The Xplor View - October 2008 - (Page 18)

cycle, from the line of business/product owner to the forms designer, the printing department or outsource provider, and the workflow owners. But it also includes the marketing department and all of their support structure, which may include brand agencies, marketing agencies, direct mail agencies, and a variety of advisors and consultants. And then there are the web people and their supporting infrastructure. Did I mention the search marketing team and the email marketing team? It should stretch to the CMO, CIO, and CTO—all who have a stake in making an integrated approach to the customer succeed. If you are part of the billing organization or the print and mail organization, you are probably rolling on the floor laughing (ROFL in textspeak) at the very idea that these groups can be brought together. These people may not work in the same city, let alone the same building. They may not know the others names or even that there are all of these other people who participate in communicating to the customer. In most organizations these groups have been well segregated and the thought of getting them all together around a table to plan out coordinated customer communication is akin to expecting a pig to fly (with or without lipstick). To be successful, however, this is what has to happen. Even to get to TransInfo it is necessary to know what the corporate style is and apply it to the transaction documents. It is necessary to ensure that the type faces, colour schemes, and basic look and feel of even the transaction documents participate in the scheme designed for the direct mail, the mass media communication, welcome kits, and other touch points. It sounds like a big job, and it is. But, there are some things you can do to get started that do not require mustering the forces. The very first thing to do is to take the temperature of where you are in terms of integrated communication. You may be pleasantly surprised. Alternatively, you may learn things that are hard to fix. The first step is to find all of the ways you communicate with your customer. That means finding copies of the current transaction statements; inserts that go into the statements, solicitation letters, direct mail pieces to current, lapsed, and prospective customers; web pages, banners on non-corporate websites; mass media advertising; and anything else you use to communicate. Remember, you do not have to get it all from internal sources. Go online and search on your company to see what comes up. Check newsstands, newspapers, billboards, and your own mail box. Find as much as you can and then set it all up so you can see it. It should be clear from the first look if you have a lot of work to do. Remember that the marketing team is not likely to change what they are doing, so the goal is to bring the transaction documents into the communication family. What will that take? Is the logo correct? Are the type faces the same? Is the colour scheme the same? Are the messages on the current transaction document the same as those in the current advertising and marketing? Now you have a baseline. The next step is to find out who owns the transaction documents and to form the task force that will identify the most logical path from what you have to what gets those documents looking more like they come from the same company and the marketing pieces. Even if you are one of those lucky companies that has already gone through that exercise, you still have some work to do. The next question is how well do you know your customer, and how evident is what you know? There is customer data that is used to generate the transaction documents. Is it mined and used to create better customer communication? Is that reflected in the direct mail, their visits to the web, or in the transaction mail? Is there a mechanism to take the actions of the customer on the web and capture it in the database to use in communicating on their transaction documents? Remember that everything you do to keep your customer longer is reflected on the bottom line, so using what you know about your customer can help keep them longer and make them more profitable. There are challenges to getting the data, synthesizing the data, mining the data, and figuring out what the data tells you, but if you master that process you have a goldmine of information. Some of this may be done already in the marketing group, but in many organizations there is no one actually looking at the existing customer data for trends, buying patterns, postal code patterns, or any other patterns that may lead to more targeted marketing. So far we have talked about the design and data involved in transaction documents. An integrated customer communication strategy involves design and data, but also delivery of any customer-focused message in a consistent, timely, and relevant manner. If you ask your favourite search engine to look for data on the value of relevant communication you will find many sources. The folks at the Winterberry Group (www.winterberrygroup.com) do a great job of capturing and sharing data about how people perceive the communication they interact with. The teams at InfoTrends, Gartner Group, INTERQUEST, Forrester, PIRA, PRIMIR, and EDSF keep an eye on the transaction space and issue reports that support the idea that the more relevant the communication the more likely a customer will react to it. It does not have to be selling something, either. Messaging can be informational or educational; it still has to be timely and relevant. The end goal for any customer communication should be to inform the customer, provide a call to action, and to make it easy for the customer to heed that call. Along the way we should be capturing data points and learning to use those data points to create the best experience for the customer. To keep the level of confusion down, we should be ensuring that all the messaging they see is consistent in its messaging and design. That is integrated customer communication. It can use TransPromo techniques, but it does not have to do so. Let us know how your company is using integrated customer communication! For more information on integrated customer communications, visit www.graphics.kodak.com and www.growyourbiz.kodak.com Pat McGrew, edp Data Center and Transaction Segment Evangelist Kodak Graphic Communications Group pat.mcgrew@kodak.com “Remember that the marketing team is not likely to change what they are doing, so the goal is to bring the transaction documents into the communication family.” 18 The VIEW Journal Xplor European Edition Issue 6 October 2008 http://www.winterberrygroup.com http://www.graphics.kodak.com http://www.growyourbiz.kodak.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of The Xplor View - October 2008

The Xplor View -� October 2008 Contents TPE Master Class: Three Ways to Tame your Print-to-Mail Workflow Right Now Mission Impossible: Embracing Environmental Concerns TPE Master Class: Implementing a Lean Working Environment Improving Business Processes Yields Award-Winning Business Performance How Do� You Effectively Win New Business Writing a Marketing Plan to Win New Printing Clients How Buying Strategies Have Affected How the Industry Sells Let's Talk About Integrated Customer Communications Management:�Transpromo...It Takes a Village! Knowledge Management Part 3 XDU: Leading the Education Revolution Kodak plus Xplor equals XDU Around the World Xplor Europe News:�Short News Items for the Xplor UK�Programme and Europe News

The Xplor View - October 2008

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