A Gift from Google
By Judy Berlin, director of Worldwide Marketing, XMPie, A Xerox Company
The Internet and mobile communications through smartphones, and ever-more-popular Apple iPads and tablet computers, are altering the landscape of the commerce world. Add social media to the mix and one can see a dramatic empowerment of the individual to influence brands in both positive and negative ways. We also know that customers today are more inclined to use the Web to research and evaluate products and services through mobile and online networks, and this increased role of e-media in the buying process is taking place across all industries.
Does all this mean that print is no longer relevant?
As the director of Worldwide Marketing at XMPie, A Xerox Company, I often receive promotional mail pieces from a variety of sources. The other day, Arie, our IT manager, handed me a mail piece he had received from a most surprising source. Google – the icon of advertising in the online world – sent me a printed coupon with an offer of 200 shekels off a Google Adwords campaign for our company website. Now, if you think about it, despite the fact that Google has a relatively easy-to-implement means of getting their message to us online, they chose to also send a traditional mail piece with a pretty good offer. This is because Google cleverly understands the value of print.
Research shows that print is still a vital component, and when included in an integrated, one-to-one cross-media marketing campaign, it is a force multiplier that generates much better results. In fact, according to Infotrends, marketers today understand this and will, on average, utilize at least three different media types for their campaigns – including print. The winning combination consists of a print component, email, and personalized landing pages, and actually proves to be the most profitable.
Mastering the technologies around online components of a marketing campaign is definitely important, but the value of print as a driving media channel should not be ignored. As mobile and social communications become ever more prevalent and accepted in modern marketing tactics, marketers and their service providers that can reach customers with the right personalized message, using the preferred media channels, including print, will win.
Personalization for Improving Health
There are many thought-provoking success stories that can be attributed to campaigns that involve personalized publishing, but here’s one that was sponsored by the England’s Department of Health that has made a definite positive social impact.
The British government announced Change4Life, England’s first and the world’s most ambitious social marketing campaign aimed at reducing rising levels of childhood obesity.
Lateral Group used XMPie® and the Xerox® iGen3® 110 Digital Production Press paired with a CX Print Server powered by Creo® to achieve the objectives of Change4Life - to motivate families at risk of obesity by encouraging them to respond and engage in long-term behaviour changes.
To help them with this important program, Lateral Group created a compelling “How Are The Kids” package, printed on recyclable stock certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which included a Handbook for Healthy, Happy Kids, a personalized action plan, and a Change4Life calendar with activity stickers for families to easily track their day-to-day progress. The personalized packages were produced as a result of responses to quesionnaires that were submitted.
You can read more about this Xerox Best-of-the-Best contest winner at http://www.xmpie.com/change4life
Busy Days at IPEX
Birmingham’s weather has been surprisingly nice for IPEX. Unfortunately, we haven’t had any free time to enjoy it! The XMPie exhibit has been filled wall-to-wall with people since the show started on Tuesday and our resident experts have been tied-up giving back-to-back demonstrations. Attendees have even been stopping in their tracks in the corridors to listen to presentations, which has caused quite the traffic jam.
The XMPie Advantage playground has proven very popular with attendees interested in getting some hands-on experience with personalization. The roaming uPrint Mobile demonstration showing how to create personalized greeting cards using an iPhone and a local printer is also creating a buzz around the show.
With IPEX half over, we are looking forward to four more busy days. So, if you haven’t been by to see our exhibit, stop by Hall 7 to see us!
Reading the Writing on the Wall
With the explosive popularity of social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other such sites in recent years, it has become clear that the new model for business communication is in the dialogue and not the monologue.
CMO’s are quickly realizing that there is no longer a place for the simplistic, one-way conversations that marketing practitioners have depended upon so heavily in past. We all know there is a sophisticated sector of digital baby boomers that will soon become the major consumers of tomorrow. We will have no choice, but to participate in this playground of interactive digital content, if we want to survive.
With this fundamental shift in consumer behavior, the need for one-to-one personalization in traditional marketing communications is more acute than ever. The clever integration of technology, creative content and personal interaction is that powerful combination that will allow us to redefine the way we communicate.
We all agree that the conversations need to be customer-centric and authentic. But therein lies the dilemma. As much as we would like, in most circumstances it is simply not logistically possible for companies to reach out to each individual customer, one-on-one. And this is where technology can help. The idea of ‘one-to-one’ is really ‘one-to-many,’ where each one thinks that they are the only one.
So the real question is – how do we efficiently manage individual conversations and interactions, along both axes of time and media? It’s not simple and many companies are wrestling with this “cross media” challenge.
One significant clue is that we see time and again, that an integrated solution for one-to-one publishing is critical to achieve a successful cross-media strategy. The holy grail of cross-media publishing is the ability to communicate with consumers across the spectrum of print and digital media channels with consistent messages that are relevant to the individual recipient in terms of content, presentation, timeliness, and channel.
Only an integrated system could provide the overall event-tracking , analysis and feedback loop capabilities needed to set the stage for an improved dialogue with targeted messages. In today’s customer-centric environment, no marketer should settle for anything less.