are engaging in the mornings. According to the USPS update we received, the emails are generating a 68% Email Open Rate (which is over 3 times higher than the industry average email open rate of 18%) and a 2-6% Click Through Rate. As a marketer, those stats get me excited!
Other Fun Facts
Here are some other fun facts/statistics I found interesting:
At Nahan, we are proud to offer award-winning catalog and direct marketing services as a part of our product offering. If you are in interested in learning more, contact us today!
Bio: Melissa Fransen is our Marketing Manager. She started with Nahan in May of 2017. Melissa is responsible for Nahan’s marketing initiatives, which includes everything from conference planning to social media initiatives. In her spare time, Melissa enjoys spending time with her husband and enjoying time in the outdoors with family and friends.
This summer, I placed an order on a website for a family member’s birthday present. Shortly after placing the order, I received a postcard with an offer of 20% off another order. I was looking for another gift for a different family member, so I placed another order, using my 20% off coupon. A few weeks later, I received another postcard with an offer and guess what? I placed another order. I also followed the company’s social media channels.
This is an example of a tried and true trigger mailing loyalty marketing campaign working its magic. And, yes, it works! I went from a first-time shopper to becoming a repeat customer, keeping this brand top of mind along the way. The product quality was great and I received excellent service throughout the process. I was also reminded of my mailed coupon offers through email marketing and through these trigger mailings, I have become a loyal customer to this brand.
How do Trigger Mailings Work?
Have you heard the term Variable Data Printing (VDP)? If not, variable data printing allows your printed piece to be completely customized to an individual based on data and triggers. It is basically the opportunity for 1:1 marketing using print. Check out our blog that is all about VDP and its advantages.
Think about the trigger mailing example I mentioned above. I was sent trigger mailings based on being a first-time customer. They lured me in after my first purchase with an offer. Then, they lured me in with another offer. I became a repeat customer right off the bat. I also plan to do some of my holiday shopping through this brand due to a great experience with all three purchases.
Getting Started with a Trigger Mailing Program Concept
There are many ways that trigger mailings can be used. Think through your customer’s journey with your brand and how you could use triggered mailings to drive business. Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself:
How can I take a first-time customer and turn them into a loyal customer?
How can I take a customer back to the buying journey with their abandoned cart items?
How can I reach out to lapsed customers and bring them back as a customer?
After you’ve thought through these scenarios, then think about all of the marketing channels that you are using to reach that customer and what makes sense from a timing perspective to keep your brand in front of them through all of these channels. Think about where mail makes sense in this equation.
Working with a Printer on a Trigger Mailing Program
Once you have the strategy ready, the next part is executing it. We have a whole team of data experts at Nahan who can help with API integrations, CRM integrations, and custom programming. Once things are set up systematically, the rest is easy. The trigger mailings you have developed automatically take place based on the concept/behaviors you have identified on your plan. Our team at Nahan holds multiple industry certifications to ensure the protection of your data from beginning to end. We help our customers utilize triggered mailings to drive business, and we can help you too.
Ready to Get Started?
Find out more about our marketing services and how we can help you today!
At Nahan, we pride ourselves as being a tech-forward printer who drives results. We invite the opportunity to talk with you about the power of trigger mailings and how you can get started. Why work with Nahan for your trigger mailing program? Check out our 30-second video on what sets us apart. Contact us today!
Bio: Melissa Fransen is our Marketing Manager. She started with Nahan in May of 2017. Melissa is responsible for Nahan’s marketing initiatives, which includes everything from conference planning to social media initiatives. In her spare time, Melissa enjoys spending time with her husband and enjoying time in the outdoors with family and friends.
We are thrilled to announce that the Nahan website is the recipient of a W3 Gold Award in the category of General Website – Professional Services. The W3 Awards recognize digital excellence in the categories of websites, apps, social content, videos, podcasts, and marketing. Our team is incredibly excited to be awarded this honor that recognizes the hard work of our website launch team and the talents of the team at Lawrence & Schiller. This accomplishment would truly not have been possible without the collaboration of Lawrence & Schiller – a huge thank you to their dedicated team! The award win comes just one year after our website launch in October of 2019. To celebrate both our W3 Awards win and our new website’s one-year anniversary, I spoke with the members of the website launch team to gather insight on the goals and accomplishments of the website launch.
Our website launch team included the following Nahan team members
Melissa Fransen (Marketing Manager)
Aaron Weekes (Director of Business Support Services)
Curt Tillotson (Chief Operating Officer)
Jim Hesch (Client Service Team Leader)
Adam Rohde (Department Leader – IT)
John Klumb (Vice President of Sales and Marketing)
Brenda Blonigen (Senior Account Manager)
Joseph Jachimiec (Security Administrator)
Our Nahan website launch team (from left to right): Melissa Fransen, Aaron Weekes, Curt Tillotson, Jim Hesch, Adam Rohde, John Klumb, Brenda Blonigen, and Joseph Jachimiec
What were some of your goals with the new website?
