Cause marketing is a well-minded marketing initiative that connects the cause of non-profit organizations with the reach and audience of businesses to create a mutually beneficial relationship. The strength in this approach is the business’ ability to provide greater visibility to the non-profit and to capitalize on people’s point of purchase decisions. Non-profits benefit from cause marketing through the ability to share their message with larger audiences and to solicit donations and support from these audiences. The business benefits from a positive brand reputation through the association with a non-profit organization. It’s a win-win situation.

Cause marketing can take a few different forms. Think of pink Yoplait’s “Save Lids and Save Lives” program that benefits the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Another popular campaign is Project Red at the Gap where proceeds from sales benefit The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis & Malaria. While these are all highly successful and integrated campaigns, others are not quite so innovative.

When checking out at the grocery store, I’ve been offered tickets to donate $1, $3, or $5 to help feed a child. Maybe I’m just an evil person because I know this is a great cause, but nothing about the offer compels me make this donation. It’s just another way in which people are constantly asked for money. Another example are the tear-off pieces of paper that you can write your name on and post on a wall in return for a $1 donation to some specific cause. While I like the idea of showing solidarity in support through the arrangement of papers on the wall – this is still not something that really inspires me or moves me to act. Yes, it’s easy (and that’s part of the success with point-of-purchase cause marketing), but it’s not compelling.

This is where I can envision an opportunity for print excellence to excite the world of cause marketing. Marketing service providers and print shops are so skilled at creating promotional items that you want to pick up and immerse yourself in. Why not tap into this excellence to promote the non-profit world?

Here’s what I’m thinking… Imagine waiting in line at the grocery store and instead of leafing through a tabloid magazine, you pick up a perfectly bound book complete with full color photos on fresh, glossy paper illustrating the plight of Tigers in Eastern Asia or a struggling village in Libya. Would you be motivated to add $1 to your grocery bill to help this cause? I imagine this book would move you to act much more than a paper-wrapped can or a simple graphic tear-off paper begging your donation. (Of course, the grocery store would want to secure the photo book to the check out area, but I’m sure that is possible).

Or what if when you donated to a cause, instead of receiving a tear-off paper, you received a glossy postcard with an image of those tigers or village residents? The donor could then mail this postcard to a friend or relative and essentially say, “I just donated to XYZ cause at XYZ store. Stop by XYZ so you can support this cause, too! Or visit www.XYZ.com for more information and to activate your support.” Now, not only has this postcard effectively solicited a donation, it has also communicated the cause to another individual, hopefully prompting their visit to the store and ultimate donation.

Personally, I love the idea of cause marketing. Maybe this post is optimistic, but I’d love to see more creative tactics and I know print can help create more impactful communications. In the end, it’s all about reaching customers in just a way to compel their support of the non-profit and I’m positive that print creativity can do just that.

A recent InfoTrends study entitled The Evolution of the Cross-Media and Marketing Services Provider reveals 58% of the 280 print service providers surveyed are offering cross-media services. There’s no doubt that the cross-media market is dynamic, growth-oriented, and a major contributor to the future of the printing industry.

The marketing executive is the key decision-maker in cross-media services. These marketers are facing a number of challenges in the transition to cross-channel marketing, from strategy to design and deployment to tracking and measurement. The sheer scope of the cross-channel marketing model, and the new innovations that continue to appear, make it difficult for marketers to keep up.

The opportunity is that marketers are reaching out to their traditional print service provider and agency partners for assistance. During an October 2010 study entitled Capturing the Cross-Media Direct Marketing Opportunity, InfoTrends surveyed more than 500 marketers to find out answers to questions such as: What selection criteria are essential to the marketer? How does that service provider move to the top of the list so they can participate in the more lucrative marketing value chain and the incremental digital print revenue associated with cross-media services?

You can download the full white paper for free here. (Click in the bottom, left corner). Find out the answers to what Marketers are looking for and how YOU can participate in the lucrative cross-media revenue stream!

