News, Ideas & Commentary on PURLs, Email, SMS Text, QR Codes, Video & More

It is not too late to get in on the action in Baltimore at the Inner Harbor.  VDP Web® will be presenting and exhibiting at the 2012 Print Services Distribution Association’s Print Solutions show in Baltimore June 4-6. Visit http://newsletter.vdpweb.com to read more about the show and educational seminar.

VDP Web be exhibiting in booth 823. John Fager will also be presenting an educational seminar “Don’t Get Killed by HTML: Winning Cross Media Strategies for Printers & Distributors” on Tuesday, June 5th at 3:30 in the Exhibit Hall Education Theater.

With three days of education and more than 200 expo booths showcasing the latest products and services, the 2012 Print Solutions Conference and Expo is the most important event of the year for professionals who buy print and related marketing services for resale to customers. View the below video and hear other members talk about the value they receive at PSDA meetings and events.

Who Should Attend?
Everyone directly responsible for buying or influencing the purchase of print and related marketing services. Gain contacts, partners and clients if you work for a print distributorship, promotional products distributorship, advertising agency, marketing firm, Design firm, or direct mail firm

JFM Concepts, the makers of industry leading cross media marketing package VDP Web, is proud to announce the “How To Bid Cross Media & Effective Sales Strategies” cross media marketing webinar part of the 2012 VDP Cross Media Webinar Series. Join John Fager, Principal of VDP Web® to discuss effective pricing strategies for cross media. Learn how to up-charge and price jobs without the dreaded "scope creep" and maintain a positive cash flow while showing value to your clients.

The webinar will be held twice, once on May 8th at 4:00 Eastern time and once on May 10th at 1:00 Eastern time. Register online at http://webinar1.vdpconcepts.com.

JFM Concepts is a full service cross media marketing technology firm featuring the VDP Complete® marketing system and VDP Web® Online software as a service. JFM specializes in creating variable data cross media marketing technologies with Personalized URLs, Email, SMS Text, QR Codes, Phone Tracking, Video, QR Codes, and more for commercial printers, agencies, and marketing departments of all sizes. The firm knows that technology development and marketing should come together to document both improved response rates and improved return on investment (ROI).

Registration is now live for the 2012 Print Solutions Conference & Expo taking place June 4 - 6 at the Baltimore Convention Center. Attend and benefit from PSDA's powerful community of distributors,
trade printers and suppliers. You'll leave the conference better informed of emerging trends and with new connections among suppliers, partners and peers.

James Michelson, author of Cross Media Marketing 101: The concise guide to surviving in the C-suite, will be presenting on cross media marketing and the staff from VDP Web will be on hand.

Join JFM Concepts and VDP Web for a practical guide to “Generating Leads with a Cross Media Marketing Platform” on Tuesday, January 24^th at the Tropicana in Las Vegas, Nevada as part of the 2012 Print on Demand Institutes AppForum.

Zodiac International is a world-class manufacturer of a wide range of recreational products. Zodiac Pool Systems required a cost effective, easy-to-implement marketing platform to improve efficiency, add tracking and increase ROI on its existing marketing mix without adding complexity.

The effort was focused on getting consumers to print out rebate forms and download brochures for more complex products. Learn how Zodiac's marketing team created, implemented, designed, and executed their program. We'll share results and samples.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how to leverage multiple marketing channels with minimal effort to generate sales leads
• Discover how Zodiac increased revenue & efficiency while lowering costs
• See how one effective manager decreased man hours for fulfillment, limited dependence on other departments, and lowered cost
• Explore how consolidated tracking improved search, banner ads, direct mail, and email results

As a special offer from VDP Web, use promo code SPK2012DIS to save $100 on every ticket.  See you there!

Can't make the show? Email sales@vdpweb.com for a copy of the presentation or to schedule a one on one discussion.

Join JFM Concepts and VDP Web for the 2012 Webinar Series "Tools for Successful Cross Media Marketing."

In its 5th year, the popular JFM Cross Media Marketing Webinar Series is the industry standard in bleeding edge information and business strategies that can be practically implemented to show immediate results for service providers and practitioners. Discover the best professional training available anywhere, for free, all with no travel required. Register here.

Sessions

2012 Cross Media Marketing Outlook

Join James Michelson and John Fager of JFM Concepts on this comprehensive analysis of the 2012 Cross Media Marketing Outlook for both marketing service providers and internal marketers. Discover lessons learned in 2011, the trends for the upcoming year, and benchmarks you can use to develop your own strategies for 2012.

January 17, 2012 1:00 Eastern & January 19, 2012 4:00 Eastern

Cross Media Marketing 101 for 2012

Learn the ropes of cross media with this informative webinar that details what cross media marketing is and ways you can enhance current efforts without breaking the bank.

March 6, 2012 1:00 Eastern & March 8, 2012 4:00 Eastern

How To Bid Cross Media & Effective Sales Strategies

Join James Michelson, Principal of VDP Web to discuss effective pricing strategies for cross media. Learn how to up-charge and price jobs without the dreaded "scope creep" and maintain a positive cash flow while showing value to your clients.

May 8, 2012 4:00 Eastern & May 10, 2012 1:00 Eastern

More Effective Self Promo's

Our valued clients have had great success with creating self-promos and marketing cross media services. Check out the do's and dont's with James and learn why self-promotion is the way into your client's budgets.

