Harte-Hanks Inc. is expected to announce today it has expanded its relationship with the U.S. Postal Service to provide data-driven marketing as part of the agency’s business prospecting system.
With the Harte-Hanks’ Allink database marketing solution, USPS plans to execute more targeted campaigns while seeking to measure more accurately its marketing success and build awareness of its business products.
The Allink Solution Suite helps companies in diverse markets achieve return on investment through the application of data-driven marketing strategies for a more relevant and better-targeted approach to marketing. The suite is a blend of vertical marketing strategy, analytics, direct marketing best practices, end-to-end marketing services and leading-edge technology.
Tina Lance, manager of segment advertising, USPS said the agency began working with Harte-Hanks more than two years ago. USPS has been using Allink for about 18 months, and is now expanding its use with the solution.
The USPS had experienced flat revenue growth for First-Class Mail, among other mail classes, as a result of numerous factors. To combat this trend, and to promote awareness and sales of its business products, the USPS hired Harte-Hanks to identify business customers with potential to spend a larger allocation of resources on USPS products and services.
Af ter conducting a thorough marketing assessment, Harte-Hanks designed and developed an integrated and centralized marketing database to support the organization’s prospecting system that includes a data warehouse made up of millions of names and addresses.
Partnering with the USPS, Harte-Hanks then implemented best-practice analytics to better segment and target business customers.
Customer and prospect data, consolidated and housed in the database, now can be used to achieve two top marketing objectives: Promoting its products, spanning Priority Mail to Click-N-Ship to Carrier Pickup, and increasing direct mail awareness and sales with business audiences.
As part of the ongoing relationship, Harte-Hanks manages inbound response activity, processes weekly updates of the hosted marketing database and manages list pulls for e-mail and direct mail campaigns.
Additionally, an analytics team at Harte-Hanks produces reports, online tools and analyses to ensure marketing campaigns are measured, and to support segmentation and predictive modeling for future efforts.
Ms. Lance said that each of USPS’ individual direct making campaigns has resulted in single to double-digit response rates because of its Harte-Hanks solution.
In general, the main reason for using Harte-Hanks, said Ms. Lance, “is to increase understanding of our customers in terms of who, what, where and ultimately increase revenue for USPS.”
