formerly transpromotional.com

The recent Outputlinks newsletter’s series “HVTO Mistakes …” does a great job of covering what I call “the greatest sin of omission in the industry” by featuring the mistake of not using customer data to the fullest.

There are millions of excuses for not using customer data on a statement. The article specifically calls out; resistance (departmental limitations) and design (available space and cost.)

 Pat McGrew makes some excellent comments regarding unimportant content that often winds up on a statement. “…how much real estate you can open up by giving up the information about the transaction that the customer can’t use, and eliminating useless information.”

Again, this points to the importance of interdepartmental project teams. Each of the problems of going transpromotional are insurmountable if given to a single department. They are easily resolved if the right people are attacking the entire problem, instead of individual components.

Hopefully, you’ve been able to see Steve Coburn present, because he’s a great speaker. His session at the Chicagoland Chapter of Xplor’s Midwest region was posted on the net. This presentation has great industry information from InfoTrends and Sappi. It also has great Transpromo case studies from the US, Europe and Israel are features. This presentation has a great breakdown of the concepts and results from a approaches that had different degrees of “tranpromotionality.”

All in all, a good crash course for new people and some good lessons for advanced transpromotional maniacs.

For people with Powerpoint, click this link to the presentation:

For people without, visit the Google HTML version here:

Please comment if you think I’m being unreasonable here. Through my credit card company, (Citi), I participate in their “Thank You”(sm) program. I accumulated some points and went online to redeem them for some gift cards. Citi took 12 days to get this thing into an envelope. Worst of all, they missed the chance to share a transpromotional moment with me. Read the rest of this entry »

Iron Gate Digital is a digital print provider that it proudly broadcasting transpromotional service offerings. Their site defines the term in terms of the services they offer. This company is doing a great job of positioning themselves for the future. Transpromo isn’t easy, and it truly requires a vendor/customer partnership for success. Pay attention to the “what we do” page. It’s not about quick delivery of custom mailings, it’s about helping customers market more effectively. Iron Gate refuses to be a commodity provider. This is an impotrant differentiator in a world filled with overcapacity.

They have some high profile customers, including; Audi, Oracle and Vauxhall. The case studies aren’t specific to transpromo.

If you are a digital print provider, you may consider differentiation along this line. Although the site does not contain samples, it does a good job of communicating their intent and skills. This is certainly not the typical “we do everything, quickly, efficiently, and perfectly at a great price all the time” message that is so common in the print service provider market.