On-Demand Webinar: How Programmatic Print Mailings Revolutionize Your Customer Approach

Annabella Pscherer: And welcome today's diva-e webinar: How Programmatic Print Mailings Revolutionize Your Customer Approach. Today our experts will show you how to increase your customers' propensity to buy with automated and personalized direct mail. My name is Annabella Pscherer, and I am part of the diva-e-marketing team. And today, I am your moderator for the webinar. I would also like to welcome our speakers Lars Schlimbach from Deutsche Post AG, Gereon Krahn from Berge und Meer and Michael Schunke from diva-e. It's great to have you with us today. I would now like to hand it over to our experts and wish you many fun and exciting insights during the webinar. Lars, I will now hand over the broadcast rights to you. One moment.

Lars Schlimbach: I'm curious about that.

Annabella Pscherer: So.

Lars Schlimbach: There. I can't see anyone now. But, in front of me, I have the document. Is that at least for some of the participants as well? That you can see the chart? Michael, I can see you.

Michael Schunke: Looks very good.

Annabella Pscherer: Yes.

Lars Schlimbach: Very good. All right. Good, so then I would say that all the prerequisites are starting. So from my side, hello again to you all from Deutsche Post here in Dialogue Marketing. I am glad that we have been invited by diva-e to give a joint presentation here on a common topic, on a joint solution, which is very exciting: programmatic Print Mails or Programmatic Print Mailings. You can see that we are now also going online with print mailings and integrating our channel into the programmatic marketing or advertising world. We will show how that works in the next 30 to 45 minutes. And I'm also looking forward to the two co-presenters here. And we're going to try to pass the ball a little bit here. If you have any questions, feel free to join the chat, and we can answer them afterwards.

However, I would like to start with a brief look at what, let's say, the world looks like out there or what people's media usage behavior looks like. And that is also the starting point from which we began to develop our so-called hybrid services. You simply have to assume that people are not only online and digital. For purely digital or online people, this is perhaps a somewhat confusing message at first. Because the big trend is that everything is going online, everything is becoming digital and so forth. Now also in such a time characterized by home office and generally stay at home. But you can already see that in various studies, this is a meta-study, that it is the case that most people already have contact with offline touchpoints. In other words, the customer journey is largely influenced by offline touchpoints. You can see that here. Whether that's 25 percent or 75 percent concerning each other. So, 25 percent offline and only 25 percent online touchpoints aside. Or, if I maybe it is also a balance. An important statement that only both worlds together can ultimately lead to customers, yes, their buying behavior is influenced, for example. And that's also why the customer journey is designed across channels. Of course, we at Austrian Post are primarily responsible for the print mailings channel, as an integrated part of such a customer journey. And we are quite happy that we have a channel here that works very well. Here, you can see the study results that we regularly conduct twice a year. In this case, 50 online shops sent out a certain standardized number of print mailings to their existing customers. And, if you then look at how long they affect over time, and these are the calendar weeks shown here, that's impressive. Of course, we have the highest conversion initially, but even 14, 15 weeks later, you can see that the print mailing has a significant effect. But strongly at the beginning. Overall a conversion of four point nine percent and a very high return affords halt. So, we know that the channel works. Print mailings, especially in this case, in the area of existing customers, are very effective. I would say that at Deutsche Post, we also have a kind of DMP. It's a database in which we have many data about households, particularly the microcells. I'll come back to that in a moment, in Germany. This is our DMP. Of course, that's completely separate from what you would call an online DMP. But we do have a bit of a counterpart to that. So, we are not that far away from the online world. We also have something like an ad server, for example. It's just something completely different. But, with us, the AdServer is the one that delivers the advertising material, just like the postman or the delivery person. But, the advertising material is delivered. That is also our logistics service behind it, which is perhaps provided by an ad server in the digital area. We have certain similarities. Yes. That's just a message. We also have a channel that works very well. However, that's always very detached from the digital world, the marketing automation world, and the programmatic advertising world. So we have the task, and that's the big challenge we face, to bridge the gap and integrate it. The objective is to become an integrated player in a so-called digitalized marketing world. And to develop new services and products that correspond to this digital thinking. And to integrate them into digital or online technology. With partners above all. In this case, of course, diva-e, with whom we work very closely on cookie-based approaches, which we will present again in a moment. But, of course, there are many challenges. And we try to solve all of them for customers together with our partners. Whether the topic is cross-channel, like I said, Customer Journey, orchestrate across the different channels. That there are good opportunities there. Of course, we bring our high net reach into play, which can play a perfect role in such a campaign logic. We have the topic in Make Ads, and if it goes more in the direction of individualization, which is simply a trend in marketing, then we want to make that possible through our channel, of course. We are already very well on the way. Today, the focus is not quite so strongly on automation and individualization. But it's something we're also working on and on the way. The topic of data-driven generally plays a role. We have to bridge the gap between, on the one hand, address data and, on the other hand, digital IDs, such as cookies. We need to translate cookies into addresses because, without addresses, you can't send a mailing. You can't send a print mailing. That's why we have to translate digital IDs into addresses. And also use the attributes and characteristics. And last but not least, the whole thing has to be simple. Yes. In all honesty, I have to say that even at Deutsche Post, we're not at the forefront of the best when it comes to simplicity. But we're working hard to make it much better. The usability of our channel and the services will become much easier. The bottom line is that we have to build bridges.

