Written by Bill Michael
eMarketing Manager
Xerox Corporation
With the snow beginning to melt and temperatures slowly starting to rise, Spring, believe it or not, is just around the corner (March 20, to be exact)! For many, this signals the start of wedding season. In fact, 28% of weddings in the United States take place in the spring, second only to summer (29.5%). Chances are you know of somebody getting married this year, and chances are some of your customers are seeking wedding card services. In the United States in 2011, wedding statistics show that the average number of guests in attendance was 141, and nearly $350 was spent on wedding invitations alone. Adding production capabilities of wedding cards to your list of services can be a very profitable venture. MagnetStreet, a Xerox Best-of-the-Best winner, proved just that by creating a portfolio book to house samples of their invitation cards, fueling over $2.5 million in revenue growth over a 12 month period. How’d they do it? Let’s take a look:
MagnetStreet had a long history of successfully offering customers save-the-date magnets and cards, but saw huge growth opportunities in the wedding invitation space. However, they needed a strategy to successfully bridge into this offering. They knew they had the attention of their customer once their save-the-date invitations were ordered and received. But simply accompanying a flyer or sell-sheet with the order wouldn’t be enough to turn a future sale. They needed a way to blow away the recipient. MagnetStreet created an Invitation LookBook, a portfolio book filled with examples of their invitation offerings. The book was produced mostly on an offset press, with all of the invitation cards and two pages of perforated color swatches printed on their Xerox iGen4 Press.
To drive response and encourage engagement, each book included a unique discount code that was created using Xerox FreeFlow Variable Information Suite and Xerox FreeFlow VIPP Pro Publisher. MagnetStreet could modify each variable offer and monitor to see which offers were driving the highest response. FreeFlow tools also offered built-in security, as each created discount code was unique and couldn’t be used more than once.
Couples fell in love with the quality of the wedding invitations, and MagnetStreet saw a huge boost to their bottom line. In fact, within one year, conversions of save-the-date customers to wedding invitation customers rose 56%. Within that same year, invitation orders increased by 103% and MagnetStreet saw their revenue grow by more than $2.5 million. MagnetStreet was the recipient of a Xerox Best-of-the-Best Award for their outstanding success.
Do you have a success story you’d like to share for international recognition? Are you a member of the Xerox Premier Partner Global Network? Enter into the Xerox Best-of-the-Best Contest today – entries close April 3, 2013!
Interested in more topics similar to photo specialty offerings or success stories? You may want to check out:
- Uncovering Opportunities within your Print Operation with Greeting Cards
- How the InterContinental Hotels Group Was Able to Cut through the Clutter
- Looking to Boost Awareness of your Company’s Capabilities and Attract New Customers? The Xerox Best-of-the-Best Program can Help!
- It’s the Most Wonderful Time of The Year…for Photo Publishing
- EU Services Creates Web-to-Print Variable Brochure for Sales Force
I wasn`t aware of that
Great info
Clearly Xerox has some great products out there. I like how Magnetstreet could monitor which codes were translating into sales and modify the codes to reflect this success. Being able to customize marketing tools is very helpful and profitable as we see from this post.
Thanks for the great feedback, Connie – it’s a great example of how to really take advantage of a niche marketing strategy, as well as how to successfully integrate your company’s offerings. I love the solution MagnetStreet came up with for how to convert save-the-dates customers to invitation purchases.
Bill (Xerox Employee)
Great story.
I am humbly excited to share our Personalized Cross Media Campaign in Malaysia in the Xerox Best-of-the -Best.
That is fantastic KL! We have had some great submissions from Malaysia throughout the years, and look forward to seeing your personalized cross-media campaign! Best of luck to you in the competition 🙂
Bill (Xerox Employee)
Wow !!! I had no idea that wedding invitations are such a huge business. $2.5 Million is a lot of money. However, I can totally understand why people trust Xerox. They have been here for more than hundred years. We have been using Xerox printers for the past twenty years. Thanks for sharing this article. I think I will be printing my wedding invitation in a xerox printer and saving few bucks.
Cool Facts..Good Post..!!