Taking flight to the next telephone wire

House Finches hiding in the wreath on top of the lamp

Our family has been blessed with a bird nest right outside our kitchen window this past winter. We think a pair of House Finches.

My daughter, son and wife have been avidly watching the husband and wife team build the nest since the winter, and then hatch their little eggs this spring! Now we have a feathered family of 5!

It’s been a fun journey and the kids absolutely love it!

And interestingly enough, my wife has convinced herself that the mother bird has been doing most of the work this whole time.

Just last week the little chicks seemed like little puffs of feathers, chirping away in their nest on top of our porch light. They hunch so quietly ... until mommy comes along with a bunch of food which is when they go absolutely bonkers with the chirping! (OK OK, I admit it...the mother seems to be doing the majority of the work. And what’s weird is she never looks exhausted).

Then just yesterday one of the young ones took flight and zipped across the yard to a telephone wire! Woo hoo! The kids were so excited! (and I admit -- there was an excitement in me, too, as I thought about claiming my porch light back.)

Isn’t spring great?!

Our feathered friends reminded me of the children across the country graduating out of their grades and moving into summer. From kindergarteners to college grads, all the chicks will be taking flight in a few weeks. Some not so little I guess.

I hope your YMCA is bustling with young camper chicks this summer. I remember my camp days. Those memories stick with me today and come up in so many conversations in my adult life. More than I could have ever imagined.

Well, here’s to your YMCA nest as you work so hard to help the youth, families, adults and seniors grow stronger and fly to their next telephone wire.

Keep up the great work and go market your nest!

Bruce

Acquire and Retain Members With This Complimentary Design

Fall Marketing is Heating Up

And competition is fierce when it comes to membership acquisition and retention. We hope you're staying front and center with your prospects and members with engaging, relevant marketing and advertising that effectively the benefits of the YMCA as a cause-driven organization.

To help you, OlleyMay created a new design for YMCAs to use. We think you're going to like it. 

PiggyBacking Works

Seth Godin -- author, entrepreneur and master marketer.

The thinking behind this new design comes from a common, successful marketing tactic: piggyback off of popular news circulating the media or a well known brand that already has some mind share. Marketing guru, author and entrepreneur Seth Godin recommends taking advantage of this approach when you can, as it's often less costly and faster to get noticed versus generating your own awareness.

So...with piggybacking on the brain, we came out with the Rio marketing campaign below. Simple, catchy and attention getting. We hope you agree. And can be used for a couple more months while the spirit of the Olympics is still top of mind.

If you'd like to use this design, or any others from our library, just give us a call or fill in the form below and we'll be in touch quickly!

---

"Rio's Done" marketing design

FREE. CUSTOMIZABLE. TURNKEY.

• Customize the front and back where you see the bracked areas. We even have a few options of photos for the front. 
• Ask us about household targeting using our YMCA Household Profile criteria

---

AVAILABLE IN MULTIPLE CHANNELS

• Jumbo postcard mailer
• Email header
• 7' retractable banner
• Outdoor sign
• Handouts at the front desk
• Landing page header

---

CONTACT

Want to use this design for your fall or winter marketing? Or another design from OlleyMay's library? Contact:

Bruce Browning
(914) 380-7510
bbrowning@olleymay.com

---

Learn more. receive pricing. Or let's just talk.

Consumers Say "Target Me"

Would it surprise you to know that 78% of consumers say they would be “more likely” to purchase from a retailer again if provided with offers targeted to their interests, wants, and needs? It shouldn’t. Here are some other eye-opening data on how willing consumers are to provide personal data if it provides them with a financial benefit:

• 71% of consumers would be more likely to purchase from a retailer again if provided with offers targeted to their individual location.
• 45% would be willing to trade “some privacy” for incentives tailored to their individual shopping habits.
• 43% don’t mind if mobile apps track their smartphone’s or tablet’s location if it means they will receive ads or promotions targeted to their local area.
• 57% would be “more likely” to purchase from a retailer again if the retailer kept them updated on new offers and service by social media.

Although these data come from a study of digital marketing, they are critical to the world of print. This is both because print is one of the primary methods of driving digital data collection (direct mail, posters, signage, in-store displays) and because, as marketing becomes increasingly multi-channel, print is relying more and more heavily on the data gathered through digital channels by sharing the same centralized marketing database.

Need help combining digital and print channels to deepen membership engagement or acquire new members? Contact OlleyMay Media.

Source: Engaging with Digital Consumers (Infosys)

4 Tips to Targeting Prospective Members

When using target marketing tactics, such as direct mail, to reach prospective households in your service area, sometimes it pays to hone in on particular households versus blanket all households.

This typically applies when the cost of reaching all households in your service area exceeds your budget, or you would simply rather reach a certain demographic makeup and leave others out for a specific campaign (for instance, targeting households with children when promoting a new Family membership rate).

Today’s target marketing technology makes it easier to find ideal members; members most likely to join your Y and stay for an extended period of time.

Here are some tips to targeting ideal households in your service area:

1. Produce a Member Profile report. A Member Profile report allows you to clearly see your member’s demographic and psychographic characteristics and makeup. With this information you may want to clone the current members, or even target households that do not look like your current members.
    
2. Define demographic profiles. If you don’t have a Member Profile report, you can still narrow down your target audience with enough confidence to run effective target marketing campaigns. You may want to consider narrowing your audience using what we call household categories such as:
   • Age ranges
   • Household income levels
   • Presence of children versus no presence of children
      
3. Define lifestyle interests. You may also want to consider targeting households with certain lifestyle interests as well, such as households with interests in:
   • Active lifestyles
   • Parenting
   • Community/Charities
   • Children
      
4. Precisely define your target market. If you are in a service area with neighboring YMCAs, today’s technology allows you to clearly define the households you want to reach and avoid encroaching on neighboring Ys. You are no longer restricted to a simple circular circumference around a specific location. The below images show how this can work.