As we reach the end of a year, we typically take time to reflect on the past year and make plans for the New Year approaching. In reading several interesting year-end reflection articles, I observed common themes regardless of the industry or location. These themes bear consideration for us in the Printing Industry as we enter into 2012.

Any year has its share of passings, but 2011 seemed to hit Americans defined by their creativeness, competitiveness, and strong individuality particularly hard. Betty Ford and Maggie Daley, two women whose bravery and openness in fighting cancer while driving their causes saved countless lives. In the technology world 2011 saw the loss of Ken Olsen from Data General, Michael Hart, the father of the e-book and founder of the Gutenberg Project in 1971, and of course Steve Jobs, whose impact is undeniable.

American Politics had its usual share of “won’t they ever learn moments”, including the ‘Super Committee” failure to find savings to sufficiently reduce the debt, and the terrible mess with the US Postal Service which it seems is more politics than business. Financially, the economy continues to struggle in efforts to recover, and we find the term “jobless recovery” popping up all over. Perhaps no industry is more troubled by the economic woes than the Print Industry which continues to contract and struggle with customers shifting to digital and multi-channel communication.

We continue to see the expansion of the volumes and uses for data, and the real question is, how will we use all this data and convert it into useful information in running our businesses? Will we be able to find the right data, and will it help us to just get a bit better or can we generate meaningful change and new opportunities?

Macro trends with direct impact on our industry include:

• Mobile communication is here to stay with 5.1 billion people owning a cell phone according to Mobile Marketing Association. Consumer time being spent on mobile devices is rising faster than all other media. Integrating mobile into our customer communication campaigns to inform, engage and entertain customers must be a priority for all business and consumer communication companies.
• Companies seeking to secure current customers and attract new ones are putting the customer relationship first. They are looking to connect more deeply and more often, putting customers at the center of their efforts to remain relevant to them despite fast changing preferences and demands.
• Marrying communication design and technology is mandatory. We have to get smarter about how we plan and develop the customer communication experience. As budgets shrink and options increase we must adopt a design once and deploy frequently approach. How to integrate the multi-channel options for the most impact across the geo-demographic base is a major challenge.

All of these themes are intertwined and related. Taking steps to understand how they have impacted us and how we will react is important in how we go forward into 2012. As for me, I believe that eliminating silos and taking an end-to-end view of business improvement is critical to continue to increase productivity and competitive success. What is your most pressing need in 2012 and how can others help?

My first reaction after listening to Dr. Joe Webb’s economic webinar last week was to go out and slit my wrists. The forecast for the economy in general continues to be poor and for print there seems to be no hope.

• GDP is still sluggish
• 2012 unemployment to “improve” – for the wrong reasons
• CPI “moderating” – but prices too high when real wages keep falling
• 2011 Inflation Adjusted Print and Print Services Shipments continue to be at or below 2010 and lowest in 5 years
• Forecast for US Commercial Print Shipments from 2011 to 2017 by WTT ERC drops from $85 B to $ 52 B

However, when I thought about many of the companies I know in the industry, they continue to actually thrive and not just survive, so what is their secret and how do we increase the number of companies being successful in the industry?

We all need to realize that continuous change is going to be a part of the way we do business for the near term, and will be required for long term survival. We depend on technology, and the equipment and software rate of change continues to increase. Channels and methods of communicating are expanding, and customers’ preferences evolving, and after all, we are really in the communication business.

Think about the conservative banking industry, which took a long time to move from personal banking to ATM’s and online services, and now have gone mobile, allowing checks to be deposited from a smart phone by taking a picture. Balances can be checked, and even transfers from account to account take place any time and from anywhere. The successful companies I know and read about are listening to their customers and are open to modifying their business models to accommodate customer demands. This is not a surefire solution and certainly not easy, as it means moving from our areas of comfort and experience.