And we have also developed an approach for this, which goes under the heading of Programmatic Print Mailings. This is everything that can be automated in the direction of marketing automation. What can be driven by data, even more so than before? Even our offline data that we can also make online-capable and use online data from the other direction to identify segments that are then addressed with a print mailing. And everything that concerns individualization, automated individualization, dynamic advertising media falls under Programmatic Print Mailings and ultimately the digital transformation of print. Yes. And we divide the whole thing roughly into two areas. Online-offline, that's the focus we're talking about today with our preferred partner diva-e at this point. We're going to go into that in-depth right now as well. So we don't forget, because this is also an important area in which we act as a postal service, is the location of automation. So, automation is that we offer self-service tools to do print mailings. But also the whole integration into different marketing automation systems is essential for us, and where we also develop apps and plug-ins, so that we are also simply present and we are easy to reach and to use. But today, it's all about online-offline. And the first challenge we faced was to create the data bridge. In other words, how do we use online data and online triggers to address a user with a print mailing ultimately? In other words, the print mailing touchpoint can be activated. We have various solutions and services that are based on this.

But the data basis that we use for this comes from the offline world, more precisely from Deutsche Post directly, which developed a very innovative approach almost 20 years ago that is now the standard in, let's say, geomarketing in the area of print mailings, namely the microcell. Yes, here, the whole of Germany is divided into microcells. At least five households are aggregated, highly aggregated into one anonymous unit, a microcell. That is also established. Also, with the data protection authorities, all discussed through and set, as I said. This creates units that are as granular and small as possible in the marketing sense, but as far as possible, no longer contain personal, non-personal information in the sense of data protection. And the microcell is the solution that has been around for a long time in the offline world. So we already have an ID or identifier in quotation marks that we can use there. However, the whole thing is, of course, not yet connected with the online world, with the cookies. It is essential to understand how this works to understand its services. That's why I'll go into it again briefly. For those who don't know it yet. Address matching. Let's assume the microcell logic. There are between six and seven million microcells in Germany, like a fine-meshed network rolled out across the whole of Germany. And every household belongs to a microcell. All the homes in a microcell are on-site next to each other, perhaps in one building or buildings next to each other, as I said, five at least. On average, it's six-point six, just for the record. So we have developed what we call an address matching process. That's where the microcells are linked with cookies in a privacy-compliant way. That's very important. Because we, like the Post, naturally stand for very high data protection standards. We have a brand that stands for a great deal of trust, like, I believe, no other in Germany than Deutsche Post, that we handle data very cleanly and adhere to all specifications. And if in doubt, we are even a little stricter than the market demands.

