(from the Print CEO)

By David Dodd on March 9th, 2010

A recent survey by Target Marketing magazine indicates that B2B direct marketing budgets will grow only slowly in 2010.  Over half (55%) of B2B marketers responding to the “Media Usage Forecast 2010″ survey (conducted in January 2010) said they expect 2010 budgets to be the same as 2009, while 23% of respondents expect 2010 budgets to be higher, and 13% expect further cuts.  Nine percent of respondents indicated they weren’t sure how 2010 spending would compare with 2009.

These findings are similar to the results of a November 2009 survey byBtoB Magazine. In that survey, 47% of respondents expected 2010 marketing budgets to be flat, 39% expected more spending in 2010, and 13% expected more cuts in 2010.

The Target Marketing survey also reflects the continuing shift to online marketing techniques and channels.  When asked where they expect toincrease spending in 2010, marketers (both B2B and B2C) responded as follows:

• E-mail – 68.4%
• SEO – 47.7%
• Paid Search – 45.2%
• Advertising on Web Sites – 32.9%
• Direct Mail – 31.8%
• Webcasts – 24.5%
• Affiliate Marketing – 22.0%
• Outbound Telemarketing – 20.2%
• Mobile Marketing – 19.3%
• DR Space Advertising – 12.1%
• Insert Media – 10.9%
• DR Radio – 6.1%
• DR TV – 4.3%

With respect to direct mail, Target Marketing said, “Compared to last year’s numbers, the percent of marketers expecting to decrease their budgets for direct mail has dropped a few percentage points, while the amount stating they don’t use direct mail held steady; the result should be a flat year in terms of investment.”

By Barb Pellow as seen at cgxsolutions.com

The formerly manageable world of marketing using print and mass media has exploded into countless micro communications channels. Familiar media has been augmented with the rapid run-up of Web, search, e-mail, blogs, satellite radio, chat, video on demand, interactive television, and even the small-screen iPhone. Interfacing with more media and new marketing channels means greater complexity for the graphic communications service provider.

You are also dealing with a new customer base that is focused on multi-channel communications – the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). In today’s market, The CMO’s challenge is far greater than brand communications. Marketing groups must now fill the sales pipeline with predisposed prospects, optimize customer value, and be accountable for demand generation through market differentiation and integrated multi-channel campaign management. There is extreme pressure to deliver marketing ROI. Yesterday’s mass-media strategies need to be replaced with precision targeting strategies and comprehensive integrated marketing campaigns.

Looking Back

In the recent years,  there has been a tremendous buzz about automated marketing campaign capabilities. New tools from Pageflex, XMPie, and MindFireInc. enable users to send the right message to the right contact at the right time and track response rates with limited manual effort.

Variable Data Alone Isn’t Enough to Meet the Needs of the CMO

In the graphics communications world, the historical perspective has been that delivering a more relevant message has significant value. Available solutions range from simple mail merge to complex transaction document solutions. In its 2005 Variable Data Design and Production Report, InfoTrends identified four options including:

Mail merge: Incorporating simple name and address information to produce unique pieces for each recipient.

Simple One-to-One: Incorporating some targeted images and text along with personalized information to produce a unique composition that is customized to a unique recipient. These solutions have been enhanced with Web-to-print technologies.

Complex One-to-One: Incorporating completely unique text images graphics, templates, content, and designs based on specific detailed profile information about each recipient leveraging conditional logic variable data software tools.

Transaction: Incorporating personalized and customized content with intricate financial and account data that is automatically composed to produce “data-driven” documents. This data is frequently mainframe-based and the document creation process may encompass complex logic.

Today, however, there is a new game in town—the emerging world of integrated marketing campaign management. Integrated marketing campaign tools appeal to the desire of the CMO for information-based marketing. An information-based marketing approach is the discipline of using facts to glean knowledge to better manage marketing outcomes.

