By M H Ahssan
The purpose of communication technology is to allow humans to interact more efficiently and effectively. At it's best, technology will extend human communication models; for example, creating the means for an on-going dialogue, which allows businesses to communicate with a greater level of intimacy with customers in order to serve them better.
Consumers prefer that businesses use the mail to communicate with them over the telephone, email and other channels. As mail finds a new niche as a communication channel, technology will be developed to help make it more efficient and effective. This column is about emerging technologies in the mail industry.
Karen is the marketing manager for the communications vertical with Pitney Bowes Business Insight, and she has for years now created well-written, concise marketing brochures that explain how products work both separately and in concert to deliver enterprise value.
I have known Karen since we both were hired by docSense to form a formidable marketing team under the direction of Sheila Eletto (Women of Distinction class ‘07) and Lenore O’Connor. docSense was an innovative software company founded by Karl Schumacher that had a big impact on the parent company in its brief life.
For example, to sell some of our more big ticket items, such as enterprise e-billing software, docSense had to devise a way to gain mindshare in the C-suite, where decisions to purchase such items are made. We initiated several programs, including a very exclusive Customer Conference at the PGA National Golf Resort in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. To reach CIOs, we started an Analyst Relations program, which garnered us excellent reviews in reports by Giga, Doculabs, Gartner, Aberdeen and Killen and Associates. We began a customer-focused newsletter and invited customer participation. Last, we began a Thought Leadership program that positioned our team as experts in our many fields of interest, including CRM, ERP and marketing---which would later take on a life of its own when adopted by corporate marketing.
With regard to strategic marketing, many of our key messages are still being used by the big company; it’s also fair to say that the acquisitions and strategic partnerships made by docSense strongly influenced the kind of acquisitions the company has made over the past six or seven years, which includes, among others, Group 1 Software and MapInfo.
Which brings us back to Karen Hansell. As each acquisition was successfully merged into the body politic, Karen has been called upon to create new marketing collateral that placed the new company in the larger context, and which offered clear insight into the kind of value these mergers and their new product lines promised customers. Over the years, Karen has supported high-speed inserters, e-billing software, the data quality suite of products, customer communication management solutions and now the Pitney Bowes Business Insight portfolio. She knows more about these products than many of the so-called subject matter experts. While others on the Marcom team have stayed with one set of products for years, Karen has restlessly moved forward to support the companies’ most innovative offerings.
So, as I continue to muse in this space about new ways to deploy technology in order to better communicate with customers, it occurred to me that Karen would be a good person to interview about new technologies that help her MarCom efforts. In this tough economy, the group needs to justify its own existence by monetizing MarCom projects and needs to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it is more teeth than tail.
“It’s all about your value add,” she said. “If you aren’t generating leads and proactively answering objections--before they are voiced---you aren’t doing your job. Return on investment is top of mind; every process and result is scrutinized.”
I asked Karen to name a technology for MarCom that she thought had real promise and her answer surprised me: digitized brochures. When I think of brochures, I mainly think about handouts at trade shows and conferences, or collateral to be left behind by sales reps after a call. However, according to Karen, the Internet continues to alter the way we conduct business, and customer collateral is no different from any other communication vehicle. The market for digital brochures will likely catch up with her.
“Human beings have a need for interaction that can best be satisfied online,” she said. “Hyperlinks that lead us to more customer insight; rich media that can graphically underscore major features and benefits; metrics that enable us measure usage patterns, customer reach and that facilitates viral marketing…these tools are newly available to us now and marketing operations need to embrace them.”
As an example, Karen went with me to www.zmags.com and digitized a brochure she had designed. Using this site, she could now add rich media, including video of the product developer walking though a list of features and benefits. She could include links to more information than she could fit on a printed page for prospects that desired a deep dive. The site provided metrics for tracking end user behavior related to the piece. And the entire process took three fairly simple steps.
“Research tells us that a multi-channel approach to communication is the most effective if you can reinforce the message in different modalities and media,” she said. “Web-enabled tools can enhance the customer experience and make each communication more fun to explore---and it can compel a reader to forward the piece to colleagues in a kind of viral marketing. And when you can measure customer reactions to the piece---how long they spend reading it, what links they click through for more information, whether or not it drives some kind of action---these are tremendous tools that strengthen Marcom’s position in the marketing mix.”
Karen wants to leverage the power of web analytics in the same way that the company webmaster does to prove that her collateral gets results. “To increase our understanding of what works and what is or is not effective is the most important benefit, in my opinion, since the digital piece is always live and can always be altered. Like direct marketers, we are always testing. After all, delivering a poor customer experience can lead to the loss of a customer, so it’s not an option.” She also said that the delivery options available for digital brochures could extend her reach and readership and therefore generate more revenue for her business unit. Posting the brochure on a targeted Social Networking site, for example, increases the readership dramatically.
Perhaps most importantly, given the current and future economic climate, there is a cost savings component to creating digital brochures. “Communicate ineffectively and you waste business cycles, waste increasingly scarce resources and squander new revenue opportunities,” Karen said. “I compete for budget with other members of the marketing team. I have to understand how my messages are resonating with readers, how much of my audience I’m able to reach and how customers respond—including using tools like click-path tracking, instant notification and reporting to know which ones require follow-up from sales or additional marketing material.”
Karen’s main theme in our conversation was marketing optimization---how she can make each marketing brochure more effective by embedding rich media--video, audio, hyperlinks, and more---directly into the collateral, always testing it for effectiveness. “With digitized brochures marketers can go beyond traditional, two-dimensional printing into a virtually limitless multi-media world in a single document,” she said. “This technology is very exciting. Every piece can serve as a doorway into every customer-focused service and all the information our company can provide on the web.”
“Technology has moved way beyond PURLs. There are no limits to the customer experience that marketers can now provide. Customers can access all the information they need to make informed decisions; in addition, they can access customer service, sales, case studies, news releases---and if the piece is interesting enough---it tends to be viral, which extends our reach.”
This has opened my eyes to a new initiative in the optimization of customer communications: with all my emphasis on Transpromo and Dynamic Enveloping and VDP, I had overlooked the importance of customer collateral. Nevertheless, even I can see the value of interactive digital brochures.
And Karen Hansell continues to strive for strong returns on her marketing investments. HVTO—take notice.
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