Maximising mail campaigns with geo-targeting

Rob Flannery of Nutshell Creative discusses an innovative geo-targeting campaign for Rohan, how data-driven personalisation strategies work, and why trust and authenticity is so important. Rohan, a 53-year-old UK apparel brand specialising in outdoor and travel clothing, had not leveraged their customer data in a meaningful way for some time. Until collaborating with Nutshell Creative, it had remained a traditional “brochure-first, mail-first business”. But the firm was looking for improved performance and needed to experiment. Rob Flannery explains, “This was the first time for some time that they had utilised their data to do something different with their output.” Rob Flannery is Sales and Marketing Manager at Nutshell Creative, and his career path, split between agency and brand sides, encapsulates the increasingly intimate bond of digital with print. “Until I came to Nutshell, I had no experience in print or mail. I was working in digital marketing and content,” Flannery explains. “My first experience of mail was here at Nutshell.” His career has been evenly split between agency and brand sides, having previously worked at Global Media as a social media manager before joining Nutshell. This dual perspective gives him valuable insight into both sides of the marketing equation. Flannery believes the divide between print and digital marketing has effectively disappeared, with an omnichannel strategy necessary for success. However, he notes that some companies still struggle to integrate the two effectively. “The advantage of digital is that attribution and tracking is huge – that’s something print massively struggles with,” he says. “Social media works in a similar way to print, in that people see it but don’t always act on it immediately. They then go and find what they need through another channel, usually search.” The solution lies in tools that bridge both the physical world of print and the digital domain, such as QR codes and UTM tags, which allow print campaigns to connect with digital tracking and attribution systems. Geo-targeting customers Nutshell developed a simple but effective geo-targeting strategy that created 11 versions of the envelope, playing on the juxtaposition between local regions and travel destinations. For example, “Milton Keynes and Malta” for customers in the Milton Keynes area. “We used the local region versus travel destination to encourage travel, but also show versatility that their products could be worn here and there,” says Flannery. “Rohan wanted to market themselves as both a travel brand and an outdoor…...