The integrated marketing campaign starts with mail. It could be a printed direct mail piece or an e-mail message. The document must be designed to attract attention. If it is strictly being sent electronically, designers need to ensure that it can be opened by the recipient’s browser. Appealing color and unique size (for printed pieces) is important, but the most critical aspect of any direct mail campaign is the actual offer intended to drive the recipient to the next step. The offer is typically presented as a link to a personalized URL. The campaign’s Mail File (list of direct mail recipients) is used to generate personalized URLs (pURLs) for each recipient. These pURLs are then woven within the direct mail piece, along with other variable data.

When the recipients type their pURLs into a browser, they arrive on personalized Web pages (landing pages or VIP pages) populated with images and offers also based on customer data. These are frequently termed microsites. pURL Web pages can be as simple or advanced as the needs of a marketing program dictate. From there, the measurement and reporting of results begins.

Once the individual has linked into the personalized URL, creative marketers can gather additional data about the prospect. The offer strategy should be designed to entice the respondent to complete a brief survey or provide data relative to interests and needs. The objective is to ensure a high level of interaction with the prospect.

Systems available in the market today include built-in tracking to enable continuous monitoring of the campaign’s progress as customers enter their personalized pages and provide additional relevant information. Campaign response rates, visitor response patterns, and detailed lead information can be available at all times as the campaign unfolds. Because systems are template-driven, adjustments to messaging and offers can be made in a matter of hours rather than days. This allows marketers to make changes in the campaign in near-real-time based on the results that they are seeing. Reports can be generated so the marketing executive can share the impact of critical marketing programs with the entire management team.

This kind of response tracking service can turn a print provider into a marketing partner who can accurately pinpoint the effectiveness of a campaign and understand how to best target campaign resources and improve returns on the marketing investment.

Based on the responses to survey questions, systems are designed to proactively forward leads to sales staff. Systems can route leads to the appropriate representatives via multiple communications platforms, including CRM (such as SalesForce.com), e-mail, cell phones, and pagers.

The Role of the Graphics Communicator

By targeting customers with a highly relevant and personalized message, and integrating that message across media channels, companies are finding that they can capture the attention of customers and generate impressive results. Communication in a cross-media environment is becoming a force multiplier in driving the customer relationship. The value proposition for your customer base is clear.

The challenge is that as you enter the world of integrated campaign management, your impact becomes very measurable. Just as the CMO is accountable for ROI, so is your organization. Before embarking with your customers on an integrated campaign management journey, you need to ensure that you have effectively worked with your customer to implement the critical elements for marketing campaign success. Here are eight critical tactics as a roadmap to help your customers succeed with a marketing campaign:

Target market identification: You need to work with clients to ensure that they have specific vertical or horizontal markets targeted. There is no such thing as aiming at an “average” customer. Marketers must first identify market segments containing customers or prospects with high profit potential, and only then can you work with them to build and execute campaigns that favorably impact the behavior of these individuals.

Prospect or customer data: A marketing campaign will only be as good as the “data” that feeds it. If you don’t have quality data about the prospect base, integrated campaigns can be used to monitor responses to gather data about prospects, identify higher quality prospects, and enhance data quality. If a key ingredient of the campaign is data refinement, it needs to be clearly articulated as part of the overall strategy.

A good and valuable offer strategy: Creating an effective offer is the #1 factor driving the success of your next direct marketing campaign. Nevertheless, the most effective offers tend to be “reasons to respond” rather than “reasons to buy.” Your customer needs to give prospects a reason to link to the pURL.

Creative execution coordinated across multiple media outlets: While online and offline tactics have specific techniques associated with them, the user expects (and even craves) creative integration. While your e-mail or landing page should be shorter in length than your direct mail letter, the colors, tone, promise, and overall positioning should be very much in concert.