What I think the industry needs more than anything now is to find ways to help each other make the industry strong, and to establish networks and resources to accelerate change. Companies should focus on customer service, putting the customer needs first, and find ways to diversify and differentiate themselves as partners in selective service areas complementing their core offerings. Companies and owners need to choose an area of expertise, and then utilize all the resources available including supplier expertise, associations, and consultants to fill in gaps and build upon their own expertise. Organizations need to resist the temptation to do everything themselves and build partnership relationships with other service providers in providing a complete solution set.

As we end this year we should not view the position as hopeless but rather recommit ourselves to working together and to embracing the change around us. Let us each and every one commit ourselves to staying relevant to the changing needs of our customer base. As General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff, U. S. Army said “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

 Looking to grow your print business? Visit MyPressGo for your personalized business development program created by and for digital printers.

Since being launched in 1995, digital production presses have continued to evolve with improved speed, image quality, and lower cost of operation. Digital printing has become integrated into commercial print shops and in-plant environments for small runs and on-demand printing. In addition, Web-enabled printing and new finishing capabilities have created a number of new business opportunities directly linked to substrates. These emerging and profitable applications include labels and packaging, photo books, personal publishing, point-of-purchase signage, and an array of creative direct mail pieces.

The range of substrates that can run through the digital press needs to be a key consideration in making the digital decision. Marketers view the paper as one opportunity for their target audience to hold the firm’s identity in their hands. This rare and intimate occasion can vastly influence the recipient’s perception of the organization – is the firm a “discount” provider with basic materials or a “high quality” marketer with rich paper stocks and vivid colors?

The Canon imagePRESS Series is about versatility with paper selection. The Canon imagePRESS Series lets commercial and in-plant printers offer customers the right stock for the job. The system can print on lightweight, coated, uncoated, and specialty media with weights from 60 to 325 gsm and sizes from 13″ x 19.2″. Automatic duplexing is supported on all stocks. Users can produce full-bleed booklets, thicker business cards and postcards, and forms or inlays on thinner lighter stock.

The Canon imagePRESS Series also comes with a wide range of finishing options so that the commercial printer or in-plant can take on more jobs. Documents can be stacked for flat or offline finishing. In addition, there are in-line options that include the ability to print and create perfect-bound books with up to 200 sheets. The press can create tabbed, hole-punched training materials and catalogs. The use of an integrated saddle stitcher can produce full-bleed, three-side trimmed booklets of up to 100 pages that lay perfectly flat. Print facilities can also saddle-stitch jobs printed on custom-size paper and mixed media.

The range of paper stocks and finishing capabilities can make a big difference in the bottom line, optimizing the return on investment for the commercial or in-plant printer. The Canon imagePRESS Series has the ability to drive high-value and more complex applications that clients request, including brochures, books, magazines, photo specialty products, promotional fliers, and personalized direct mail. With this new system, print providers can enter the lucrative digital color print market or expand their existing capabilities.

Visit OceWow.com to view the Canon imagePRESS Series demo video!

Adobe has been making waves with its series of acquisitions over the past few years, including Web analytics provider Omniture and content management provider Day Software. More recently, Adobe acquired web font specialist Typekit, electronic signature provider EchoSign, and video enhancement software provider Iridas Technology.

At a financial analyst briefing in November, Adobe made a number of announcements about what it is doing with those acquisitions, and more broadly, the direction in which the company is headed. Most of the news coverage in the tech community that surrounded this briefing was Adobe’s intention to stop any future development of its Flash for mobile platform. Instead, the company is opting to focus on leveraging HTML5 and other standard Web technologies in the mobile arena. Adobe is also putting more emphasis on these technologies in general, as showcased by some of its concept products it has released for testing, including Muse (aimed at helping users design and publish HTML websites without the need to write code) and Edge (an application that is meant to help people create animated Web content using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript).

