The opportunity is right under our noses. Today's content, document and process management technologies already allow us to communicate with millions of our customers in more engaging and reader-friendly invoices and statements than ever before. But now we can think bigger and smaller, in a way. Think of the impact of transforming those transactions into personalized promotions relevant to each individual customer with targeted, dynamic and interactive messaging and offers.
In its most basic form, TransPromo enhances transactional documents, such as a credit card bill, bank statement, benefit explanation or invoice, with promotional information and messages to create one cohesive, customer-focused communication vehicle.
Customers open and read their statements more reliably than unsolicited direct mailers that are often tossed before being opened. In fact, recent U.S. Postal Service research reveals that recipients look forward to their mail - surprising, since US households received 151.6 billion mailpieces during 2005, with an estimated average of 22.71 transactional documents monthly for each household.
When we deliver on the full promise of TransPromo, it not only puts important marketing content in context, but also places it in front of existing customers in their delivery preference and then enables us to respond to their interest in repeat business with us.
In short, when back office and front office work together to deliver useful, current and focused information and messages, your company is taking another huge step to support customer service, retention and growth.
Capitalizing on this opportunity to reach a worldwide customer base requires more than just a high level of personalization. The right platform will help your organization close the loop with customers - it must offer maximum flexibility, accuracy and control of data sources, formatting, process and production, and it must integrate inbound and outbound activity. With the right technology solution, this powerful marketing approach is easier to implement.
Five major functional components combine to execute a powerful TransPromo application that unifies your content, data and communications systems for complete campaign management:
- Data analytics
- Campaign generation utility
- Document design
- Document composition
- Response management
- Multi-channel output management
When all are present, your organization has the right tools to deliver the right message at the right time to the right customer for the right response, to create the right customer experience for a long-term customer relationship.
Once these components are all available to you in one solution that is compatible with your existing information-based systems - do not settle for less - look for these very important features to ensure TransPromo will be a truly effective and 360-degree customer communications strategy for your team:
- Versioning and multiple language support
- Rules entry and automation of message selection and customer patterns
- Predefined and pre-approved dates and messages
- Relative positioning, dynamic resizing and incorporation of business rules for available space
- Activity-based messaging with conditional logic
- Integrated security for identity and access control and compliance
- Data interfaces for customized content across silos and cultures
- Multichannel delivery for identical presentation across print, email and web
TransPromo efforts can include an email campaign or online or interactive application, as well as printed pieces. Nevertheless, each communication is only worthwhile if you can measure, record and react to responses for full-circle customer satisfaction and subsequent promotions.
ANNEMARIE PUCHER [annemarie.pucher@isis-papyrus.com] is the chief executive of ISIS Papyrus America, providing enterprise organizations with world-class software solutions for personalized business communications, process improvement and content management across platforms, cultures and channels. Visit www.isis-papyrus.com for more information.