An interactivity strategy that engages a prospect or customer in a dialogue: Integrated campaigns need to be used not only to initiate, but to sustain a dialogue. Multi-channel marketing means that you work with customers to deliver marketing communications regardless of channel to a) reach customers, b) deliver a consistent message, and c) encourage them to interact, and be able to act on their interaction. The dialogue must include the following steps:

Reach. Getting a compelling message out to your target audience and generating interest for your offer

Interact. Allowing the target audience to act on the offer by enabling them to interact

Fulfill. Complete customer dialogue by acting on interaction data

Interact (again). The customer journey continues with another dialogue and interaction via direct mail, e-mail, or passing a lead to a direct sales representative for immediate follow-up

Test, test, test: You always need to test the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, but testing each channel individually is a bit different than testing the overall multi-channel campaign. Afterward, the campaign will need refinement based on the results. Some offers will be more effective than others and adjustments may need to be made on messaging. The benefit is that through today’s software tools, testing can be done quickly and changes can be made dynamically.

Define your success metrics up front: This ensures that you receive a holistic view of the results throughout the campaign.

Complete communication and sharing of campaign results with a willingness to analyze what worked and what didn’t: With challenging economic conditions, marketing professionals are being asked to justify their marketing budgets and are being held accountable by top executives for results. You need to ensure that response dashboards are easily accessible to give marketers access to quantifiable results and help them better understand their return on marketing investments (ROMI). To the extent that they translate marketing campaigns into real ROI, your value is substantially enhanced.

The days of disjointed marketing campaigns are numbered. 2007 will be the year of multi-channel integrated campaigns. With integrated marketing campaigns in the mix, today’s graphic communications firm now has a new value-add opportunity. As competition drives down margins, selling true marketing ROI enables real competitive differentiation and increasingly sustainable profit margins. When graphic communications service providers focus on marketing ROI solutions, they move away from the commodity sale and toward higher-margin, value-added services. As you develop integrated campaign management solutions, you’ll be able to engage marketing executives in new and unique ways, build greater loyalty, and achieve ROI for your business and your customers. If you have not yet considered adding integrated marketing campaigns to your business mix, now is the time!

I am traveling on business in Ohio, visiting Cyril Scott. So, posting is and will be light – at least until my fingers thaw out again.

Recently, I have posted several articles about the confused marketplace and printers re-inventing themselves to sound “cool” or perhaps confuse buyers as to who they really are.

I saw this breif video this morning posted on what they think, and it about sums it up – from a print buyers perspective. I encourage you to watch it!

Print buyer and marketing exec Brittany Fenning: What “marketing services provider” means

Value added services should be embraced by both printers and clients alike, but printers need to keep in mind what their core competencies are, and how they can truly help a client.

Thought that this article, published by WhatTheyThink.com, tied in nicely with my recent post on 2010 planning, where I wrote:

“Printers will be scrambling to re-invent themselves. Hey – look at us – we do PURL’s, we are a marketing firm! Look over here – we do e-Brochures, we are multi-media experts! Hey – we have mailing in house – we are now data experts! Look – our pre-press department is slow – we can design that for you! This re-invention will create a confused market place. Who are THE experts in any given arena? And, more importantly, how will the client know the answer to that question?”

I agree with Dr. Joe – it is easy for printers to reinvent themselves when the going gets tough – I have seen a lot of that in my local market – some printers even going as far as to change their home page to promote eBrochures instead of promoting the products (printing) that define who they have been for decades. Margie Dana (another link below) hits the nail on the head – we need to be proud of our core competencies and build upon them by hiring professionals – not merely repurposing some existing prepress operators who were not getting the full 40 hours. The company I work for (CGX) has hired those pro’s – we have built upon our position as a leader in print by creating a stand alone technology and solutions group, we have hired top-tier designers to help our clients,  and we have assembled a team of fulfillment experts to round out our offerings.

Enjoy!

Dr. Joe Blog

Marketing Services is the Easy Answer, Just Like Buying New Equipment Always Was

By Dr. Joe Webb
Published: February 17, 2010

Throughout my career, I have always heard that print is a commodity, that there are too many printers, printers always have the same equipment, and that printers don’t know how to market. There are many more, and I’ve dealt with all of them at various times.

This week, I was reminded of the issue because of a blogpost by Margie Dana, which happened to echo my general sentiments about “marketing services” and printers. What she describes, but may not have realized, has an economic underpinning. Businesses are defined, whether they want to be or not, by their major capital investments and their history, all of which combine with other factors to create a culture that is detected by others, even on their first interaction, even if they cannot articulate it. Therefore changing that definition is difficult.

