Seth Godin recently published a blog post about sunk costs. Read the post here.

Yes, in business school, they teach you that making the right decisions often means ignoring sunk costs and measuring what the cost/benefits are in the future.

There is some truth to that, but boy is it hard to ignore sunk costs! I would even say it is against human behavior to do so! Too often we dwell on decisions we make in the past and its inertia affects our decisions in the future.

For some professions, like venture capitalists, you never ignore sunk costs, for others, like printers, it is hard to do so. Using Seth Godin’s Analogy, the $10,000 property (Digital Press) could bring in more business for you than the $1,000,000 (offset press) one. Which should you invest in?

Aren’t you tired of struggling with poor campaign response rates?

If you’re getting poor results and ROI, not getting value for your marketing dollars (even if it is just the cost of emails) and are feeling bummed about your marketing ideas chances are you’re not alone.

Arguably, marketing has never been as challenged as it is during this economic period. With marketing budgets often the first to be cut, your prospects and customers even more determined not to respond and spending at an all time low. You need to make your marketing stand out! With this post, I want to help you do that and lift the lid on some of the secrets to doing better.

Catch Wrich at On-demand!
Wrich Printz, CEO of L2, Inc. will be presenting “Climbing the Multi-Channel Mountain Without Falling Off: Insights From Industry Experts” at On-demand 2009.

• How to prepare and test personalized multi-channel campaigns.
• How to leverage CRM information to drive campaigns.
• Tips to create a marketing system that includes sales.
• How to profit from personalized digital communication.
• Current practices in cross-channel marketing.

Join us at the “Becoming a Marketing Provider Track” on Tuesday 31st of March (3:30pm) at room 203A.

Last month I blogged about "variable data publishing in the future".

I envisioned that in the future, magazines, catalogs, etc will be completely customized to the individual. It will know your interests and maybe buying behavior (but not in a creepy way) and have content that is more targeted and relevant to you.

Despite the current economic downturn, it seems some people are beginning to get how powerful this can be. I’ve been having some conversations on twitter (@RyanLou) about how this can be profitable for publishers and they are echoing some of my ideas.

Even large publishers are beginning to get it. A co-worker saw this on the news this morning and directed my attention to it.

Today, Time, Inc. launched an application, with sponsorship from Lexus, for recipients to receive 5 different magazines over a span of time with content that is personalized to them. In the application, http://www.timeinc.com/mine they asked respondents a set of 4 questions that would determine what variation of the magazines they would receive. For more on the story: Read here.

This certainly is a start to fully personalized publications. The technology for even more complex personalization that includes magazine ad already exist. What is needed is relevant information about your readers and a willingness to break the mould and try something that is not commonplace!

Time Inc’s application: http://www.timeinc.com/mine

A story on what Time did:  http://TinyURL.com/TimeMine

Previous post: Variable Data Publishing in the future

In the same day, John A. Greco, Jr., President & CEO of The-DMA and the BtoB magazine sent news of how the direct marketing industry and direct mail industry are getting hit by the recession.

In an email to members of the DMA, John highlighted how the DMA as an organization had to restructure, do more with less resources and even cancel some of its non-signature events. Its signature events: DMA’09, DMDays, Non-profit federation conference and the email evolution conference will still run along with events with its partners.

In an independent report by Christopher Hosford, BtoB reported a $1.7 billion drop in direct mail spending last year, down from $58.4 billion in 2007. According the Winterberry group, this was its first drop in 60 years. 2008 saw drops in direct mail spending in financial services (down 16.6%), technology (down 16.6%), travel and leisure (down 4.7%).

What to do about it:

Transform your business to adjust to the economy

How? Read Jon Oakes’ recent post: Can’t dance and it’s to wet to plough

Do you get your favorite magazines at the news stand or delivered to your door?

I know I browse through magazines at the stand, but in many of them I have the option of signing up with the publication for a year (often at a lower price).

Now, since you’re already collecting information about me, how about finding out my preferences and personalize some of the magazine, catalog or publication to me.

This can be as simple as printing my name on the cover (and not just on the mailing sticker), having a centerfold personalized to me, even publishing ads that apply to me… an insurance ad that says ‘is the Lou household sufficiently covered?’.

The technology is there (if your vendor is unable to do this, talk to us), waiting for a publisher to take CRM and Variable Data Publishing up one more level.

If this resounds with you, let me know via twitter: @RyanLou

or how has it changed your marketing?

My friend @minxuan posted her slides on Slideshare on how twitter changed her life with a few tips that marketers that are just trying to build a following will be able to use so they don’t spend all day (away from work) on Twitter.

See her slides here…

Amid fears of the spreading credit crunch affecting your core print business and limiting your ability to purchase expensive print equipment on credit and half measures for tiding the poor economic conditions, we suggest you diversify your business out of trouble.

While your immediate concerns are to cut down staff and reduce investment (even on marketing), these actions may leave you in a disadvantaged position to grow your business when the economy picks up.

A better option would be to reduce your cost while increasing business even while your competitors trim theirs.

Industry Data:

Clear market trends suggest that marketers have long been looking to the web to compliment print in reaching their target customers.

Marketers are increasingly going direct, personalized and online! Are you keeping up?

If you are already using digital press from the Canon CLC and Konica Minolta 850 on the low end to the Xerox iGen3, Kodak NexPress and the HP Indigo on the high end, then you have already made it easy for your print company to diversify your business, growing while the industry does!

If you’re stuck with offset press that are huge and expensive to run and maintain and set you back with millions of dollars in debt then now would be a good time to ‘go digital’.

Read more…