formerly transpromotional.com

HVTO has a grea article on “The Most Common HVTO Mistakes” that is a piece of timeless information for our industry. The most interesting thing on this top ten list sits in position number 5:

Not Using Customer Info for a Dynamic Statement
The next most common mistake involves failing to use information about the customer to create a more appropriate, dynamic and 1:1 statement.

This is a long way from the past, where departmental silos prevented marketing from talking to programming and production not talking to accounting. The truth is that the data is available to make every statement a 1:1 transpromotional statement.

If you are not making a transpromotional statement today, you competitors are working on it. Are you going to wait for their increased market share to force you to play catch up? If so, good luck. 

CEO refresher has an interesting (but older) article about marketing metrics that appears timely as transpromotional documents gain momentum. It outlines the important links that need to exist between strategy and execution in a general sense. We’re just talking about applying marketing paradigms to transactional documents to increase the brand value per page/interaction/touchpoint of all B2C communications.

The article mentions a 2006 IDC survey that indicated that 38% of responding companies plan to measure their marketing efforts through metrics. That’s a really low number. Essentially, this means that 62% of companies are throwing marketing money into the wind and hoping for increased results through increased spending. That’s pure insanity. You have to know why you got the results and how they came in. Read the rest of this entry »

In the recent installation of Harry’s corner on e-document news, Harry does a better job than us on explaining how the new USPS rate case is a motivator for transpromotional documents. While I disagree that the USPS left business mailers “holding the bag,” many of the points in the article are excellent.

 The key points are:

• Weight increment charges decreased, making it cost effective to stuff envelopes with more pages.
• Larger envelopes no cost more, inducing business mailers to re-evaluate the form factors of their mailings to match the USPS automation investments
• When adding up all costs, a color TransPromo strategy is more cost effective than ever before

Now is a great time to rethink the form factor of transpromotional mail. Turning flats into letters can be a driver of cost savings, as well as an opportunity to make your documents stand out.

 A letter doesn’t have to be a Number 10 envelope. There are plenty of ways to innovate and differentiate in the current rate structure. This is better news for product innovators and customer intimate companies than it is for cost focused companies. The math just doesn’t fit the paridigm of myopic penny counting that many business mailers are locked into.

Well, May 14th is here, and everyone knows about the new postal rates. Some people think the glass is half empty, and this is just another rate increase. Not true, the glass is half full, if not overflowing with opportunities for new designs and fresh ideas for transpromo delivery information.

It’s a total re-evaluation of the postal system’s rates to align them to their cost structure. In the end, that’s a good thing.  CNN has a great story about this, including quotes from the DMA (Direct Marketing Association).

Read the rest of this entry »