Some noted the scaling back of Flash as a posthumous win for the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who was adamantly opposed to putting Flash on Apple’s iDevices because of what he felt were flaws that made Flash inferior in the mobile realm. What was substantially under-reported in the tech world was Adobe’s clear shift in direction, as highlighted by a reorganization that re-targets the company to focus on two main areas: digital media and digital marketing.

The company is also pushing its users to get out of a perpetual licensing model of buying and upgrading its Creative Suite product line to a cloud-based subscription pricing model that lets users pay for access to Creative Suite tools on a monthly basis. To do this, Adobe has developed the Creative Cloud, a Web-based community and portal for users to manage their Creative Suite applications and connect with other creative professionals. While the company will continue to sell perpetual licenses in the near future, it has very clear plans to fully migrate 100% of Creative Suite users to the Creative Cloud over time.

With the Creative Cloud on the Digital Media side, there is also Adobe’s cloud-based Digital Marketing Suite, which is geared toward the company’s solutions for digital marketing, including Web and social analytics, content management, digital asset management, eCommerce, display advertising, e-mail marketing, and customer relationship management. Adobe’s goal is to provide a suite of solutions for marketing professionals that can help them compete effectively in the online channel.

Furthermore, Adobe is shifting its business strategy from simply being a technology provider to a company that also provides services to help businesses with things like content monetization. In this sense, Adobe’s transformation pushes it closer to competing with some of its customers and partners; it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the near future. Just weeks after its financial analyst briefing, the company announced the acquisition of Efficient Frontier, a provider of digital ad buying and performance management solutions. This acquisition is further proof that Adobe is intent on not just providing tools to create content, but that it fully wants to provide solutions to help its customer monetize the content they are creating.

All in all, Adobe’s changes are much more substantial than no longer developing Flash for mobile; the company is totally revamping its strategy to focus on digital media and digital marketing, and expanding its scope to offer companies help with content monetization. As an unfortunate by-product of this reorganization, Adobe is also laying off about 750 people, or around 7% of its workforce. Layoffs aside, the company is, of course, painting a compelling future for itself, as well as digital media and marketing in general. With the marketing and media landscapes still undergoing a high degree of transformation, it may not be a bad bet.

What do you think of Adobe’s recent moves? Can it refocus its business while maintaining trust and good relationships with its long-standing customer base? Have you already moved from a perpetual licensing model to a monthly subscription via the Creative Cloud? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Two things I read last week hit me with a one-two punch: first I read about Warren Buffet’s investment in IBM, and then I read information from a Gartner report on leveraging customer loyalty.

The AP article on Buffet’s investment says: Warren Buffett said Monday that his company has spent $10.7 billion to buy more than 5 percent of IBM’s stock this year, a surprising move by the billionaire investor who has long shied away from investing in high technology companies.”

Why the change is a kicker!
“Buffett has long refused to invest in high-tech companies because he has said it’s too difficult to predict which technology businesses will prosper in the long run.
“But he said he recently realized his view of IBM was wrong based on what he read in the company’s annual reports and what he learned by talking to information-technology departments at Berkshire subsidiaries. He said he should have realized years sooner that hardware is no longer the heart of IBM’s business.
“”Now they’re very much a services company, and they’re very intertwined with their customers,” Buffett said. And he said IBM’s customers are reluctant to change once they start working with IBM.”

Now for the Gartner quote on loyalty and customer experience:
“”I don’t think it’s ever too late,” said Adam Sarner, principal research analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. “Long-term loyalty initiatives depend on building trust and affinity. The more relevant you are to the customer, the more likely they will be loyal to you.””

So what does this mean to us in the world of Print, or Print and Mail? What can we learn from these two seemingly unrelated pieces of information?

For some time now, everywhere we turn we see studies, reports, and market recommendations about how moving from a Print Service provider to a Marketing Services provider is the way to expand and grow our business. However, it is certainly a complex transition to make, and maybe even too costly. It is hard to figure out where to begin and even if to begin.