Melissa: We wanted our website to represent Nahan and our brand, be SEO (Search Engine Optimization)-focused, and be optimized for lead generation. We also wanted it to focus on our people, thought-leadership, and our culture.
John: One of my goals was to have a robust group of blogs available that would be added to on a regular basis. My hope was that this would drive repeat visitors and make us known as a leader in providing valuable content. Thanks to the efforts of many, this is a reality.
What did you enjoy most about the process of relaunching the website?
Aaron: I really enjoyed identifying and creating the profiles of people using the website. The process really helped us understand the content that different consumers would want to know and the best way to tell our story to them. It was a great exercise that Lawrence & Schiller helped us through.
Lawrence & Schiller: It was a unique and rewarding experience to work with our long-time print partner and help them to create a website that is as innovative as they are. For a business who is always dedicated to producing the best work, it was great to turn the tables and put the focus on Nahan.
Brenda: I thoroughly enjoyed learning how much it takes to create a website and the intricate parts of it. It was a great learning experience for me. The Nahan and Lawrence & Schiller team members were so knowledgeable and I learned so much from all of them. They were fun, creative, great thinkers, and such a joy to work with. Wow! Such amazing people.
Does anything in particular stand out to you as something cool or noteworthy you learned during the process?
Jim: I thought it was pretty cool how easy it was to add content. We were able to add some awesome pictures to our website. I’m happy that it’s able to show some friendly team faces.
Melissa: It was a fun process as to how our team built the site tailored to all of the different personas of people who come to the site – from job seekers to community members to customers to print professionals that have been in the industry their entire career to print newbies. There is something for everyone and we continue to build blogs tailored to all of the different people that come to our website.
Adam: I loved the cross-department collaboration that went into the build. The chance to highlight individuals and show who we are was probably my favorite part of the process.
Lawrence & Schiller: Nahan assembled the perfect team to tackle this project. When I say perfect, I really mean that. It was a diverse group of folks from multiple departments and parts of the business, but the special part was how focused their team was when it came to decision-making. As L&S led discussions on vision, audience, content, design and functionality – the Nahan team (time and time again) would collaborate and reach a final, definitive direction on where they wanted to go. This was also a nod to Melissa who had a passion for innovation but a commitment to team.
From your perspective, what was the most difficult challenge you faced during the launch?
Aaron: We took the approach to start from scratch instead of just improving the current site. This was challenging because it took time and caused us to rethink everything, but it was worth the investment.
Joseph: The Nahan team was so fun to work with, and Melissa was a great team lead, so I honestly don’t remember any particularly difficult challenges. Lawrence & Schiller was top-notch, very friendly, talented, and professional. I’m just glad I was able to play a part in the launch from a security perspective, as well as helping with the design, photography, and content. It’s a great website!
Brenda: My greatest challenge was just to understand the whys behind the creative portion of what we were trying to accomplish. How exactly information pulls into a website was a mystery to me, but so very interesting learning this.
Curt: The most difficult part of the process was deciding which words we wanted to make sure that we mentioned on the site so that we show up on Google searches. It was a daunting task, but Melissa and our team at Lawrence & Schiller showed us how to work through it.
What made you the most proud during the process of launching the website?
John: I am proud of the fact the new website does such a great job of conveying who we are and what Nahan is and that we’re not just a printer.
Jim: I’m proud of our collaboration and brainstorming sessions. And then we would all get together with each addition and review . . . oh my, I love smart people.
Lawrence & Schiller: Adding the photo/video shoot to this project really made the website go from “great” to “award winning”. Nahan’s decision to invest in capturing the company culture, people and processes through photography and videography allowed L&S to design a website that was modern, forward-thinking and simply different from your typical print shop. The website truly delivers on its promise of being world-class.
Curt: Our Nahan team that brainstormed our website was amazing. They brought energy, creativity, and competency to the project well beyond what I ever could have imagined. They worked as a team and got it done.
Feel free to explore our website and let us know what you think!
Bio: Camille Lehmann is on the Marketing team and started with Nahan in January of 2020. Camille is responsible for assisting in Nahan’s marketing strategies and goals. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Marketing with a specialization in Project Management. In her spare time, Camille enjoys writing, going to coffee shops, and spending time with friends and family.
Meet Jenny. Jenny started with Nahan in 1996. Jenny leads Nahan’s Fulfillment department, which is our newest division at Nahan. This new department continues to be a huge growth area for Nahan. We’ve more than doubled our staff count in this department in less than two years and continue to add an impressive amount of customers and projects. I thought I’d take this special opportunity to introduce Jenny and some of the great things that Nahan’s Fulfillment department is up to these days.
Jenny, first tell me a little about your career path at Nahan.
Jenny: I’ve held a variety of roles at Nahan. I started my career in the mail center as a Helper on the high-speed inserters, then I moved into the Quality Checker role, and from there I was a Laser Operator. I wanted to learn more about the company so I joined the Customer Service team and worked there for nine years, then held positions in Prep and Purchasing. From there, I became a Lead in our Fulfillment department in May of 2018 and became a Shift Leader in July of 2019.