July 17, 2012 1:00 Eastern & July 19, 2012 4:00 Eastern

Cross Media Holiday Marketing 2012

Now is the time to think seriously about holiday marketing! Join JFM Concepts to discover how holiday cross media marketing can provide sales leads and good will even without an offer or sales call to action. Learn how cross channel communications with mail, email, social media, and landing pages can turn an expense into a revenue generating activity. Your customers, clients, and prospects will love it!

October 2, 2012 1:00 Eastern & October 9, 2012 1:00 Eastern

2013 Cross Media Marketing Outlook

Join James Michelson and John Fager of JFM Concepts on this comprehensive analysis of the 2013 Cross Media Marketing Outlook for both marketing service providers and internal marketers. Discover lessons learned in 2012, the trends for the upcoming year, and benchmarks you can use to develop your own strategies for 2013.

December 18, 2012 1:00 Eastern & January 8, 2013 4:00 Eastern & January 10, 2013 1:00 Eastern

Register here.

JFM Concepts, the makers of VDP Web, is proud to announce that principal and founder James Michelson will be speaking at the Exact Target 2011 Connections conference in Indianapolis.  The session is titled “Email + Direct Mail: Response Rates on Steroids?”  Reports of "direct mail deaths" have been greatly exaggerated.  In fact, when used in combination with email, direct mail can lift response to new heights.

Connections 2011 is the world’s largest interactive marketing conference with more than 3,000 global marketers attending the three-day event Sept. 13-15. Connections ’11 follows ExactTarget Connections ‘10, which welcomed more than 2,000 marketers to Indianapolis and featured a lineup of industry titans including Virgin Group Founder and Chairman Sir Richard Branson, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and a private concert from Grammy Award-winning band Train.

If you cannot make the event, please contact us to obtain a copy.

To obtain a copy, contact us!

Order now at: https://www.createspace.com/3537914 or amazon.com!

JFM Concepts and VDP Web® are proud to announce the publication of their latest case study on direct marketing for Education. Successful cross media tactics for admissions, events, alumni relations, planned giving, donations and more are covered. Campaign goals were to decrease cost, improve response rates, document and measure return on investment, and simplify the follow up process. Download the case study for free at http://education.vdpconcepts.com.

The VDP Web® cross media marketing platform has been deployed by public and private educational institutions of every size to deliver outstanding results. Successful projects have been launched by organizations as diverse in size and mission such as The University of Michigan and Northeast State Technical Community College to regional Christian institutions such as Calvin College and Grace Bible College. Not-For-Profit institutions such as Harrison College and various secondary schools have also used the system for admissions, alumni relations, fund raising and planned giving. Integrated campaigns have been cost effectively run for multiple departments without the need for internal technical assistance or support.

 
University of Michigan Landing Page, one of many samples in the case study.

There are common challenges faced by the academic institutions detailed in this case study. The goals of all the campaigns that follow were to decrease budget, lower man hours required for follow up and fulfillment, increase response rate and add personalization to generate leads. Each of these projects was executed by one decision maker and did not require the support of other departments. The cases examined assume that additional budget expenditures for new projects is unlikely, IT and other internal technical support is not available, and that the department does not have additional manpower resources to dedicate to a new project. If any of these assumptions are not true, so much the better.

It is possible to implement a basic cross media marketing strategy without any major changes to the current marketing mix. Unique landing pages, QR Codes, new 800 numbers, and SMS Text can be added to any existing marketing channel to add new data collection mechanisms and start a two way conversation with prospects, students, alumni and donors.

Last month, Target Analytics released their "2011 donorCentrics™ Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report" to the public.  The complete report can be found on their website here.

Summary of Findings

• For the large direct marketing organizations participating in our online benchmarking groups, the majority of gifts are still received through direct mail.

• Although direct mail remains the dominant channel for new donor acquisitions as well, it has become increasingly common for new donors to give their first gift online.

• Online-acquired donors are significantly younger and tend to have higher household incomes than mail-acquired donors.

• Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger gifts than mail-acquired donors.

• However, online-acquired donors tend to have slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired donors.

• In aggregate, online-acquired donors have much higher cumulative value over the long term than traditional mail-acquired donors.

• However, long-term value varies depending on the donor’s origin gift level. The substantially larger gift amounts given by onlineacquired donors can mask issues with retention.

• Multichannel giving is not ubiquitous. The majority of multichannel donors are those who are acquired online and then subsequently start giving direct mail gifts. This is the only situation in which there are significant numbers of cross-channel donors across all organizations.

• Every year, large proportions of online-acquired donors switch from online giving to offline sources — primarily to direct mail. The reverse is not true, however; only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years.

• When online-acquired donors move offline, they tend to do so soon, in their first renewal year. They then continue to give offline in similar proportions in subsequent years. Eventually, just under half of all online-acquired donors convert entirely to offline, primarily direct mail giving.

• Robust direct mail programs drive up the retention and long-term value of new donors acquired online. Without the ability to become multichannel givers by renewing their support via direct mail, this group of donors would be worth far less. Other than monthly recurring giving programs, established direct mail programs are the best method for gaining repeat gifts from onlineacquired donors.

• When online-acquired donors move offline in subsequent years of giving, it does have some negative effect on their value in the renewal year. The higher the donor’s original gift level, the less they upgrade and, in fact, the more likely it is that the donor will actually downgrade if they move offline. However, these lower gift amounts are far outweighed by the higher retention of onlineacquired donors provided by the direct mail channel.

• For the consistent givers who comprise the majority of donors already on file, the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant factor in predicting future retention or long-term value. Traditional RFM factors are far more predictive.