What I take away from the Gartner information is that for our industry, and for us as companies or individuals, to compete and succeed we must stay relevant to our customers. Communication channels and technology are changing fast, and some say Print, and Print and Mail are becoming irrelevant. We need to adopt a customer-centric view and prioritize discovering what our customers need, and change our organizations to meet those needs. We are experiencing changes, but so are our customers. There are new regulations and changing demographics impacting how our customers communicate to their customers. We cannot afford to take a product or technology only view, and ignore the changes impacting our customers. We must stay relevant to them.

My take away from the Buffet article relating to our business and our industry is that some very smart investors have stayed away from high tech companies because of the difficulty in picking a product or technology with long lasting impact. They are instead placing their bets on companies that are service providers because a good service provider becomes very involved with their customers and it becomes difficult for the customer to change. The technologies and the tools supporting our industry in producing communications have never been more widely varied and in flux. However, if we focus on the needs of the clients and their communication requirements with an outside-in view instead of inside-out, we, like the giant IBM, can change how we are perceived and increase our value, longevity, and profitability.

So in the end what does it mean? Listen carefully to the clients, learn and understand their needs and even what is driving those needs, and then no matter what you call it, offer service solutions that meet those needs.

Are you interested in learning how some printing companies have accomplished just this? Visit OceWow to watch best practice videos. Watch as we highlight what makes print operations like i3Logix, Yurchak Printing Inc., and Ideal Printers Inc. successful.

The Document Strategy Forum just celebrated its fourth birthday last week. This event is unique for its focus and its size. The focus on transactional documents brings together an audience with a common need: how to keep up with all the changes in regulation, technology, and customer demands surrounding transactional communication, which is at the center of every business’ interaction with its customers. The organizers stay tuned in to what is of interest to their audience, with an example being this year’s addition of both a track and an exhibit floor pavilion for SharePoint. The narrower scope and smaller venue, as compared to the mega-events such as Graph Expo or On Demand, leads to superior interaction opportunities for both attendees and the solution providers.

The focus and size in no way limit the value and learning opportunity provided. There are six tracks and over forty-five sessions dedicated to providing information and insight. The best part of the sessions provided is that they often lead to very interactive discussions amongst the speaker and the attendees, leading to a sharing of perspectives across different functions and industries. I attended a session on Managed Print Services where I was reminded that when speaking about anything with documents, it is a good idea to set the stage by explaining whether you are referring to internal business documents, business-to-business documents, or business-to-customer documents.

The opening keynote presentation by Forrester Research, “The State of the Document Processing Services Industry 2011”, provided great background and thought provoking information for the rest of the conference. The presentation states it is time to change our process approach. We think we’ve got it all under control and we do to a certain point, but firms still struggle to manage untamed business processes: customer onboarding, claims processing and invoicing process. “1998 – 2009 marks a lost decade consumed with packaged apps and leaving enterprises stuck in cement, unable to rapidly change, compete and innovate. 48% will invest in collaborative technology to improve app performance.

Another part of the Forrester presentation described Customer Communication categories and primary applications. They defined the categories as: structured, interactive and on-demand. Key industry concerns include: enterprises trying to get rid of a big headache – aging structured output systems, the ability to quickly comply with new regulations; rapid movement to on-demand and interactive transactions and archaic fulfillment process.

Another unique take away I got from this year’s event was to remember that when talking about “multi-channel”, (and who isn’t?), we need to not only think about the broad variety of output channels with print, email, web-hosted, social media, mobile, etc., but we also need to focus on the breadth of the input information channels from multiple administrative, transactional, marketing, and yes, even customer response sources. As a process-focused individual, this suddenly seemed obvious; you need to look at the inputs, tasks, and outputs in any process to be effective, I do not think I have experienced any other time which highlighted the input side.