That is fantastic Jenny! Can you give me an overview of how Nahan’s Fulfillment department started?
Jenny: Nahan’s Fulfillment department was started as a result of a customer asking us to do a UPS mailing for them. It started off with small quantities for the project and has grown into a large volume of quantities each week. We’ve continued to expand this area and we are now doing projects for a wide range of other customers as well. One of the great things about Nahan is that when we have a customer that is looking for us to do any type of mailing project to make things easier on their end, we have an awesome team that comes together to find a solution for them.
What types of projects is our team currently doing?
Jenny: Currently, our team is working on a 3-way match mailing project. Basically, we have a three-panel folder that gets a personalized letter and a personalized card added into the folder. Then, this package will go into a pre-labeled, addressed OSE.
What other types of projects have we done?
Jenny: We’ve done a large variety of assemble, pack and ship projects. Two particular projects stand out. One was a tube mailing project, where we put a personalized letter into the tube, taped the ends, and put an address label and meter strip on to mail it and the other, we put together a Holiday gift package last year with calendars and holiday cards included.
What are you most proud of that the Fulfillment team has accomplished?
Jenny: I’m very proud of this team with how well they work together and help each other. They know what needs to be done and they have fun doing it.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Jenny: This group of individuals are truly amazing to work with. There is a lot of teamwork. They work very hard together to get the jobs done so we meet the customer’s expectations.
Jenny, this has been great. Thank you for your time!
Interested in learning more about our Fulfillment services? Contact us to learn more.
Bio: Melissa Fransen is
our Marketing Manager. She started with Nahan in May of 2017. Melissa is
responsible for Nahan’s marketing initiatives, which includes everything from
conference planning to social media initiatives. In her spare time, Melissa
enjoys spending time with her husband and enjoying time in the outdoors with
family and friends.
Since the opening of Nahan University in July of 2019, a lot has been happening with our training programs and our leadership team is proud of how things are progressing. From an employee perspective since launch, several of our 300+ employees have been involved in a training course thus far and the plan for 2020 is that every one of our employees will have a training opportunity. Doug Karls, an employee of Nahan for over 25 years, is leading the Nahan University initiatives.
“We are just getting started and I’m excited about all of the training opportunities that are in store for our employees. Our employees are our number one asset and if there is one thing that I believe in investing in, it’s our people.” Doug Karls, Trainer
Nahan University Goals
Here are the goals that our Leadership team has set for
Nahan University:
Basic equipment functionality
Educate our team on our quality standards
Generate a career path for team members
Empower our employees
Team building
Training Recap
The focus of the training has started with Operator training on Folders and Inserters, as well as Leadership training. Here is a quick overview of the training thus far:
Operator Training:
Basic equipment functionality
Problem solving skills
Mechanical aptitude
Math aptitude
Quality standards
Leadership Training:
Communication Skills
Servant Leadership
Creating Effective and Empowered Teams
Coaching and Delegating for Success
“One of the biggest differentiators of Nahan in the industry continues to be our quality. The quality of our print, the quality of our service levels, and the quality of our people.” John Klumb, Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Nahan University – What’s Next
Our team is in the beginning stages of launching Brainer’s LMS (Learning Management Solutions) program. This platform will provide learning opportunities for our employees through module-based training on a variety of topics. Topics include everything from Safety, Team Building and Problem Solving to Web Presentations, Marketing, and Microsoft Office. These training sessions can be customized to the individual and tailored to topics that are applicable to our employees. The full implementation of Brainer’s LMS program is planned for Q2 of 2020.
“At the end of each day, I ask myself what I learned that day. Each and every day I try to learn something new. My goal is for our employees to learn something new every day as well.” Doug Karls, Trainer
Bio: Melissa Fransen
is our Marketing Manager. She started with Nahan in May of 2017. Melissa is
responsible for Nahan’s marketing initiatives, which includes everything from
conference planning to social media initiatives. In her spare time, Melissa
enjoys spending time with her husband and enjoying time in the outdoors with
family and friends.
It’s been another great year for Nahan and we have been thrilled at the performance, likes, and shares of our new blog articles that were added to our revamped website launched in October. Thank you for all of your comments and the great feedback! We appreciate you!
In case you’ve missed it, here were our top five performing blog articles of 2019 so you can check them out:
We have a ton of great articles in store for 2020, so be sure to check back to our site for the latest and greatest articles. Plus, we also share these articles on our LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter pages. If you have content that you’d like to see from our team in the future, feel free to contact us anytime and let us know. We are just getting started and 2020 is going to be a fantastic year!
Bio: Melissa Fransen is our Marketing Manager. She started with Nahan in May of 2017. Melissa is responsible for Nahan’s marketing initiatives, which includes everything from conference planning to social media initiatives. In her spare time, Melissa enjoys spending time with her husband and enjoying time in the outdoors with family and friends.
