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Sold on Transactional Document Marketing? Now Build Your Infrastructure
By Tom Lee
Everyone seems ready to agree that marketing via your transaction documents is worth the effort and investment. Now the question becomes, what does it take to transform statements and invoices into marketing tools that strengthen customer relationships?
For starters, you’ll need a team of engaged stakeholders from marketing, IT, billing, production print and perhaps support from outside consultancies to help you create a strategy, collaborate on messaging and information design, implement an infrastructure, integrate new systems into an existing one, or provide project management expertise. Achieving results means setting clear goals and new ways of engaging people, processes and technology.
It All Starts With Data
This article focuses on the basic elements of a transaction marketing infrastructure. You may find you already have much of what you need, while other components will need to be investigated and acquired. Use this guide to make sure you consider all the components you may need.
At the heart of your efforts are data-mining, processing and analytics capabilities. Developing an effective transactional document marketing campaign means determining where data resides in your organization and how you’ll access, mine, scrub, analyze and model it to create the right message, offer and conditional formatting. In a perfect world, you have access to sophisticated historical, geographic, demographic and psychographic data.
Don’t get overwhelmed if you’re not a “data person.” Keep in mind that transactional document marketing can be effective using just a few solid data points. Some marketing organizations leverage data they already have—transactional information such as types of products purchased, length of customer relationship, account balance or region to successfully inform, educate, cross-sell and up-sell.
The takeaway? Whatever data you have, use it to package the right message, offer, products and services to achieve your objective and track and measure results. Whether you’re embedding a reward coupon on a customer statement or adding messages to prompt 401(k) customers to re-evaluate asset allocation, the goal is to energize the relationship. If access to data is an issue, going forward, future campaigns can be based on data gathered from the transactional marketing campaign itself.
Transaction Workflow Integrates Personalization
From a production management and implementation perspective, output flexibility combined with high levels of reliability is key. Producing effective transactional marketing documents requires a specialized workflow that can adapt as requirements change.
The most successful implementations are built around user-friendly document design, composition and publishing software systems that make it easy to design, compose and integrate personalized documents into your workflow. Solutions are available that simplify development of business rules dictating how data and content are used to create personalized documents combining color, text, graphics and promotions.
Black & White Still Best for Some Applications
While color is proven to increase impact, response rates, and readability, many companies are finding success with transaction document marketing using high-speed digital monochrome presses to produce variable black & white output. Sometimes the right amount of color for an application—job appropriate color—means producing black-only variable text and images at high speeds to meet tight print windows and service level agreements.
Digital Color Takes It Up a Notch
Combining color text and images with relevant messages can be a winning combination. Highlight color has been proven to aid readers in navigating documents and calling attention to key elements. Full color delivers even more impact and better results.
As the price/performance ratio for digital color presses improves, using full color to accent data and add impact to graphics, charts, photographs and coupons is becoming more economical. According to InfoTrends, the market for transactional marketing documents printed in full color in North America was estimated at 3.8 billion impressions in 2008—and is expected to reach 27.5 billion impressions by 2013.
Build In Measurements to Track Results
The best transactional document marketing campaigns begin with clearly defined objectives that are measured along the way. Given today’s economic conditions, accountability—measuring, analyzing and reporting on campaign effectiveness—is more critical than ever. In terms of tools, the level of complexity may vary from simple results reporting to sophisticated marketing dashboards or response management systems. The key is to be able to measure the impact of the promotional messages in the documents and the effectiveness of the overall marketing spending and adjust messaging.
By building in analytical components that measure results, marketers can monitor, measure and quantify the impact and ROI of transactional marketing initiatives. Poor campaign tracking abilities make it impossible for marketers to gauge the success of campaigns. On the flip side, cost/benefit analyses typically show that transactional marketing is a highly efficient approach compared to “scattershot” marketing initiatives. When Forrester asked 224 marketing pros to name their biggest challenge, number one was “measuring results.”
No one said transactional communications were easy. Many do say, however, they get results. Start with a solid infrastructure, and you’ll move forward more confidently toward communications success.
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As Director of Customer Experience and Advocacy for Océ North America's Production Printing Systems division, Tom Lee knows customers. His responsibilities include the world-class Océ Customer Experience Center in Boca Raton, Florida. This role puts him in constant contact with document professionals eager to develop TransPromo and other document strategies.
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