Cross-Media Services — Getting Results that Count
CROSS-MEDIA is one of those adjectives to which so many printers can lay claim—like green or high-quality printing, value-added services and quick turnaround—they can lose meaning as a point of differentiation. The lack of an established definition means every company can decide for itself what capabilities and service offerings are required to be a cross-media services provider.
There are two components to this work—the marketing expertise to develop a campaign and the production capabilities required to execute it. The services that companies most commonly offer beyond variable data printing include the combination of personalized URLs (PURLs) and landing pages, along with e-mail and SMS/mobile messaging.
One extension of the concept is the creation of more elaborate Website experiences for recipients of PURLs, including use of Flash video and audio components. Since few “printers” have built in-house studios for video and audio production, it’s more common for this work to be contracted out or provided by the client.
In its fullest conception, cross-media means coordinating a marketer’s efforts across all media—print (all forms, not just direct mail), television, radio, online, outdoor media, etc.—for consistent messaging and so each individual component can leverage and reinforce the others. In theory, that might lead to one company doing all of the production work. It’s more likely, though, that multiple parties come together at the concept and creative stages to craft an integrated campaign; then the individual parts can be executed separately.
Using the Metrics System
The ability to measure and track responses to the messaging is the most important defining characteristic of a cross-media campaign and supplier. What the responses will be, and how to measure them, needs to be identified up front and designed into the campaign. Suppliers must then be able to track responses so that information can be used to refine the campaign, as well as provide a means to demonstrate an ROI to the client.
Nu Graphics Etc. in Woburn, MA, defines cross-media more broadly by focusing on what it delivers to clients, notes Jonathan Ward, vice president of Marketing Systems. It established a division that “helps clients enhance demand generation activities or automate daily tasks, such as response management and literature ordering,” he explains. “Plus, we provide clients with the ability to run analytics and metrics in support of key performance indicators (KPIs).”
Design services, database cleaning, postal services, marketing automation consulting, PURLs and e-mail marketing programs with response forms are among the services that the division offers as value-added for the company’s variable data printing capabilities. Ward says Web-to-print solutions, online inventory management and fulfillment also fall under that umbrella.
The lead generation tools Nu Graphics creates for clients can range from simple database-backed Web forms that collect inquiry information (landing pages), to a full-service dashboard implementation that enables customers to manage e-mail and PURL campaigns themselves, if they choose, or with the company’s help.
Campaign responses are managed via an open system that clients can log into remotely and view responses online or download a comma-separated values (.csv) file for analysis using their own software. Nu Graphics has built multi-page response forms with some Flash and audio enhancements for customers, but has yet to have a request for integrating “rich media” (video).
Having the right tools and capabilities is only part of the equation. Ward says the biggest challenge the company has faced is changing how it is perceived in the market from being a printing order-taker to a marketing services solutions provider.
“You have to be the brand you are trying to project,” he asserts. “We hired a person with a strong marketing and consulting background, and deep experience in selling marketing programs and cross-media solutions, to support our sales team of proven solutions sellers. We also execute a monthly e-mail program, do public relations, and have had great success by offering to speak at marketing and printing industry events.”
Called into Account
For the ArborOakland Group in Royal Oak, MI, cross-media is about using any tool at its disposal to help facilitate the propagation of its clients’ marketing messages, reveals Jeff Parr, director of cross-media services. The most important aspect is being able to provide obtainable and trackable results back to the customer, he adds.
ArborOakland offers the standard set of in-house capabilities, although Parr prefers the term “response URLs” over PURLs, and says the company has only recently moved more aggressively into mobile messaging in response to increased customer demand. It also handles outside media buys working through partnerships with other firms, he notes.
The cross-media services department has a full-time staff of five employees. This includes database and predictive modeling specialists, agency-class creative talent, a campaign architect (Parr) and programmers. Part of his role as the architect is to ensure that the key metrics sought by the client are defined up front and tracked for each campaign.
Parr feels that most agencies have lost sight of their traditional roles of providing trackable results back to clients, as the focus shifted to more general brand recognition building and using pretty imagery to stand out. He sees that as the support (expertise and technology) Arbor-Oakland can provide when a client already has an agency of record doing its creative, and as a crucial component of the turnkey service it offers to others. The latter involves working with the client to develop a marketing initiative, including figuring out how many touchpoints should be involved, and doing the demographic and geographic research to identify recipients.
“You need to be there at the beginning stages and help to develop the project,” Parr says. “It’s very hard to define success for a campaign if you don’t figure out up front what results are going to be important to that client.”
Don’t Sell, Talk Strategy
Like Ward, Parr also does seminars and public speaking engagements to promote the awareness of cross-media. He normally is also the lead person who will go out with a salesperson to help close a program sale.
“It is a much different sales cycle than traditional print. You are helping clients develop a marketing strategy and not actually selling any one thing in particular until you get down to determining which deliverables will facilitate that marketing initiative,” he says.
XMPie’s PersonnelEffect Cross Media Edition version 4.5 software is a linchpin of ArborOakland’s cross-media services. It uses the system’s marketing console to track the direct responses to the campaigns it produces, as well as incorporating results for a customer’s tele-service and broadcast marketing programs handled by other firms. Phone operators are provided with a modified versions of the response URLs for the target group to use for capturing prospect data, Parr says, and specific URLs can be associated with broadcast media messages to track responses.
It’s not mandatory for a service provider to be in a position to offer a given capability in order to capitalize on it for marketing purposes, suggested Rob Seaver, vice president of strategic marketing at Phoenix-based R and R Images, in his presentation at the recent Dscoop 4 HP Indigo users conference. Seaver cited the example of Quick Response (QR) codes and Microsoft Tag technology that can be used to link any printed product to the Web. (Goss International also has rolled out a similar concept that it calls GossRSVP codes.)
These special codes can be printed onto a variety of products—magazines, catalogs, signage, packaging, shelf talkers, etc.—and, when read by a compatible cell phone, take the person to a specific Website that may offer more information, a special promotion and/or the ability to place an order. Along with a camera-equipped, Web-enabled phone, the technology requires special software that is yet to be widely adopted in the United States even though it is popular in Europe, Seaver concedes.
He says that’s no reason to not produce a newsletter story or promotion that asks, “Is your printer doing this?” and explain the technology. “Educating your customer about a new technology shows you have expertise in this arena and are ahead of the curve,” Seaver asserts.
Cross-media has become a popular topic for sessions at many industry conferences, including last fall’s Converge Conference presented by Printing Industries of America. Several speakers offered insights that are worth sharing.
According to Scott Dubois, vice president of cross-media services and marketing at Reynolds DeWalt in New Bedford, MA, cross-media involves using database intelligence to build a campaign that is trackable so it can be changed on-the-fly as results come in to increase its effectiveness. The focus should be on the ROI over the campaign’s lifetime, not individual response rates, he believes.
Serge Grichmanoff, vice president of new technologies at the AIIM Group in Aurora, Ontario, agrees, noting that ROI will continue to grow each year as a campaign is fine-tuned based on previous results. The lifetime value of a customer is what really matters, he says, which highlights the importance of investing in marketing to existing customers because of the cost of losing one.
Cross-media may be about more than PURLs, but they are an essential tool that must be used effectively, advises Jack Neary, manager of IT strategy and design at Communicorp Inc., Columbus, GA. “Be sure to include an alternative way of responding with a PURL campaign, since a recipient may not be comfortable typing personal information into an online form,” he recommends.
“You only get one chance of a recipient typing in a PURL, so make sure your system can handle the volume of responses. Even though e-mails might be sent spread out over time, people may still hit the server at the same time based on personal habits,” Neary adds. PI