So we have set up a process here with different address matching partners. These are ultimately data partners where we are integrated into their online shops. And in this case, it works as follows, just to illustrate it. A user visits an online shop connected to us as a partner. And the moment he logs in, the partner gives us the street, house number and postal code of this user. Nothing else, just that. No name, no other characteristics, behavior. Just street, house number, postal code. This is transmitted to Deutsche Post and then directly compared with this microcell logic at Deutsche Post. So this means that the Weberstrasse three in 53844 Bonn is transferred and is looked up at Deutsche Post. What is this microcell number? Returns the microcell number, the microcell ID one, two, three to the DPDS, and the address is immediately deleted again. But that's going to happen in a split second these matches. So, in this case, when the user comes to a website, we know down to a microcell exactly where the user is to be assigned geographically. And then, the microcell itself is also encrypted again, and at the same time, we set a cookie for the user. So, when he is in the shop, a so-called Consentric-Cookie, the generic term for the entire procedure, is set. And we end up having a matching table between Concentric cookies, so the cookie ID is assigned to the user and a microcell ID. That's the mapping. But the result is of the whole process, as we say so nicely, we now know where the cookie lives on microcell exactly—a geographic prescription of cookies. We just plotted that on a map here. Here it is, however-. So, first of all, the remark, you can show cookies on maps. That's something that has never been possible before in this granularity. On microcell down, here are postcode areas represented. Otherwise, you could not recognize it on the map anymore. But, as I said, we know where the cookie lives down to the microcell. And that's why the whole thing is highly privacy compliant. As I said, we have clarified this with all authorities and also certified it again with the European Data Protection ADVERT. So we are happy to answer any questions you may have. We are definitely on the safe side. Yes. And of course, we don't do that alone, then the services that are based on the knowledge of where the cookie lives do that with different partners. Now in the area of programmatic print mailings, of course, overall, as I just said, the other systems. But now, in cookies, we are on the road with IntelliAd and have almost one hundred percent matching with the IntelliAd cookies. So we can match our Concentric cookie with the IntelliAd cookie. And because of that, we can then implement the services that we're about to see very well together with IntelliAd. However, I don't want to explain what IntelliAd is precise. Instead, I would now hand over the floor to Michael.

Michael Schunke: Yes, with pleasure. Thank you very much, dear Lars. So, we are thrilled that we can do this with you today in the webinar. Many thanks to you, Mr Krahn, because we can create something fascinating with such technology. So, as diva-e, we know the challenges in the market pretty well. We were also, concerning user journeys. How do customers move across different channels and perhaps even as switchers between online and offline? And that's how we realized that we have to link worlds. And that's what we're doing with the technology we're showing today. And what describes today's users particularly well is that they operate across channels and devices. This means that it is imperative to capture and address them at as many touchpoints as possible. To be in the right place at the right time and address him. And it is also essential to overcome the disruptions that technologies simply bring with them. And we are particularly proud that we have a partner in Austrian Post with whom we can overcome these disruptions. And on the next slide, we see an exemplary customer journey that perhaps all of you have already completed at least once today. So, we see here on the x-axis the different channels, for example, from an ad to a mailing that you receive. And on the y-axis, we see the device or the device that the user uses for this. And what you can already see here is that the user journey works across a wide variety of channels and appliances until the customer ultimately comes from his initial touchpoint to the purchase.

And one of the challenges is to make the customer journey trackable across a wide range of channels. And in addition, the exclamation, I want to understand my customers better, as we all know as online marketers. And the second challenge is how I can improve the performance of my campaigns? And first of all, an understanding of this customer journey is essential to act on it at all. And on the next slide, we can see what an integrated solution looks like. So, here we have a small screenshot from the IntelliAd Suite. IntelliCAD is registered as a trademark at diva-e—so long-standing technology that is usable. And has made a name for itself, especially in the area of multichannel and cross-device tracking over the last ten years. What is essential here is that complete transparency is required here about the user journeys and customer journeys, which leads to a better understanding. And, as Lars has also shown, there are API interfaces. In this case also to post technology and a variety of other services and technologies. So from Google Ads to Bing, Facebook and so on, you can see that IntelliAd and diva-e are trying to get the channels under one hat, under one hood. And what is particularly exciting about the Deutsche Post and the diva-e project is that they have managed to link the technological worlds. In other words, online and offline no longer need to be evaluated separately, but rather the interrelationships need to be understood and acted upon. Ultimately, we also offer solutions that go toward data-driven attribution, i.e. how do you attribute the values? These are not somehow. Lars clicks evaluation perhaps takes as a basis and his conversions to assess, but something just also makes data-driven. And that also provides the technology to track down the user and address him in the best possible way.

Lars Schlimbach: Okay, thank you. Well, I think it fits like a glove. That we are integrating the two technologies here. We've just seen it with IntelliAd in the screenshots. So, both in targeting and attribution modeling and tracking, our channel is listed with, exactly, so on an equal footing with the digital media. And the goal is to be able to manage it 100 percent in the same way. Because we are now first and foremost on the way in tracking and targeting, so that you can do that. We have already started the first tests. Or implemented the first campaigns where tracking was also brought in. It's just essential that we, above all, what we have just seen, create the basis, the data basis and connect the digital identifier with a postal address to build this bridge. Yes. And then, of course, you can go first and kind of include print mailings in the tracking. And say, okay, which microcells did the print mailing go into? What were the cookies? And the cookies are then transferred to IntelliAd in interfaces, and then IntelliAd can somehow show how a conversion looks. But here, for us, it is first and foremost about optimizing the targeting for our channel.