I believe that the focus provides superior interaction and networking opportunities. The attendees are mostly high level individuals with 45% of them holding C-level or Director/Department Head Positions. 28% of the companies represented generate 3+ million outbound transactional documents per month (and 13% of those are generating 10+ million per month). I personally have met and established ongoing relationships with many key contacts through participating over the past four years.

This event may be one of the best kept secrets in the industry, and I am looking forward to what the show organizers will do to keep improving for their 5th anniversary event in 2012.

For more information on transactional document solutions, visit Océ Production Printing – Transactional Resources.

I came across this great article last week in the PINE newsletter written by Dr. Ronnie H. Davis, Vice President and Chief Economist. The article offers speculation on the future of print and print markets – something we all wish we could look into a crystal ball to see.

We tend to talk a lot about marketing service providers and how they are critical to the future of print. But this article presents an idea discussed less, especially on this blog. The article states that print logistics – things like packaging, labels, wrappers, and product user manuals – is the only industry segment not susceptible to competition from digital media. Though still a relatively smaller part of total industry sales, a series of graphs illustrates how print logistics sales have increased the most over the past 10 years and the number of print establishments who specialize in logistics has decreased the least when compared to other print segments.

Perhaps this is one untapped area of opportunity for the printing industry. Could your operation capture some of the print logistics market?

 Looking for other ideas to help grow your business? Check out the only business development program created by and created for digital printers.

The cross-media market is dynamic, growth-oriented, and a major contributor to the future of the printing industry. InfoTrends recently completed a study entitled The Evolution of the Cross-Media and Marketing Services Provider. This study surveyed more than 280 print service providers (PSPs) to understand the current state of cross-media and the evolution taking place in the graphic communications market. The first key message is that service providers as a community nderstand the critical importance of getting into cross-media services. Of the 285 total respondents, over 58% are currently offering some level of cross-media services.

The second key message is that companies taking a leadership posture in cross-media are growing revenue from both cross-media as well as expanding digital print. Respondents offering cross-media services indicated that offering cross-media marketing services increased their digital printing volume by an average of 13.7%.

Participating in the More Lucrative Cross-Media Revenue Stream
The marketing executive is the key decision-maker in cross-media services. These marketers are facing a number of challenges in the transition to cross-channel marketing, from strategy to design and deployment to tracking and measurement. The sheer scope of the cross-channel marketing model, and the new innovations that continue to appear, make it difficult for marketers to keep up.

Marketers are reaching out to their traditional print service provider and agency partners for assistance. To date, they are primarily doing this selectively for specific functions. No single partner fits the bill for a wide range of services.

During an October 2010 study entitled Capturing the Cross-Media Direct Marketing Opportunity, InfoTrends surveyed more than 500 marketers. These respondents reported working with a number of different external service providers to execute cross-media marketing campaigns. Almost 42% of respondents work directly with a commercial printer. Over a third of respondents reported working with an advertising agency, a direct mailer, or a graphic design firm. Since marketers work with commercial printers and agencies the most, it would make sense that these service providers are well-positioned to offer new cross-media services to their existing clientele.

The key question is this: what selection criteria are essential to the marketer? How does that service provider move to the top of the list so they can participate in the more lucrative marketing value chain and the incremental digital print revenue associated with cross-media services?

To read the rest of this article, visit www.OceWow.com and download the September NewsLetter.

I drove past my local post office yesterday morning, one that is not closing, as far as I know, and noticed a FedEx drop box about ten feet from the main entrance door. It was clearly on USPS property. Or rather, on my property, and your property. I never noticed it before, in the way that many things that are a little out of place are invisible until you need them, or your brain has a spare moment and recognizes them. So as I ran my errands, I arranged to pass a couple of other post offices and found the same thing –FedEx drop boxes lined up next to the Express Mail box and regular USPS mailboxes.

