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

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).

JFM Concepts, the maker of VDP Web, is proud to announce the Cross Media Marketing 101 for 2012 webinar.  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.

The webinar will be held March 8^th at 4:00 eastern Time.  Register at http://webinar1.vdpconcepts.com.

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.

VDP Web founder and principal James Michelson was recently featured on a What They Think video published on October 25th, 2011.  The short is an overview of Cross Media Marketing 101, The concise guide to surviving to surviving in the C-suite.

Click here to watch the video

VDP Web is proud to announce that founder and principal James Michelson, the author of “Cross Media Marketing 101: The concise guide to surviving in the C-Suite” has been featured in several articles both in print and online by Print Professional Magazine in the their most recent issue.  In articles about landing pages, PURLs, email, SMS-Text and other channels, the experts at Print Professional interviewed James on a variety of topics from education, not for profits, fundraising, and general business marketing.

The articles are entitled “The anatomy of a cross media campaign” and “Knowing your audience and its needs help a cross media campaign make its mark” and are available online.  For case studies, more information or to execute your own campaigns, visit www.vdpweb.com.

JFM Concepts, makers of the VDP Web cross media marketing platform is proud to announce that James Michelson, founder and principal, has been invited to present in the Advanced Marketing Track at Exact Target’s Connections 2011 to be held in Indianapolis, Indiana on September 13-15, 2011.

The title of the session will be “Integrated Cross Media Marketing with Email, Direct Mail, SMS Text, SEO and Landing Pages for the Print Services Distribution Association (PSDA)”.

Join James Michelson, author of  “Cross Media Marketing 101: The concise guide to surviving in the C-Suite” and founder of embed partner VDP Web® as he creates and executes an integrated cross media marketing campaign that combines email, direct mail, landing pages, web, SMS-Text  and more into an integrated campaign to market the 2011 Print Solutions Expo.   In this session, discover how multiple marketing channels were coordinated and how personas were developed to deliver highly personalized content to prospects of the Print Services Distribution Association.  The speaker will re-create the process from start to finish on how content was created, channels selected, and follow up conducted in order to boost response rates, improve tracking, lower costs, and document return on investment.

The session will explore acquisition, lead generation, and sales techniques from this highly successful integrated campaign.  James will detail how pre and post-show follow up was conducted in order to maximize the impact of the event and to cross-sell / up-sell other association products and services during the campaign.  Detailed reporting metrics will be shared as will actual samples of content.  Items to be covered include:

• Developing personas
• Determining the correct contact channel
• Coordinating content and channels
• Developing a contact matrix and content for each persona
• Follow up techniques
• Results
• Lessons Learned
• Best Practices

Attendees will leave the session with a checklist of activities required to design, implement, and effectively track an integrated cross media marketing campaign using any combination of channels.

 

Connections 2011 is a must-attend event for ExactTarget customers. Sessions will appeal to those responsible for interactive marketing strategy and execution at all levels—from Vice Presidents to Email Marketing Specialists to Web Developers. Anyone looking for new ways to engage with customers through the latest interactive marketing tools and best practices is encouraged to attend. And because the educational value of Connections is unlike any other in the industry, attendees will be able to immediately apply what they learn to their marketing campaigns, prompting extraordinary impact on program results.

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.

Everyone makes mistakes.  The first time that Canon sent us an email a few months back that had a data mismatch on the PURL and took us to someone else’s landing page, we were shocked but willing to overlook it.  Stuff happens sometimes, no matter how hard you try.  But as an OEM manufacturer of digital presses, there is no excuse to have ongoing data errors in an ongoing campaign.  Here are the emails we received Thursday– two of them – within minutes of each other. 

 
 

The PURL in question on both emails is: http://luciaex.cusa.canon.com/cp/jm186.  Try it.

You’ll notice the following issues with this landing page in addition to the fact that the data is crossed:

• The links on both the email and the landing page are not dynamically rewritten and sent through a collection mechanism to allow link tracking.  There are lots of links to click, but no way to know if we clicked them.
• There is a broken image at the bottom of the page.  See the little X.
• Even after changing the contact info in the survey form, the page still says “Thanks, Jerry.”
• We also dispute the claim of absolutely amazing accuracy, at least if they are referring to the data...

Recently, we also received a standard billing communication from a medical billing company that opened the wrong user account and displayed a different patient’s detailed billing summary.  The repercussions could be dire for both the medical facility and the billing partner. 

Take Away

Despite our best efforts mistakes will happen, but follow these tips to minimize the risk:

• Be sure to test live data and real records every time
• Use a checklist to assure all the details are handled
• Never manipulate data in Excel or any other spreadsheet
• Test again, be sure, wait ten minutes, and test again
• Compare and test original data files versus lists that have been appended with data such as a PURL

Follow these steps, and fewer mistakes will happen.

Traditional email marketing programs rely on very limited reporting to accomplish marketing analytics.  One key to a successful integrated email marketing campaign is to continue tracking the responses of individual recipients beyond their actions in the email.  In typical email marketing, tracking ends when the prospect leaves the email and a "link click" is recorded.

By utilizing a personalized URL (PURL) campaign in conjunction with email, the actions of individual responders can be tracked beyond the inbox.  The additional intelligence that can be gathered from this process include:

•  Link clicks on the landing page
•  Time spent on the landing page
•  Videos watched and time spent watching video
•  Files downloaded
•  Surveys submitted
•  "Seed" content review, and more

Additionally, highly relevant and personalized information based on the segmented persona of the individual recipient can be provided on the PURL landing page that can make a dramatic difference in response rates.

By using a PURL in conjunction with email, marketers can continue reporting and tracking beyond the inbox.  The most important feature is that a marketing decision maker can complete this process without the support of corporate or third party IT resources.

The critical factor for both marketing service providers offering cross media and in-house employees executing the same is the ability to avoid inter-departmental struggles in order to quickly and efficiently launch the campaign.  To avoid complications with the legal department, reuse materials that have already been improved.

The most important result is that marketers who have responsibility for results, but not necessarily the authority across departments to control their own destiny can launch and have access to sophisticated tracking and analytics under their own area or responsibility (AOR).  The case for access to critical data cannot be overstated.  If the data collected by a firm resides in IT, the sales or marketing decision maker may not have access to the data on a timely basis.