We also know that in surveys that we have done in conjunction with the economic webinars that the business conditions of printers that state that they are marketing services providers are just as bad, and sometimes worse, than printers who do not. I have rarely found that printers who say they are marketing services businesses have any significant or sustainable economic advantage. We don’t know how the early adopters of this monicker initially performed. Nor is there a good set guidelines of what clearly separates a marketing services business with printing equipment from another business with printing equipment alone. A recent post to the WhatTheyThink peer group makes an attempt.

I’ve already explained somewhere in these pages that print is not a commodity (a commodity is a raw material that is combined with other things to create something quite different, which makes print a processor of commodities, but not a commodity itself). The marketplace has been correcting for the number of printers for years, forcing the net exit of more than a thousand a year for a decade and a half. Technology has narrowed the variability of the printing process and its operators, and instead stored essential and repetitive knowledge and craft skills in software. This created a predictable, rising, and reachable level of acceptable mediocrity that nearly all printers could achieve. (Regarding technology and craft, just think that almost every time you click a dropdown in Adobe PhotoShop, it’s probably something that would have taken more than an hour in the 1970s, used lots of film and chemicals, and would have billed out at $35/hour, plus materials).

The old saw about printers being involved in the production of sales and marketing materials for the entire economy, but printers not knowing anything about marketing seemed pretty astute at first hearing. It minimized the core capabilities and innate knowledge that our industry’s entrepreneurs and risk-takers used to profitably survive in the markets at that time. I always found it to be quite the paradox in the 1980s and 1990s when executives of money-losing tech companies would lecture printers about their inability to market. The printers had long track-records of being profitable and supporting generations of family members. The tech companies had trouble surviving from quarter to quarter. The marketing efforts that those printing organizations used at that time were appropriate for their marketplaces at that time. They are not the skills needed this time, because those marketplaces no longer exist in the same way or form.

The reason marketing services is not a panacea has a similar pattern to the way the industry made its equipment investments. For almost all of print’s entire history, there were limited numbers of early adopters of new technologies. In the ’80s and early ’90s, these folks would joke amongst themselves and their risk-averse peers that they were at the “bleeding edge of technology,” a recognition of the marketplace experimentation they were engaged in, and that it often included a period of economic loss until they got it right.

After the adopters were done, other printing organizations would jump on the bandwagon. As some would tell me, “we’ll let them take the arrows and the gunshots, and then we’ll jump in.” There was a mimicry, a keeping up with the Joneses, that was involved in the technology investments that printers would make. This was perfectly sane and rational: prior capital investments would usually have long lives, capital was scarce and had to be used wisely. The market was growing, which meant that there was enough business that could be competed for on a profitable basis unless one made big mistakes, even if that profit was often limited. So if a 28” press was hot, the reason was because it had been proven as safe to buy because the market for its output was proven by other printers the buyer knew. This is how our industry went from letterpress to offset, hot type to phototypesetting, film to direct-to-plate, and many other changes. This has changed, however. Consolidation means that there are fewer independent business owners that can emulate each others capital purchases. Technology changes so rapidly that the marketing life of the equipment is often less than its funtional life.

The problem with marketing services as it is often practiced is that it must co-exist with significant capital investment in print production equipment. Those investments still dominate the culture and operations of that business.

Unlike a bad equipment choice, there is no downside risk to claiming a business is in marketing services and being wrong. No one has to put a load of their own money, or agree to a bank’s conditions, to say they are a marketing services business. That alone would be a barrier of entry to the business, such as preventing a printer from saying they had a heatset press in their plant because they would hire someone to stand next to their AB Dick 360 holding a hair dryer. Capital investment would create discipline to claims, as well as making the differentiation clear to everyone. If I claim to be a medical doctor and start seeing patients, I can be arrested. If I claim to be a marketing services provider, no one will notice.

The real issue is credibility. How does a client know that they are dealing with a marketing services provider, and not “just” a printer? They will know it because the printers experience in marketing services will come from using the tools of marketing services themselves. Consulatitive selling, yet another buzzphrase, is not just telling people what to do and figuring out what freelancers you can assemble and markup their individual billable tasks.