This reminded me of our collective reactions at shows like Graph Expo as the major equipment providers, many with competing hardware or software or services offerings, began to populate each other’s booths as part of “solutions”. Often we did not know whose booth we were in. At the time, this blew our minds.

Of course, there are collaborations – or contracts – between the USPS and the private package delivery carriers already in place. The USPS Global Express Guaranteed service is the USPS’s “fastest international shipping service with transportation and delivery by FedEx Express”. And UPS Returns Flexible Access uses the USPS Parcel Return Service combined with UPS’s own delivery network.

These collaborations appear to leverage the strengths of each organization. The USPS, however, with its monopoly, (or responsibility), for First Class Mail and Standard Class Mail, is left with the less profitable deliveries of the carriers’ packages in out-of-the-way locales. FedEx and UPS are clearly dependent on the USPS for final delivery and pickups of packages in remote areas that are, of course, routes covered by the USPS.

The USPS must continue to focus on performance improvement in its core areas of responsibility – First Class and Standard Mail, but it’s time for the USPS to start thinking about “solutions”, and “collaborations” in the true sense of those words, to help promote its own sustainability instead of mere survival through cost-cutting.

Looking for more information? Visit www.OceWow.com and sign up for the free monthly newsletters designed especially for Transactional and Direct Mail providers.

Recently, I had the chance to spend some time at the DMA 2011 conference in Boston. While I absolutely enjoyed my time at Graph Expo, I was excited to attend a show that primarily consisted of marketing agencies and in-house marketers. I was looking forward to seeing what topics were trending, what challenges were being hotly discussed, and what technologies and channels were being debated.

It’s certainly very important for all of us that are associated to the printing industry to understand what marketers are thinking and talking about. Thus, I’d like to share some of my observations from DMA 2011. I hope that you find them helpful!

1. Marketers are absolutely in need of integrated solutions:

One theme that seemed to exist in many of the conference sessions was the need to break down silos and to integrate marketing efforts. As more and more marketers move to reach their customers and prospects through multiple channels, many of them have fallen into the trouble of storing and managing multiple databases. Those databases might store conflicting or simply varying bits of information about their contacts. This harms a marketer’s need to try to communicate with their audience in real-time. It also prevents a marketer from truly delivering one-to-one and relevant messages.

Thus, service providers (especially those that are committed to offering marketing services through multiple channels as opposed to only print, mail, or fulfillment) have a tremendous opportunity to promote and offer solutions of that nature to their customers to help them solve those challenges.

2. The Primary Discussion was Digital — But Print Still Has a Place in the Marketing Mix!:

I won’t lie – many of the discussions at DMA 2011 centered around online marketing and other digital marketing initiatives. But there were still a number of great case studies shared that involved print and direct mail components. Some of the main reasons why I heard marketers share why they still chose print as a channel included:

• It is tangible.
• It can be personalized.
• It can create a deeper emotional impact.
• It can be a very effective way to drive people to online content.

3. When it comes to social networks, businesses have a lot to learn:

Judging by the attendance of various sessions, many companies are still striving to learn how to effectively use social networks in the B-to-B space. Here were a few of the tips that I heard that I’d like to share:

• Twitter’s search features can be one of the most powerful websites for companies to utilize. It enables us to really listen to what’s on the minds of customers and prospects.
• Facebook’s dominance in the social networking space is truly astounding — thus, we most likely all need to invest more resources there. They have 800 million users! Nearly half of them log in each day.  30 billion pieces of content are shared there each month! Those numbers clearly dwarf the activity that other social networks can share. With that much volume, it’s certain that some of the content being shared and discussed has to do with companies and products. In order to capitalize on the opportunities there, business of all shapes and sizes must be on Facebook too.
• People love video. It’s true. Video is being used more and more by marketing agencies and other companies to tell their stories. I truly think that many service providers can utilize video to do the same thing

4. Mobile and QR Codes Were Huge… and Growing:

There were a ton of QR Codes at the conference. They were on posters, signs, collateral, and clothes. While that is a good sign to me when it comes to printing, I also noticed that most of the QR Codes were not used 100% properly.

