Specialty Services for the Agri-Marketing Sector

The following is a snapshot of the Specialty Agri-Marketing Services offered by Highland Marketing. Each of these programs and related services are explained in more detail, below.

Enhancing Marketing Programs with CHU Data for Addresses in Ontario, Quebec & Manitoba

• Integrating CHU Data with Direct Mail Pieces
• Integrating CHU Data with pURLs ( personalized URLs)
• Integrating CHU Data with Email Marketing

Tailored, Unaddressed Targeting by CHU or by County in Ontario

• Unaddressed Targeting by CHU
• Unaddressed Targeting by County

Enhancing Marketing Programs with CHU Data for Addresses in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba

Sometimes it can be a benefit to “speak a little closer” with customers and prospects, or to know exactly who to contact when launching a product that is more applicable in certain areas rather than others.

At the same time, marketing pieces than contain personalized, context-sensitive information can add more appeal and show customers that you are making every effort to accommodate their specific needs.

In a nutshell, we can provide CHU data for communities within Ontario, Quebec or Manitoba. Further, we can extend your data with this information for a variety of programs, which might include:

Direct Mail Pieces

This could be in the form of a personalized postcard, letter or some other form of mailer. In addition to the contact name, you could include the community, specific CHU zone for the community as well as associated crop inputs. For example, “Dave, our VT 2001 seed variety is a perfect match for your 2700 – 2800 CHU zone in Fergus ON.

As an example, the personalized die cut card featured in this case study is from an actual project. As you will see, this card was tipped into a magazine, but as noted above, we can use the same concept with any other form of direct mailing piece.

pURLs ( personalized URLs)

Personalized URLs are a great way to engage both new and existing customers. They can also be a wonderful way to gather valuable contact data for new prospects.

As an incentive is often used to entice people to respond, the GroPro pURL example features an attractive offer. Typically, the value of the offer is consistent with the long-term value of developing the new relationship.

Email Marketing

We can apply the same targeted marketing concepts, featuring CHUs and associated data, to email deployments to your email subscribers. This can include direct links to pURLs as well as other web or microsite content.

Online CHU Fetching Programs

We have developed the first phase of an online utility that fetches and returns CHU zones, in real time, based on the community. This technology would be used where an existing customer logs on to a system or someone provides address data while on a website. This, in turn, would facilitate the same type of interactions with customers and prospects, whereby CHU data as well as  associated crop inputs could be integrated into the online content.

Tailored, Unaddressed Targeting by CHU or by County in Ontario

Unaddressed direct marketing programs are not addressed to specific individuals, but this does not mean that they cannot be highly targeted. For example, with an unaddressed program we could still use cards that say, “Our VT 2001 seed variety is a perfect match for your 2700 – 2800 CHU zone in Fergus ON”.

How can we do this? This is explained under “Targeting by CHU” and “Targeting by County”, below.

Targeting by CHU

Because all Canada Post “Farm” points of call (see below) are linked to specific communities and we can provide the respective CHU zones for communities, we can vary the messages within an overall unaddressed drop. It does mean a bit more segregation and paperwork, because we have to separate the cards for each community, but it is a powerful way to build a high degree of personalization into unaddressed pieces.

The Unaddressed “Farm” points of call do vary monthly. Here are the counts of Farms, by CHU, within Ontario, as of August 2015.

Canada Post’s definition of a farm is as follows:

Farms:

Include residential and business buildings associated with a defined areaof land (ex. fields) used to grow crops, raise animals or fish. The point of call does not necessarily have to belong to any farming association to be classified as a farm.

Targeting by County

Because some marketers like to target specific geographic regions that span more than one heat zone, we also mapped communities to counties within Ontario. This allows us to send unaddressed pieces to specific counties, whereby we can cite not only the county name, but also community names within the content. For example, “Hoping all is well and that you have enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the Mitchell area. We have enjoyed wonderful, long-standing relationships with all of our friends in Perth county. . .”.

Here is a table that shows Unaddressed Farm point of call by county, within Ontario, as of August 2015.

As a final note on this topic, Canada Post has been very generous this year with some outstanding offers on Unaddressed Admail. As we hope we have shown, when used strategically, this product can certainly transcend any type of junk mail image – especially with highly creative pieces, awesome die cuts, etc.!

Birds of a Feather

Sometimes it’s nice to know where the bulk of your business is coming from, as this can be a determining factor in where you might want to direct future marking efforts.

Although not just applicable to agri-marketing, our Birds of a Feather program, which provides counts and percentages of your customers on postal walks/routes, within communities, lets you know where you are being successful as well as where you might not be as successful as you might hope. Note that, as not all rural addresses contain route designators, some results are shown at the overall rural community level.

Complete, Complementary Suite of Other Direct Mail and Direct Marketing Services

In addition to the specialties noted above, we also provide the agri-marketing sector with a full range of direct mail services, both basic and advanced data services, printing and integrated web-based marketing services, incorporating both generic and personalized web content.

For additional information on any of the services outlined above, please do not hesitate to contact us at 1-800-422-1309.