And here we have the approach that we have been developing for two years now and are constantly refining and optimizing. And where more than 100 customers have used it so far. Offline retargeting. Yes. So, we know where the cookie lives, and that's why, if an IntelliAd pixel is installed on a page, and, as I said, we have integrated a cookie in it, you can use that for offline retargeting. Now, if you just-. We've taken the Sky page here in the example. This is not a real example. Just to make it clear. This is a user who goes to Sky.de. Then he is interested in series or football, for example. And we need the whole thing to be pixelated so that retargeting and preset so that whenever users have been on the site for at least 30 seconds, for example, a print mailing goes out automatically at the back. If they have been in the series area, then a print mailing goes out that doesn't have any individual names because we don't know exactly who it was. We only see the microcell, i.e. the buildings in which the people live. In this case, a mailing goes out, fully automated and with daily data comparison. If you want, you can, of course, wait a little longer. It always depends. Yes, then a mailing goes out to all series junkies, sender Sky, or, in this case, we have Sky. As individualized as possible. Even with a corresponding individualized discount code, if you want. And this is then no later than two days after the website visit has taken place, not no later than two days after the holiday has taken place in the mailbox. Yes. And, of course, that has a high conversion. We have a wide variety of customers who already use this. This is a way to use this bridge between online and offline in a meaningful way. We have a customer with us now, that's, let's say, the best way, who already knows and uses the whole thing here. And not just used it once, but multiple times and continuously. At this point, I am happy to hand it over to Mr Krahn from Berge und Meer. And that's why I think he can tell you much more about it than I can now. And he can report much more from the practice and the customer's perspective.

Gereon Krahn: Yes, thank you very much. I am the specimen today. And may I just say briefly that what is shown here also works. For us, I had already said this in the preliminary discussion. We were actually with Berge and Meer. We are a medium-sized tour operator from Westerwald. We are located here in Rengsdorf. We have been around for 40 years. We have 350 employees. Our core competence is round trips and cruises. We have, yes, our target group is 59 plus. And we have a very high segment of existing customers. And we've grown up with papers. And we don't ship now. Unfortunately, Corona is conditioned, but we hope to get back into old headlines sometime. We've been mailing up to ten catalogs a year. Other than that, we always send our existing customer base a run of between 150 and 300 thousand printer advertisements. And we approached it, saying, wow, how can we do without. And then we went back and forth on that path behind us then. In the end, we didn't go down the path of doing more online, but we converted online to print. And you have to say that our clientele is already into it. So, they have an excellent affinity for print. And from that point of view, we're doing quite well with how we're presenting ourselves right now. So, we pixelated the website, and we set the cookie. And the exciting thing for us about these microcells is, they always have a homogeneous environment. And, that is, actually have a good chance of hitting. And I don't always have a good chance of getting a hit if I don't compete against the website, who might be interested in booking something with us, but I also have the, let's say, the twins actually, yes. So, customers who behave similarly or are similarly built income-wise. We've done several trials now. And we have different goals. One goal, of course, is to acquire new customers. We look at a customer conversion model every year. How we generate customers, which ones we pull from the market, how we remove them from the market, online, offline. Which ones we convert from that change into a first-time booker, later on maybe the existing customer, who then books again within this year or the following year. But also, who purely in the interest nevertheless remains, so, nothing books. And so we have in the first mailing what we have here as an example. We had sent out a total of 54000 postcards, as shown in the middle block below. We had a response rate of just under zero point two, a KUR, which is often decisive for us, of seven point three. You can see that we have an extremely high shopping basket. We are still very interested in the trigger, and where we have tried it out are the different filters that you can set. Of course, we also have products in the area of our own. If you travel to the Moselle, the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, we have shopping baskets that start at 49 euros and go up to 129 euros. I don't necessarily want to send the postcards to the customers. Instead, we first concentrated on high-value bookings. That means we were able to use filters for a travel price. But we also broke it down from round trips to cruises; we even did a test with cruises simply with shipping companies. Of course, this makes it very difficult. We often have to operate on the website through other channels to go to the product. But the trigger was on the product. And we then went into an American shipping company, which still works quite well. We would like to use it more often, but tourism is highly affected in Corona times. So as an example, no one is looking at the moment. But we had to just also in March 2020 virtually all our sales, which we have since, we have a very long booking time, up to some people book a year in advance, we had to pay back all cancellations virtually again. As a package tour, yes, the customer has the security with the travel warning, they get their money back. And that makes life extremely difficult for us. So we hope that the trend will go back to information. But then use the trigger again as soon as we get the trending on the website. Then just to get bookings again. Because travelling is and remains the most beautiful secondary thing that Germans have. So far from me.

