The concept of a digital mailbox or digital mail delivery is certainly not new. In the enterprise, vendors like Esker, Océ, and Pitney Bowes offer digital mail delivery solutions whereby each piece of mail that comes into the company is scanned and delivered electronically to employee recipients. EarthClassMail is an early service for smaller businesses and consumers that also scans and manages mail. With a mix of new entrants and existing players, there is aggressive development of digital mailbox services for consumers, designed to reach every household in the United States, just like the USPS. There are a number of key players to watch in this space:

• Accenture, the worldwide consulting and outsourcing firm, is taking the approach of partnering directly with national postal services to help them develop digital mailbox services. It has clearly stated it is aiming to help global posts design their own services to compete directly against some of the independent digital mailbox services listed below.
• doxo is a technology start-up that takes a broad approach to the digital mailbox, enabling users to not only import electronic bills and statements, but also many other types of documents that can either be uploaded or scanned in via its mobile phone application.
• Manilla, started by Hearst Corporation, provides access to over 1,000 companies to enable users to consolidate and manage bills and loyalty programs, including major wireless carriers, cable & satellite TV providers, utilities, financial companies, airlines, and more. Certified Manilla partners can also present targeted advertisements to Manilla users alongside the sender’s content, which offers an intriguing TransPromo play.
• Pitney Bowes announced its Volly digital mailbox offering at the beginning of 2011, although the offering is still in beta. According to my colleague Matt Swain’s blog post on the service after its announcement, “Think of Volly as an extension of a conventional consumer bill consolidation model, incorporating other types of mail into the same platform.” There is no doubt that PB will be highlighting Volly at Graph Expo this year.
• Zumbox, another technology start-up, has made waves recently with its million-dollar giveaway contest to get people signed up for its service. The company has a unique twist on its service in that it uses your physical mail address as your digital mailbox address, as well. Like others, its concept is to digitally centralize the management of all mail being sent to a household.

There is a great deal of innovation occurring in this space right now, and considering the rapid pace of technology proliferation and adoption these days, it would not be surprising if these companies and their services make a big splash in the near future. InfoTrends is investigating this market right now, currently conducting a research study entitled The Emergence of Digital Mailbox Services: Moving Beyond Online Bill Consolidation in the U.S. This research initiative will identify the opportunity for secure digital mailbox services in the U.S. and will include a growth projection through 2015. I’m excited to see how this space shapes up, as these services could have a major influence on how we delivery, accept, and manage our mail.

While in-plants are under the gun to justify their value-add to the enterprise and prevent defection to external providers – those same external providers are wrestling with their own set of challenges.  Not the least of which is relentless pressure to deliver a profit month after month. In addition they must combat print suppression efforts,  satisfy the diverse requirements of more knowledgeable and demanding customers and make the transition from purveyor of ink to integrated service provider. All this at a time when core commercial print applications are under siege by alternate communication channels, the commercial print market is consolidating, volumes are declining and business in general remains stuck in an aimless recessionary grind.

Amidst this potent brew of challenges, digital print is increasingly seen as a requirement for survival, one that opens up new applications, opportunities and sources of revenue. Despite overall decline, the total print opportunity for 2011 is estimated to be an astounding 10 trillion pages. Of that number 2.1% or 216 billion pages are digital print – a number that’s expected to nearly double to 3.9% by 2014.

So if you’re a commercial printer looking to get your share of the growing digital opportunity, what’s workflow got to do with it? A lot, as it turns out. In fact, workflow can mean the difference between a print operation that’s rooted in the dark ages and one equipped to satisfy the expectations of 21^st century customers. Can streamlined digital workflow help commercial printers survive – or better yet, thrive – in the second decade of the new millennium? Yes -and here’s how:

1. As commercial print shops invest in digital print production, through workflow, they can expand their product offerings and expand into new markets that were originally out of market, becoming a true marketing services provider.
2. Software opens up the potential for commercial printers to handle multiple file formats and sizes, which allows for greater flexibility in the number of applications supported.
3. With a digital workflow, commercial print shops can store jobs electronically and print them digitally on demand. This, in turn, eliminates the need for longer runs and warehousing printed inventory.
4. With the ability to store files electronically, commercial print shops can turn jobs around quickly with minimal labor and processing, enabling a just-in-time production process.
5. As access to information increases and marketing messages become more targeted, a digital workflow that supports variable data and marketing messages enables commercial print shops to produce targeted, relevant communications that generate a better return on investment.
6. To meet demand for faster turnaround, shorter runs and variable data requirements, commercial print shops can implement web-to-print solutions that will offer the benefits of an online ordering system.
7. With digital workflow products that enable variable data document composition or streamlined make-ready, commercial print shops can diversify their product portfolios with value-added products and services.
8. With web-to-print and variable data solutions and increased application flexibility, commercial print shops can further strengthen customer relationships.
9. Overall, with digital workflow solutions that seamlessly route applications to digital print engines, commercial print shops can reduce production costs and improve efficiency.

