Company: Century Direct Solutions
Press: Canon varioPRINT iX sheetfed inkjet press
Paper: Primalith 80 lb. Matte Cover
Standout Innovation: Speed and variable data help create large-run, one-off direct mail promotions with a rapid turnaround time
Century Direct Solutions is a direct marketing communications provider with decades of experience in helping companies in a wide range of industries execute high-quality, targeted direct mail campaigns. For the last two decades, Century Direct has partnered with automotive dealerships to produce large print runs of one-off, retargeting direct mail promotions to position special, time-sensitive offers.
These jobs often require extremely rapid turnaround times — sometimes as quick as 24 to 48 hours — and they also need the capacity to print variable data with information like lease date or car make and model preference to effectively target customers. What’s more, these mailers also require the ability to print four-color on both sides with superior consistency and reliability.
Investing in the Canon varioPRINT iX sheetfed digital inkjet press helped Century Direct automate production for faster, more efficient print to meet tight mailing deadlines. Digital inkjet also streamlined the process of scoring and folding each piece in preparation for mailing, and this capability helps Century Direct provide dealerships with more cost-effective direct mail promotions.
The ability to consistently and reliably produce full-color self-mailers with stunning print quality has helped the printer partner with more than 350 car dealerships — with more than 30 partnerships currently in the pipeline — to further establish Century Direct as a major player in the direct mail marketing space.
Have you ever wondered if it’s worth it to mail to the same list twice? Our client did, and here are the results we found:
Using an in-house list with a renewal offer to retain financial services, we initially mailed to a population of over 15k households with a direct mail package consisting of a letter, application and reply envelope into a #10 window envelope.
Initial response rates were over 6%, and the client was very happy.
About 2 weeks later we mailed to a portion of that same list with the exact same package, and conversion rates more than doubled to 14.93%!
This was an overall increase in response of 139.9%!
Here are the details:
| Mailing Effort | Mail Quantity | Conversions | Conversion Rate | Mailing Effort |
| 1st Effort | 15,059 | 937 | 6.22% | N/A |
| 2nd Effort | 4,301 | 642 | 14.93% | 139.90% |
The data clearly show that a second effort of direct mail has a very positive effect on ROI, not just because of the increase in response, but also because that you can often re-use the same list for no additional cost or at a discount, which essentially lowers your kit cost.
Direct mail is a persistent medium has to be handled by the recipient, as opposed to digital ads and emails that are considered ephemeral media, (meaning it is very short-lived) and literally disappears into the ether.
Our research has even shown mail pieces have been retained and responded to after more than 4 months!
An additional contributing factor was that there was also a renewal deadline, (the same on both packages), and the procrastinators realized that they had to act in order to maintain their services. Even if you’re particular offer doesn’t have a specific deadline, there are many things that can be done to create a sense of urgency.
Want to learn how Century Direct can help you increase your ROI?
