Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 23)

For one client, Rapid Solutions Group delivers personalized vacation destination kits to people who ﬁll out a web questionnaire. “We take that data and develop a highly segmented, relevant kit focused on the places the person wants to go,” explains Lombardo. “That’s relevance to us. It’s about showing the customer that we know something about them without abusing the privilege.” A client of Rapid Solutions Group, start-up Panraven, Inc., has developed web-based solutions for creating and sharing stories and photos online and in printed books, which Rapid Solutions Group produces on six Xerox iGen3 110 Digital Production Presses. The service is available to general consumers at Panraven’s website, www.panraven.com, and through premier tour operators as a co-branded service. The tour operator service includes templates pre-populated with professional photography and descriptions of the operator’s tours, for travelers to customize online with their own photos and writings. The books boost customer loyalty, which can lead to repeat bookings and to word-of-mouth advertising as travelers share their elegant, hardbound memory books with family and friends. “Stories are created for the express purpose of being shared—nothing is more fundamentally viral,” notes John Shumway, Chief Operating Ofﬁcer and co-founder, Panraven. And word-of-mouth recommendations of friends and family members are cited as highly credible by 83 percent of leisure travelers, almost a third more than any other information source, according to YPB&R/Yankelovich Partners National Leisure Travel Monitor. About 20 percent of travelers with Panraven-afﬁliated companies create books, and they share the online version with 10 people on average, he says. Driving Responses Franklin Communications recently applied its one-to-one marketing skills to a more targeted challenge, on behalf of Hilton International, which operates about 400 hotels worldwide as a Florida-based branch of Hilton Hotels Corporation. Franklin serves a broad swathe of clients, including large corporations and retail chains, most of Miami’s professional sports teams and numerous hospitality and travel companies, including several popular cruise lines. The company distinguishes itself with excellent customer service built upon a can-do attitude, according to Peter Dunne, President, Franklin Communications. Indeed, “can-do” was the response when Hilton International cold-called the company seeking to improve response rates for direct mail promoting its Caribbean conference facilities to corporate meeting planners. Hilton was generating tepid one percent response rates to static direct mail and believed variable-information could do better. “We see more customers who understand one-to-one marketing and are asking about it,” says Rick Wellner, Director of Variable Data Marketing, Franklin Communications. “But with the majority, we need to convince them of how it will work. The challenge we have is that it costs more to do a personalized program, so the focus needs to be on ROI, and even then, it’s still a leap of faith for the customer to sign on.” “We take that data and develop a highly segmented, relevant kit focused on the places the person wants to go. That’s relevance to us. It’s about showing the customer that we know something about them without abusing the privilege.” —Julia Lombardo, Vice President of Marketing and Design, Rapid Solutions Group For Hilton, Franklin produced two 10,000-piece mailings on its Xerox iGen3 press and distributed them to lists Hilton complied from multiple sources, driving recipients to a 1-800-phone number and personal websites. The ﬁrst mailing—created by an agency Hilton selected—boosted the response rate to ﬁve percent. The Hilton team wasn’t satisﬁed, however, so Franklin brought in its design team, which made the piece more relevant with more prominent use of the recipient’s name and more images versioned by age, gender, and other factors. The response rate jumped to 13 percent. “The message is, you can’t just send a personalized piece, you need to know how to make the piece relevant for the recipient,” says Rick Wellner, Director of Variable Data Marketing, Franklin Communications. “With developments like the postage increase, people are understanding they need their direct marketing to do a better job,” concludes Dunne. “A two percent response rate used to be something to celebrate. By making each piece relevant to each recipient, we can do a lot better.” And that’s a welcome message in any industry. Toni Schottenhammer is the Manager of the Direct Mail Segment for the Worldwide Graphic Communications Business, Xerox Corporation. She can be reached at Toni.Schottenhammer@xerox.com. Innovate spring 08 23

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

Innovate - Spring 2008 Table of Contents 10 Tips for Successful Open Houses The TransPromo Path Escape the Complexity Putting a Price on Value A Welcome Boost to Hospitality Team Approach Earns Accolades Bound Together New Highs in Image Quality Transforming the Business of Processing Photos Predictive Maintenance Making the Right Choice Diving into Digital Book Production Doing More With Less Distributed Document Creation

Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

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