Lars Schlimbach: Yes, thank you very much for the contribution here. And all the best that things are now looking up again shortly. I almost can't add that much to that. So you can already see with the retargeting logic, which of course exists online, that you can now also use that offline in combination with the microcell. So that means that I ultimately have a few more twins that I can address automatically by addressing the microcell. At the same time, I am very data protection compliant because of the microcell. Fascinating use cases can develop here. We have also combined this online with other customers. So that one, where we have worked together with (?Strör), set up an online campaign for the customer. Which brings much traffic to a landing page. That means, first of all, bringing relevant users to the website. And if users are interested, you have such a funnel wide online and bring traffic to the website that then pixelates the landing page. And then those interested from those who are only mildly interested or a little bit interested, or have only seen a video online. The whole thing is pixelated, and then to follow up with a personal print mailing, that's just a system that also makes much sense and works very well and is also used permanently. This is no longer a campaign logic but runs through and is successively optimized and adapted to the individual, yes, perhaps also seasons and special events in case of doubt. But it's not an on-off logic. It's more of an always-on, as they say. Yes. Because it's simply worthwhile to follow up on such triggers that are triggered online better, and be it a cancellation, for example, with print mailing afterwards. That's the offline retargeting, which works with this bridge. The second thing that we're implementing, which we're offering right now as part of, let's say, an MBP, where we're also happy to have a conversation, that's the extension. The bridge is the same. Cookies to the microcell. And then out the back, it's produced and delivered. However, the trigger is not a trigger through pixelation on the website, but ultimately simply first- or third-party data segments that you have as appetizers, i.e. first-party segments yourself in your DMP and build up over time through the use of your websites. Or even third-party data that is also used for classic online campaigns. That you can also use them. And these audiences are then segmented classically, as it runs in the DSP or DMP. Then but this campaign is not online, or one does not play out only online to realize the inventory ultimately. Or realizing the potential of the target group and then occupying the inventory and playing it out online. But that one also translates the whole segment. So not translating a single copy then, as in the retargeting, but a target audience segment may be of a potential of 500000 IDs. That takes. Or 100000 IDs. And translates THOSE into microcells and then print mailings in one fell swoop, always in combination with the launch of an online campaign to the same households. So, ultimately here has a channel-neutral or cross-channel target group segmentation, and then it's decided, okay, I'm going in online now, I want to address them online anyway. For example, the campaign starts at the beginning of April. And then, I immediately do another print distribution at the beginning of the campaign to drive up the online conversion from the online campaign. And that's also an insight that we have over the last couple of years. Have we combined channels and realized double contacts, the conversions get significantly better. Because someone who already had attention got a print mailing in hand and then said, there you think perhaps also often, yes, I have already looked at, I must look at the next time I'm online. But he is not immediately online. Put the thing away, the flyer away. Go online. Doesn't think about it right away. But is reminded again by an online campaign. Falls there, oh yes, there I wanted to look again. Clicks on the advertising material are perfect for the conversion of the online campaign. And all in all, it works very well. Yes. You can do it that way. There are different forms. Just to think about it, yes, how each individual can use it for themselves. Addressing and implementing these first and third-party data segments out of DMPs for a print mailing campaign. There are the smartest ideas that you can implement there. We're happy to be part of that. We'll have to discuss that again. As I said, the sync is there. We will also connect further DMPs. But for now, this is the setting we will start with. And therefore, we would be pleased to talk about your ideas, whether they are feasible. What the costs will be. Maybe we should also mention that. In general, with the online-offline story, we have to deal with that. Well, production is always part of it. So, the printing of all the advertising material. The campaign management plus the media costs. So, the stamps, postage. So you should calculate from 200 euros CPM in total. If it should start here. Even if it is very individual, or only minimal numbers, then that can be, of course again more, but that simply again such a house number. Can we talk but gladly with the individual questions there. As far as that is concerned. Also, what other ideas you have, whether they might work. We are open to any idea and any craziness that might seem crazy at first glance. That's what we thought at the beginning of this whole story. Quite crazy. But it's already something that works quite well. That's why I'm happy to take your questions. And then I'll hand you back over to the moderator so that she can perhaps transmit these questions. Or that we talk about it.