“Direct mail is growing in popularity as marketers look for ways to cut through the digital clutter and reach customers,” says Randy Hardy, business development representative for locr. “Research shows that an image is the best way to create that level of engagement. That’s because your brain processes images thousands of times faster than text. So including an image like a personalized map is the ideal way to make an impact and tell the recipient how easy it is to do business with you.”
The Healthcare Advantage
Located in Dallas, Texas, Varispark is a digital marketing solutions provider that offers marketing collateral management, direct mail, personalized and cross-media marketing along with their print operations. To produce its marketing campaigns, Varispark integrates and automates various programs including XMPie PersonalEffect Suite, Marcom, HP SmartStream, and HP Indigo presses.
Debbie Spray, Director of Solutions Development, says, “At Varispark, we use a combination of creativity and technology to create marketing campaigns that solve our clients’ problems. When our healthcare client approached us with the goal of encouraging members to participate in their gym enrollment, we combined variable data, personalized maps, and digital printing to go beyond their original request and create a campaign that was more robust and produced excellent awareness and response.”
The Wellness Center
The Wellness Center campaign employs frequent, low-volume communications with target customers. Each week, Varispark sends locr the address data of new health plan members. locr then assigns these addresses to fitness centers that are within a 15 mile driving radius of the address. Addresses that fall outside the 15-mile radius are excluded, saving printing and postage costs for the client.
Maps are then generated using the remaining address data. locr applies personalization and design elements to the map, creating the visual element that establishes a connection with the recipient. Once complete, the maps are sent to Varispark for use in their HP workflow.
“Wellness programs have grown as more health-care providers seek ways to reduce the cost of health care,” says Spray. “But these programs won’t work if the patients don’t use them. That’s why this campaign worked so well. It not only got the patients interested in the wellness program, it enables them to visualize how easy it was to get to the location.”
Although the second healthcare campaign was more complex and had a higher volume, it still had the same goal: getting people to visit a fitness center.
In this campaign, the recipient address file numbers from 5,000 to 250,000 individuals. locr GEOservices assigns each recipient up to three fitness centers within a 15-mile radius of their address. A personalized map is generated that shows the recipient the location of one, two, or three centers. Once created, Varispark downloads the maps and incorporates them into their XMPie VDP software for production.
