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

The marketing technology experts at JFM Concepts are proud to announce they have partnered with the Great Lakes Graphics Association, part of the Print Industries Association of America, to provide cross media marketing services.

JFM Concepts has used its industry leading VDP Web® cross media marketing platform to support the Great Lakes Graphics Association in membership development and retention efforts.  The campaign included a multi-channel distribution effort to current and former association members to conduct a highly complex and detailed survey.  The questions were designed to gather detailed feedback from the membership in order to improve services to boost both relevancy and values in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Since 1886, the Great Lakes Graphics Association has represented the printing industry and its allied partners.  The GLGA is a professional trade association representing members in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin that helps businesses achieve powerful results.  JFM Concepts and VDP Web are proud to assist the Association in developing industry leading cross media marketing tools and systems to accomplish their mission.

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).

Special thanks to Steve Anzalone, COO of the Harding Poorman Group for his efforts in this project.

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

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.

JFM Concepts is pleased to have partnered with the Print Services Distribution Association for the 2011 Print Solutions Expo from pre-show marketing to educational sessions and post show follow-up.  The highly successful event was held at Chicago's Navy Pier May 17^th to 19^th.

Marketing

JFM Concepts and VDP Web provided in depth cross media marketing support to the PSDA for the show including data cleansing, segmentation, personalized URLs (PURLs), QR Codes, Generic Landing Pages (GURLs), Personalized Landing Pages, Surveys, Email and more in a comprehensive pre and post-show marketing effort.  The effort was the first time the association had implemented a comprehensive communication plan that included all these channels with unified reporting and analytics.

The results of the campaign included a streamlined work process, coordinated messaging and content, highly relevant personalization, detailed reporting, and improved response rates.  The association was able to access detailed analytics and metrics for each individual channel.

Education

James Michelson presented an extended session on integrated marketing based on his popular book "Cross Media Marketing 101: The concise guide to surviving in the C-suite" from Schooner Press. The interactive presentation focused on the practical development of several real world campaigns from strategy through follow up.  The three hour session was a follow up to the overview of the same topic from the CEO Summit.

Exhibition

Show visitors experienced VDP Web first hand at the double-size booth featuring both Mac and PC, mobile and desktop cross media applications.  At the exhibitor theatre, Josh Driver delivered a session on generating revenue with cross media for print manufacturers and distributors.

 

Sponsorship

JFM also sponsored the show's cocktail reception with an open bar.  Attendees and exhibitors alike were able to relax after a hard day's work with complimentary food and drink before hitting the town.

For additional information or to get copies of presentations and sessions, please visit www.vdpweb.com

JFM Concepts is pleased to announce that Sexton Strategic's Girl Scout PURL campaign has been featured by PODi, including a custom cookie calculator. From Caslon & CO on May 12, 2011:

Cross Channel Marketing Drives Girl Scout Cookie Participation

Vertical Market:               Not for Profit
Business Application:   Direct Marketing / Loyalty

Business Objectives:

The annual cookie program is a major fundraiser for the Girl Scouts of the Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys Council (River Valleys). Encouraging Scout participation is critical to the success of the program. In the past, staff had provided vital information through a monthly email that only reached the parents or troop leaders. River Valleys felt that communicating directly with girls would be important to growing the success of the cookie program. They needed a communication solution that would:

* Improve communication about the cookie program to Scouts and their parents
* Engage three key segments: 
- Newcomers - Girl Scouts in Kindergarten through third grade who may be new to the Girl Scout cookie program
- Parents of Scouts
- Older Girl Scouts who may need extra encouragement to continue their efforts in the cookie program

Results
River Valleys worked with Sexton Strategic to develop a multi-channel marketing program that engaged their membership in the cookie program. With the targeted program River Valleys reduced their overall marketing spend while increasing the effectiveness of the campaign.

* The integrated campaign contributed to greater Scout engagement, which in turn supported exceeding the council's cookie program goal
* A reduction in the number of calls to River Valleys showed that girls and families felt informed about the program
* 12% of targeted older Girl Scouts visited their Personalized URL and completed an online survey giving their feedback on the cookie program

Read more about how this campaign was structured and why it succeeded.
PODi members can download the full case study and nonmembers: Get a complimentary copy for a limited time here.

 
The following email from AT&T is a good example of direct email marketing.  We like this example because the call to action is clear, above the break, and there are multiple ways to respond.

Once the link for the new Atrix phone is selected, the link takes the user to a content specific page on the AT&T site, which is good. The missing link here is that there is no way to continue to get more information on the phone or a “buy now” link.  There are other options below the fold, but they are difficult to find.  (The address in blue is actually part of an image and not a link and is not a next step in any event...)

The simplicity and directness of the email is lost on the landing page.  When thinking about the customer experience, always remember not to make the user think.  Make it painfully obvious at each and every step what he next action should be.  The email does a good job of this, but the landing page drops the ball and maybe the sale.

Additionally, AT&T should consider personalization and segmentation to improve response rates.  It is odd that the same offer and text would go to a business account and then the recipient be asked to enter a “student email address.”  They have the data – they just need to use it.