Are you a 90% marketer?

We've been taught since our formidable years to give a 110% effort in order to succeed in life. Athletes do it every game. Successful Type A personalities do it without thinking. Yet we as marketers sometimes settle for less.

My latest reminder of this phenomenon was delivered in the mail last week. Here was a beautifully designed direct mail piece that had it all, almost. The major elements were right in front of my face. It used an offer - in this case for a portable optical mouse which would be a great addition to my laptop kit. It had a 'call to action' - giving a link to the survey that acted as the qualification phase of offer. So what made this a less than 110% marketing piece? The web link to the survey!

Although the mailer was personally addressed, there was an error in the individualized link printed on the outside and inside of the promotion. The end result? There was NO way to capture the prospect's information since following the link yielded a generic, yes generic error page in my browser.

The end result was a total waste of money for the advertiser. I don't know where the error occurred. It could have been the agency that failed to verify/vet the printing automation used in the customization phase. It might have been the source data that was unchecked. Or it may have been a costly oversight in the entire process.

The moral of this story? Check your information over an over again to ensure that it's correct. Test, Test and test again until you are confident customization works for your mailer. And always make one person fully responsible for verifying and validating the data, process and end product.

I'll see you later with another Marketing and more . . . tip shortly.