View fullsize

View fullsize

One more thing to keep in mind: when targeting prospective members in an effort to grow your membership base, don't make the common mistake of immediately dismissing your current members from your acquisition promotions. You can usually structure the language and offers in an outbound marketing campaign to effectively appeal to both audiences.

Happy marketing!

Bruce

5 Popular (and FREE) YMCA Marketing Designs

5 Popular (and FREE) winter design themes

As we all start preparing to make 2016 a banner year, we wanted to share how some of our YMCA clients are successfully heading in that direction by using OlleyMay’s design, printing and marketing services.

Below are 5 popular designs being successfully used by YMCAs to not only acquire new members but also retain current ones (remember, it costs approximately 6X more to acquire a new member than retain one, so make sure you include your current members in your outbound marketing efforts).

All of OlleyMay’s designs are free for your Y to use, and customizable to match your demographic or target audience. And of course, we can create a new design for you.

Below are the fronts only of jumbo 6x11 postcards and are available in other direct mail sizes as well as email headers, online ads and signage.

[click any image to enlarge it]

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

View fullsize

---

“OlleyMay created a creative and compelling marketing campaign for our new Y facility that proved to generate greater awareness and membership than we would have been able to achieve on our own.”

— Rob Reeves, former CEO, Westport Weston Family YMCA

---

It's not too late to launch a winter campaign! Using one of our current designs, you can be in the mail in a couple of weeks, including mobile targeting and Facebook targeting.

Bruce Browning
(914) 380-7510
bbrowning@olleymay.com

One Headline. Three Fresh, Engaging YMCA Designs.

Here's how the creative team at OlleyMay adapted one of its more popular headlines to three different design approaches for the YMCA brand. 

View fullsize

The two on the left are bright and fresh while the one on the right is a little edgier. Nonetheless they're all contemporary and will grab the recipient's attention, especially when used across different marketing channels.

These variations were not designed to be used as a series, or all at once since the last one on the right has a bit of a different tone, but with some tweaks to make the last one more consistent with the first two in style, they could easily be a consecutive series of marketing messages or all used at the same time.

We think the themes not only speak to family, adult fitness and youth, but also touch on unique YMCA benefits and features such as indoor pools and court activities -- offerings that many YMCA competitors do not offer.

What do you think? Any suggestions?

Thank you and happy marketing!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you'd like to see other OlleyMay YMCA designs please  contact Bruce Browning at (914) 380-7510 / bbrowning@olleymay.com

Multichannel Marketing Success: It’s All About That Mix | OlleyMay Media

Want better sales?

It’s all about that mix—the marketing mix. From print to email to mobile, top marketers combine channels to provide a consistent customer experience regardless of channel used. Here is some data every marketer ought to know.

58% of online shoppers browse print catalogs for ideas

25% of marketers saying direct mail or print ads are the channels most likely to be combined with email campaigns (Ascend2)

61% of marketers boosting investment in lead-nurturing mailers in 2015(Regalix)

44% of marketers citing multichannel as an essential skill for marketers(Econsultancy)

45% of marketers are increasing mobile spending this year (Target Marketing)

7.6% Average response rate for print + email campaigns

6.0% Average response rate for print-only campaigns (InfoTrends)

+1.2 billion Increase in spending on U.S. direct mail marketing in 2015(Winterberry Group)

42% of brand research conducted on phones and tablets

56% of consumers who read the postcards that come in the mail (Direct Marketing Association)

Integrating Multichannels: Percent of marketers integrating multiple channels into their campaigns in 2014:
38% — Three channels
29% — Four channels
(Experian Marketing Services)

Prioritizing Multichannels – Percent of chief marketing officers who prioritize the multichannel experience:
71% — high-growth companies
41% — low-growth companies
(Percolate)

There are lots of channels out there. Use the right combinations and make them work for you!

How to Stay in Front of Customers and Prospects for 12 Months With One Simple Postcard

I picked up the postcard below at my son's school in Ridgefield, CT not too long ago. The postcard is produced by Newpond Farm in Redding, CT.

I thought the mailer was quite interesting and effective for a couple of reasons:

• 12 months of events on one postcard. The timeline layout is an effective, clever use of this postcard's jumbo size (6"x11"). If your organization has scheduled events during the year that you want to promote, this layout can be an effective way to display all of your events in one shot. I bet this card lasts months in someone's home just for this reason, even if the dates get transferred to a digital calendar because we all know the term: "out of sight, out of mind."

• The cut out corner for membership. I thought this was a clever addition to a postcard. Recipients simply cut out the corner, fill it in and send it back in an envelope. Adding a landing page would be a nice additional membership signup option, but nonetheless this is not so much to ask of the recipient. And to help justify the cost of your membership, just flip the card over and see all that you get for one full year.

This card is big, measuring 6"x11". The cost to print and mail it is not overwhelming. In fact the postage cost is the same rate as a letter (around 40 cents first class pre-sorted, around 30 cents bulk rate, and around 18 cents as a non-profit mailing, though that could go to around 13 cents each depending on the type of mailing.)

It sure does pack a lot of content, but I must say that I don't feel overwhelmed since the content is well written and relevant to me. The more the better actually. The design will not win an award, but it doesn't need to if the content is relevant and timely to the audience.

What do you think about the piece? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Happy marketing!

View fullsize

View fullsize