Marketing services is not part of the printing culture, at least yet. So many of our great companies came from entrepreneurs who had print production insights that others of their time did not. Those advantages were right in those times, but now must compete among media alternatives that have advantages unique to themselves.

That competition is not always easily understood unless all of a business’ scarce resources are devoted solely to that cause. For that reason, I have believed that any marketing services business should be a set up as a standalone business, separate from the printing organization, with its own investment, management, and financial measurement. This prevents falling back to the familiar safety of printing capabilities (as in “we need to get some sales activity because we have a lease payment due for the press, so be more aggressive in estimating the next few days”). The shift to marketing services has to be made knowing one can’t fall into a safety net; that’s often more difficult for the owner than it is for everyone else.

Marketing services is a new culture, moving from a billable task or job relationship that is invoiced as completed like print, to a longer-term retainer relationship that is comprised of many services, and billed monthly, quarterly, or annually. It needs to stand alone because the culture and pace of the business is radically different, which means the staffing must reflect that difference, too. But the first hurdle is always to use the tools available in the marketing services business for one’s own business, and use it in a way that proves competence, demonstrates skills of wide range and insight, and makes marketing services more than a new business card.

• Presented By: Target Marketing and Printing Impressions

• Sponsored By: NewPage Corporation
• Duration: 90 minutes

• Speakers: Andrea Johnson , Director of Forest Campaigns, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA); Elinor Colbourn , Senior Trial Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice; Rick Merdan , Marketing Strategy Manager – Environmental, NewPage Corp.

• Moderator: Hallie Mummert , Editor in Chief, Target Marketing

• View this Webinar

Is the paper you purchased for your next direct mail or catalog campaign imported? How about the fiber used to make the paper? Did you perform due diligence to determine if all parties in the supply chain legally sourced and imported the paper that you bought? If not, YOU could be in violation of the Lacey Act.

The Lacey Act, a 100-year-old statute originally passed to stop wildlife crimes, was amended in May 2008 by the U.S. Congress to also now ban the commerce of illegally sourced plants, timber and wood and paper products. Companies that import or domestically source such environmentally harmful products may face seizure of goods, fines and jail time.

To stay on the right side of the law, protect your company’s reputation and be a good corporate citizen of the world, you need to understand the requirements of this legislation and how they affect your role in paper sourcing NOW.

As mentioned before – I’m a tree-hugger, but a realist. I think the Lacey act is a great extension of that realistic approach.

When the first wave of environmental awareness struck our industry in the late ’80′s I was a pressman. I recall vividly the first press okay for what was then a small boutique hair care company (it is now a major brand, owned by a F100 corporation) when a recycled logo was used. We were running on one of the first “premium” sheets available that had been touted as recycled, and it sucked. The sheet was off-color, the printing was “picking”, and there were “hickeys” everywhere. The solution? We pulled it off press, pulled some premium (non-recycled) paper out of our inventory and ran the job –  complete with all the “recycled” logos and mentions all over it. The client doing the press-okay told me at that point “Oh – the end user will never know – they just throw these in the trash anyway.” Since that point – I hated recycled paper, and regarded he majority of the  people using it as hypocrites – the more and more I read up on it – found out about the de-inking process, looked at the amount of additives (chemicals with 15 syllable names ) we needed to use in the pressroom to make the paper “work”,  I soon started preaching about the detrimental impact of the paper.

Boy, how times change – the recycled process has much improved, and now I love, and was an early adapter of,  the idea of sustainable paper and printing. The reason I love it is the accountability afforded to the printer and the end user by the multiple COC’s available.  Part of that love has provided me the opportunity to help my clients (as a partner),  printers (as a consultant), and local municipalities (as an environmental advocate) develop a “plan” to procure “Green” print as part of their triple bottom line.

