AlphaGraphics North East Campaign Achieves 100% Response Rate and ‘Xcellence Award’ at 2012 XMPie Users Group Conference
By Christine DeNering (formerly Winter), PR/marketing programs manager, XMPie, A Xerox Company
Just over a month ago, the annual XMPie Users Group Conference was held in Boston. 189 people attended (up 23% from last year!), representing 13 countries, including USA, UK, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Singapore, and Sweden. Women attendance was also up 50%, and there were over 35 sessions presented by Adobe, Xerox, prindoz, NEPS, VDP Success, PB Systems, InfoTrends, Traffic GMBH, and XMPie. In talking with some of the attendees, it was obvious that they were very pleased with this year’s conference. Frank Romano even stopped by and had some very positive things to say! Check out the video here.
I myself enjoyed the opportunity to learn and network with our customers. One story I’ve been meaning to share is that of this year’s Xcellence Award winner – AlphaGraphics North East. Stephen Jones was there to represent the Stockton, U.K.-based company and present the innovative marketing campaign that scored the most votes among attendees.
The campaign, referred to by AlphaGraphics as their ‘Contact Toolkit,’ has become an essential marketing tool for their internal and external sales teams to communicate with clients and prospects in a professional manner, sending out personalized, targeted and highly memorable information across multiple media, including email, SMS, direct mail and websites (Personalized URLs). Standard communications, such as a follow-up to a sales meeting or a request for product information, all receive a personal response, tailored to the customer enquiry.
The results of the ‘Contact Toolkit’ campaign demonstrate how AlphaGraphics’ competitive and innovative use of XMPie software works. A massive 100% of customers read through their personalized emails, and 99.3% clicked through to their Personalized URL, a response rate that speaks for itself. AlphaGraphics also greatly improved internal productivity levels and streamlined the overall sales process with this application.
AlphaGraphics North East prides itself as the most technologically advanced firm in the region, and is now offering this ‘Toolkit’ service to local and national businesses. So, a big congratulations to them, and thanks to Compu-Mail, Stoque and NEPS – three great customers who also submitted their work for the awards competition!
I had a chance to sit down with representatives from all four companies at the conference. Watch my interview with Stephen Jones, below, and hear more about AlphaGraphics’ winning campaign. A case study with more details will be coming soon, as well as the video clips from my other customer interviews, so stay tuned!
By the way, the XMPie Users Group in Germany will be holding their 4th conference November 20-21. Interested? Register here.
7 Shining Examples of 1:1 Marketing
Filed under: Awards, Cross Media, Events, General, One-to-one, Web-to-Print
By Christine Winter, PR/marketing programs manager for XMPie, A Xerox Company
Last week, Caslon, a PODi Affiliate, announced that the all-new 2011 case studies are now online, along with the Best Practice Award Winners. These impressive campaigns will be featured in-depth at the AppForum, which is fast approaching!
I was proud to discover that the campaigns and applications from the following PODi case studies were powered by software solutions from XMPie. In fact, a extra round of applause is in order for the Dermalogica case study, which was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Marketing Resource Center category for PODi’s 2011 Best Practices Awards! Check it out…
Dermalogica Supports Stockists with Web-to-Print Solution
Dermalogica is an international skin care company that sells its products through trained skin therapists. The South African operation of Dermalogica has over 550 stockists that need marketing collateral support. Through a Web-to-print portal, the stockists are able to create personalized marketing collateral while Dermalogica is able to maintain brand consistency. The new solution is also much more efficient as turnaround time from order to delivery was reduced from weeks to 72 hours.
DaVinci’s Restaurant Serves up Results with Cross-Channel Marketing
DaVinci’s is a newly renovated, gourmet Italian restaurant that re-opened its doors with a fresh look and a new menu. To ensure the grand opening was a success, they implemented a cross-media program that incorporated digital print, e-mail, Web and social media. Personalized postcards invited potential customers to see the renovation and transformation of the restaurant. By visiting their Personalized URL, and answering a few questions, customers received a coupon via e-mail. The campaign generated a 4.8% direct mail response rate and helped DaVinci’s grow their customer database.