• Primarily, most of them seemed to point to non-mobile websites. I truly think that there is a tremendous opportunity for service providers to grow their business by doing more than just providing or printing the QR Code; but rather, to also offer the building and hosting of the mobile website or mobile landing page.

Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, is a reliable name in Hawaiian health care. Established in 1938, it is the largest and most experienced provider of health care coverage in the state. Over half of Hawaii’s population has chosen HMSA for their coverage.

HMSA’s mission is to provide quality, affordable health plans, employee benefit services, and work site wellness programs. HMSA also offers a variety of programs, services, and support to help improve the health and well-being of its members and community.

In the complex and dynamic world of health care, nothing is more important than high-quality, effective communications about subscriber benefits. Assumpta Rapoza, Director of Enterprise Risk Management for HMSA, clearly understands the importance of ensuring clear communications about benefits for subscribers. Rapoza stated, “Quality communications are essential for
customer satisfaction as well as the retention of a loyal customer base.”

Clear Messaging to Drive Loyalty
With health care on everyone’s agenda, HSMA wanted to effectively communicate the true value of the individual’s health insurance policy. The company decided to create an annual cost savings report that raised the subscriber’s awareness of the actual costs for medical procedures and
medications, the amount covered by HSMA, and the resulting financial benefit.

According to Rapoza, “If the subscriber went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, he or she typically didn’t know the actual costs and the HMSA benefit. We wanted an agile solution where we could customize communications based on the specific member profile. We were seeking tools that would enable us to create personalized messaging for each subscriber in the form of an annual summary report.”

Rapoza continued, “We needed to push out the messaging. We knew that we wanted to mail out customized statements. While electronic delivery is a more costefficient way to deliver information, we are cognizant that a high percentage of our membership still prefers paper.”

The Solution
HMSA leveraged Océ’s Technology & Software Support (TSS) Solution Development Manager and Systems Consultant resources, its existing investment in Océ digital print technology, upgrades to its Océ PRISMAproduction® workflow software, as well as the GMC PrintNet Variable Data Composition software to design a solution for its annual benefits summary statement. This combination enabled HMSA to design, compose, produce, present, manage, and automate printed documents with individualized targeted messaging that was HIPPAcompliant. The system design also needed to accommodate production in print and electronic formats, created by PrintNet. Rapoza noted, “The end-result was a customerfriendly communication that clearly articulated the value that HMSA was delivering to its membership.”

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I only ask because in today’s marketing strategy digital print is only one piece of the magic formula and it’s effectiveness is dependent upon many other factors. It really starts upstream with market research and understanding the audience in order to drive the desired results. Next we need to figure out how to connect the dots. For example, once we gather the data and creative pieces, how do we get them working for us?

We are often faced with the opportunity to show our clients how digital color can impact the mail campaign. For me, it’s never just about putting color on paper, it’s much more personal. Sure, we can convert projects from conventional printing to digital color by combining market cells and targeting smaller segments, which are often considered too expensive to run on their own, but there’s much more to it.

For example, it’s about working with our clients and helping them take a name and address file with a vehicle identification number, break the VIN down to isolate the year, make, model and color, and then use that information to pull in a picture of the vehicle owned by the mail recipient. The next step is to reengineer the package and allow that vehicle picture to show through the window of the outside envelope so the recipient has that immediate personal connection to the mail piece. It’s also about building a program with business rules and logic that requires minimal maintenance, yet having more flexibility than ever imagined. You end up incorporating new ways of thinking and the latest technology to create a personalized experience, meet quick turn times, minimize inventory control and enabling our clients to track their mail.

Sure, just adding color has proven to increase response rate, but when you plan and design variable color to be part of a solution it takes your mail campaign to a whole new level.

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