When I work with an individual buyer or a corporation, I offer the following advice in regards to paper. With the Lacey act going into effect Aril 10, these recommendations are even more relevant:

• When obtaining an estimate, always specify a specific sheet of paper, or a specific grade of paper with appropriate environmental annotations, for example: “100# McCoy Gloss Book, FSC” or “100# Gloss Book, #1, FSC Certified”
• If your printer replies on their estimate with “100# House Gloss Book”, make sure you know what they are going to use as their house sheet as many printers do not have an actual “house” sheet, but often time use that to describe a “best buy” sheet, which is normally a standard grade/sheet that they were able to negotiate a better price on.
• If you are specifying an FSC/SFI/PEFC sheet of paper, make sure your printer is certified to use the appropriate logo. Again, this may seem like a no-brainer, BUT, there may be some unethical printers out there. Also, as our industry continues to face unprecedented strain, a lot of printers who were able to obtain certification three years ago, may not have the fiscal resources required to keep their certification current.
• If you are large consumer of paper (Large Corporations, procuring more than 2MM in print annually on a national scale is a base line I use for pre-qualifying this particular approach) I recommend partnering with a paper company (such as Xpedx) to develop a paper buying strategy. This strategy, when properly executed, provides your printers ample flexibility, and the reporting metrics you need to quantify your environmental impact.
• Ask questions – ask for swatch books – ask for options. Let your printer do some leg work for you – its their job!

By following these suggestions – you can be relatively assured that you are going to be properly protected from any of the negative impacts of the Lacey Act.

The Lacey Act was originally signed into law in 1900, it was then the first piece of conservationist legislation. It was intended to stem the trade and commerce of threatened and endangered wildlife. I am not sure, but I think Al Gore was a cosigner of the bill at that time.

I think the IPad will be a game changer. I know I am supposed to say that the IPad, and the 9+ other devises that are getting ready to roll out over the next few months, will not change the way that people use print – and that print will still survive, but I think the game is about to change. Dramatically.

One of the things I have been hearing for years is that “digital magazines” and the like will never take the place of a magazine, a brochure or a newspaper for the primary reason that you cant take a computer into the “reading room” with you (also known as the bathroom). Well, I believe we can all agree that is no longer a valid argument, despite any inherent sanitary issues.

In looking at the technology, and the portability of that technology, I think that we will see print still being a very viable instrument for client attraction and solicitation, but will take a back seat to the IPad in regards to client retention. Imagine you buy a new car, and instead of getting the traditional bulky user manual, the dealership gives you a keychain that has a pre-printed QR code on it. You rush home, hold that QR code to your reader (note to apple: another reason why the IPad needs a camera), and you are instantly directed to a link containing and eFlip book of the instruction manual that is current, personalized and is constantly being updated by the dealership with recalls and relevant contact information.

We as printers need to start thinking about that – we need to be at the forefront of this technology, we need to embrace it and promote it, lest we go the way of the printers that said the Mac was just a phase. In my oppinion, the printers that will lead this charge are the ones that:

• Help their clients repurpose files to a reader friendly format without being asked
• Offer intuitive and robust DAM systems that will make sure that the aforementioned files are always current for consumer download, and allow the clients to track “who” is downloading “what version.”
• Offer storefront solutions that take print on demand a step further, by integrating the delivery of customized content for readers.
• Embrace the use of QR codes, and “clickable” print (check this guy out, he loves the QR code, and has some great ideas)
• Embrace the technology behind the readers – learn quickly the different platforms, and how to leverage that technology.
• learn how to tie it all together – VDP + PURL + QR + Ipad
• Learn how to design for a reader, and help our clients better understand the limitations of the platforms

Yes, the IPad will be a game changer – the other platforms will be important as well, but we need to step back and accept the fact that Mr. Jobs and the folks at apple have just created a new way to view print. And yes, that may be in the bathroom.

(As mentioned, from time to time I will post case studies – this one is NOT from my company, so I have left both the name of the client and printer in)

Climb Every Mountain | Deliver Magazine.

October 7, 2009

(Greenville AAF presents the 2010 Addy Awards – Print meets Social Media Spoof on Mac commercials featuring Beau Phillips and Rebecca Ragland)