HP Value Added Reseller Cross-Media Marketing Campaigns
Hewlett Packard’s product and channel managers need support for conducting integrated lead generation campaigns. A marketing resource center solution was developed by JFM Concepts that supports eight different product lines and enables Value Added Resellers to deploy complex variable data campaigns. Cold sales lists have produced consistent direct mail response rates in the 4% to 6% range while highly segmented offers to warm leads have generated response rates of 30% or higher.
JDB Fine Hotels and Resorts Provides Personalized Memory Books
JDB Fine Hotels & Resorts is a comprehensive hotel and resort marketing organization representing the finest and most unique properties in the upscale travel market. Travel agents work through JDB to book vacation plans for their clients. A personalized memory book program was developed to strengthen the relationship between JDB and travel agents, and to increase referral business from consumers. The digital print books are customized for each client with details of the trip, exquisite photos and contact information for the travel agent.
NewPage “Dream, Green” Campaign Grows Awareness
NewPage needed a lead generation direct marketing campaign that would encourage printers to sample NewPage papers and develop brand awareness. A multi-touch, cross-media campaign with a “green” theme was deployed. The campaign incorporated personalized postcards, die-cut mailers, e-mail, custom posters and Personalized URL response mechanisms. The campaign achieved a direct marketing response rate of 4.7% and captured valuable information from print service providers.
Print Media Management Variable Content Magazine
MBA Group*, in partnership with their client Print Media Management magazine and technology supplier Xerox, set out to produce the world’s first fully digitally printed 64 page colour magazine with variable advertising and editorial content for different market sectors personalised to each of 12,400 subscribers. It helped generate 24% advertising revenue for the publisher and advertisers achieved a 256% increase in responses on variable data advertisements targeting to specific market sectors compared with the results for generic advertisements.
Progressive Communications Uses Personalized Cross-Media Promotion
Progressive Communications* wanted to highlight their new capabilities powered by digital print. A direct marketing campaign was developed to drive awareness of their services and illustrate the power of personalized communications. The cross-media program incorporated direct mail, QR codes, e-mail and Personalized URLs. Progressive Communications achieved a 11.6% direct mail response rate and new business from customers.
*Also a Xerox Best-of-the-Best award winner!
XMPie is ExactTarget’s “2010 Embedded Partner of the Year”
Filed under: Awards, Cross Media, E-mail, Events, General
By Ranen Goren, VP, Cross-Media Products & Enterprise Solutions, XMPie
ExactTarget, which has been an XMPie partner for the last three years powering the e-mail technology behind the XMPie e-Mail Service, recently presented XMPie with the “2010 Embedded Partner of the Year” Grand Prize Award!
This is an important milestone for the partnership between XMPie and ExactTarget because it shows that interactive marketing experts acknowledge the power of the integrated e-mail service, as provided by ExactTarget, within a complete cross-media solution, as provided by XMPie.
Here’s what the judging committee had to say about the XMPie solution.
XMPie’s embedded ExactTarget offering…
1. Provides seamless integration as part of software and services offering;
2. Enables clients to offer sophisticated use of e-mail;
3. Includes advanced personalization; and
4. Delivers a strong feature set and superior deliverability.
For example, the XMPie e-mail below includes a personalized image, greeting and URL, which are sophisticated features that have proven to increase response rates for us and our customers. XMPie makes it possible to do all of this, with the superior deliverability and tracking of ExactTarget, in one single software package that integrates print, e-mail, Web and SMS together into real cross-media campaigns.
Receiving the ExactTarget award was exciting and timely. Just the day before, I presented XMPie’s latest e-mail features of our one-to-one cross-media solution, PersonalEffect 5.0, at the XMPie Users Group Conference in Orlando, Fla. With the wealth of new features and improvements, together with the new lower pricing options offered by the XMPie e-Mail Service, we had a lot of great news to deliver.
For our customers who are not using the XMPie e-Mail Service, I believe the best news for you is that we now provide a free trial option that allows you to evaluate it very easily and for free, with no commitment at all. With this new option, every XMPie customer 
with the cross-media edition would benefit from checking out our much improved – and affordable – e-mail options.
We were a bit surprised and delighted to see that almost everyone in the audience that came to the e-mail session at the Users Group Conference is already using e-mail in their campaigns. This was a big improvement from previous years when we saw only 30 to 50% using e-mail. It shows again that e-mail has become more than just a “nice-to-have,” but rather a critical ingredient in the cross-media mix.