As someone who creates content for companies in the printing and mailing industry, I’m amazed that so many mail service provider websites are lacking a critical piece of content that impacts late-stage buyers — customer case studies.

That’s a shame, because my clients who have these items in their content collections find them to be highly versatile and effective.

Serious buyers of mailing services need answers to questions they have about a company before they will engage in conversations with your sales representative. A proper case study will address those major areas of concern:

1.Is the situation described similar to mine?

2.How did you solve the customer’s problem?

3.What difference did it make?

Short project briefs and testimonials alone cannot convey enough information to satisfy someone who is nearing a decision about who will process their mail. They need something with more depth.

I’ve written lots of case studies for my content marketing clients. Before I start, I always ask my clients some questions of my own: Why are we doing it? What do they hope to accomplish? What do they want prospects to do, learn, or feel after they’ve read the case study? Who do they want to influence? Once you’re clear about the goals, it’s much easier to create the content that will influence the audience you’re targeting.

Print and mail operations are full of measurable statistics that make customer case studies credible and relatable. You can talk about production efficiency gains, reductions in undeliverable pieces, response rates, conversions, postage savings, and many other items that line up perfectly with the interests of your prospective customers.

Typical Case Study Structure

The first paragraph of a case study usually tells the reader about the featured company. This is vitally important because a reader will only spend their time reading the rest of the story if it sounds like their own situation. This isn’t a full biography, but list the customer’s industry, what they do, and some measure of size, often expressed in the number of employees or pieces mailed per month. If you serve multiple markets, produce a case study for a company in each industry you support.

Next, express the problem, challenge, or opportunity the customer was experiencing prior to engaging with your company. Use terminology that will be familiar to your target audience of business leaders, such as “alarming reductions in customer retention associated with bad addresses” or “delays in bill processing causing cash flow issues.”

The third segment of a case study describes the solution. What did you do to solve the problem? You don’t need a blow-by-blow recounting of events, but include enough detail to illustrate your solution and communicate the value of your services. Some examples might be “tightened address hygiene with comprehensive data quality tools,” “normalized data to remove previously unrecognized duplicates,” or “standardized formats and implemented a white-paper workflow, eliminating expensive pre-printed forms.”

Deliver the payoff with numbers that connect directly to the problem: “25% drop in duplicate or undeliverable mail, resulting in more than $100,000 in savings over three years”, “tripled response rate compared to previous campaigns to the same list”, or “20% drop in billing-related call volume after improved document clarity.” If a prospect could copy your outcomes section and paste it directly into an internal justification memo, you’re on the right track.

End the case study with some forward-looking statements. Is the client poised to repeat the campaign or expand the technique to other applications? Your conclusion can also provide benchmarks that back up the credibility of the benefits you’ve described. Statistics about direct mail response rates and ROI, for example, or comments about how anticipated higher postage rates make it critical for organizations to leverage appended data to expand targeting and personalization strategies.

Working Around Sensitive Numbers

I just told you to publicize those result numbers. But clients often view their campaigns and workflows as competitive advantages. They don’t want to reveal things like response rates, cost savings, or operational improvements. This happens a lot, but customer privacy concerns shouldn’t keep you from publishing your best success stories.

If the client objects to being identified at all, you can anonymize them while preserving the story. Simply refer to them as a “national telecom company” or “a midwestern health system,” for example. Optionally, you can even add a note that the client requested anonymity but gave their permission to profile the project.

Even when customers allow you to identify them, they may be hesitant about revealing actual facts and figures. This is when you can shift to relative numbers, ranges, or percentages instead of hard numbers. Replace “response rose from 1.3% to 3.9%” with “a 200% increase in response,” for example. You can even communicate results by comparing them to published data, as in “the ROI sat at the high end of what recent direct mail studies report.”

Your case study can always emphasize the transformation, rather than the statistics. You could focus on how the customer benefited from outsourcing their print and mail operation vs. running an in-plant document center, for example. Or you could show how the customer’s mail moved from a pure expense to a principal element in a system of triggered programs, better targeting, and synchronized digital touchpoints that drive revenue.

To highlight projects where customer identities must remain concealed, we’ve also occasionally created a composite case study where we combined the experience of several customers. By using ranges, you can explain the details without singling out any of the customers individually. That works well in some instances.

Customer Quotes

Quotes are some of the best parts of a case study. Collecting quotes is one reason we always interview our clients’ customers instead of relying on a questionnaire. We record the interviews so we transcribe the quotes correctly, but we usually don’t add them to the case study verbatim. We routinely clean up grammar or clarify a customer’s remarks, presenting them in the best light. In over twenty years of writing case studies, we’ve yet to have anyone object.

If you must anonymize a quote, be sure to include the speaker’s position or job title so the reader understands the context.

Always allow the customer to review the case study before publication. They will tell you if you’ve included any details they don’t want published. I recommend sending the completed case study to the customer along with a deadline for a response, after which you are free to publish as-is. You don’t want to delay your publication date just because the customer didn’t get around to approving it. This task is unlikely to be at the top of their to-do list.

Keep It Brief

Executives and managers aren’t likely to read long-winded case studies. For most uses, a one or two-page document is sufficient. If the project is complex and part of the audience needs the technical details, then you can create two versions. I find it easier to write the extended version first and then shorten it.

One of the greatest things about case studies is that you can use the content in lots of different ways. Pluck segments out and publish on LinkedIn, make slides for sales presentations, conference talks, or a carousel slide show. Do a webinar with your customer to go through the case study project together. Create two-minute videos that highlight the main points of the case studies.

People are busy. Make it easy for them to consume your content whenever they have time. One case study can become the source for a dozen other pieces of content. Prospects that interact with these short versions can always find the complete document on your website.

An Essential Piece for Every MSP

A good case study does more than describe a completed project. It helps a prospect see themselves in the customer’s situation, understand the work you did, and believe the results are possible for their own organization. That is much more persuasive than another list of services or a few vague claims about quality and experience.

More mail service providers should make case studies a regular part of their marketing and sales efforts. Show the problems you solved, explain the difference your work made, and give prospects the proof they need to move forward in the sales process.

Mike Porter at Print/Mail Consultants and PMC Content Services creates content that helps attract and retain customers for companies in the mailing and document industry and he assists companies as they integrate new technology. He welcomes questions from Mailing Systems Technology readers. Reach out to him at www.pmccontentservices.com. Follow @PMCmike on X or send him a connection request on LinkedIn.