In summary, an efficient digital workflow can facilitate the transition to integrated services provider, improve productivity and efficiency, enhance customer relationships and position commercial print shops to capture new opportunities. Want to weigh in? I’m interested to hear your take on the impact of a digital workflow on commercial print shops.

On August 20, 2009 the first provisions of the CARD Act go into effect. By this date, card issuers must have made the changes necessary to ensure that:

• - Cardholders have a minimum of 21 days to pay their bill;
• - Cardholders receive 45 days’ advance notice of significant changes to their card agreements;
• - Notice is provided that cardholders have a right to opt out of significant changes in their account terms, including interest rate and fee increases, as long as they are not more than 60 days overdue on their payments.

These provisions will have significant benefits to cardholders and will require extensive systems and programming changes for card issuers, but they pale in comparison to what’s in store for 2010.  By next year, the CARD Act will fundamentally change the way credit card issuers advertise, market, and bill credit cards. The majority of these changes will need to be in place in little more than 6 months, only 9 months from passage of the law. Tick. Tick. Tick.

 Beginning in February 2010, the CARD Act entails changes that impact what card issuers can charge, who they can charge and how and when those terms are disclosed. The overarching theme is “Plain Language and Plain Sight” and affects the layout of every solicitation, application, notice, and periodic statement delivered to consumers. The Federal Reserve has been tasked with providing model disclosures, which are to be updated regularly, based on government-sponsored reviews of the market, empirical research and direct consumer testing.

In addition to disclosing terms, card issuers are required to provide information to consumers on the consequences of their financial decisions such as how long it would take to pay off the existing balance, and the total interest cost if the consumer paid only the minimum due each month. In addition, all terms and contracts must be made available online for easy comparison and monitoring.

 What’s at stake for card issuers and banks? An estimated 15 billion in annual revenue from late fees alone, the cost of retrofitting existing contracts and communications while issuing new (more profitable) products and the cost of lobbying against additional reforms likely to be imposed on the lending industry.

What’s at stake for service providers? Potentially a one-time opportunity to help your customers gain efficiencies by introducing them to new marketing techniques such as transpromo and relevant personalization that can make all of their documents more efficient and effective.

Card issuers are challenged to analyze, redesign and reprogram each of their marketing and customer communications over the next 6 months. Are you ready to help? Tick. Tick. Tick.

 (Stay tuned for the next post covering changes to individual communications mandated by the CARD Act of 2009)

Our customer and their customer are engaged in a long term project to integrate variable promotional elements in their transactional messaging. The variability is based on both the consumers’ buying habits and some very sophisticated demographic segmentation. Our customer’s customer is delighted with the results and has no intention of going back to the old way of doing things. In fact, they want to double the volume again in the next 6 months.

TransPromo involves a complete redesign of a company’s entire messaging structure. Corporations do not invest the kind of money it takes to stand up a serious TransPromo project lightly, e.g., $100K in software, $150K in professional services, $XXK in document redesign, etc… These projects are not for the faint of heart. They require a solid C-Level commitment These are marketeers that are convinced that they will generate the kinds of increased top-line revenue that these implementations have been proven to produce. Notice that I said top-line revenue not bottom line cost savings. TransPromo is a money maker. These implementations are developed by professional marketers and mathematicians who apply sophisticated strategies and arcane analytical measurement tools to guide them at every step.

Let’s touch just quickly on validation. The statistics that we all learned in undergrad Stat 301 (and quickly forgot) are woefully inadequate to conduct a proper inquiry into success metrics. TransPromo is first and foremost a data driven environment. Instincts, hunches and marketing experience are incapable of cutting through the noise, finding the actionable data, and linking the correct recipients with the relevant offers. The truly effective programs begin with clearly defined business objectives that typically come from the Marketing department, e.g., improving back-to-school sales, cross selling additional services, launching a new product, increasing the lease renewal rate, blowing out under performing inventory, etc.. [Hint: cost reduction is hardly ever a sufficient reason for TransPromo]

The final result is called Behavioral Targeting and gets much of its horsepower from integration with CRM systems to provide the necessary 360 degree view of the customer. Add the insights provided by CRM to a well conceived business objective and you have a potent revenue generating marketing program.

You will know you are ready for TransPromo when basic mathematical marketing concepts like net promoter scores, RFM, CART, CHAID, LTV and brand equity come like second nature to you. Just remember back to one of the basic tenet of Six Sigma: if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Finally, our experience at Océ has shown us that companies that engage in TransPromo on a large scale basis do not want to talk about it and they don’t want us to talk about it. Non-disclosure agreements are always part of the deal when we help a customer implement one of these programs. We beg them to allow us to do case studies, but it never happens. They think of these projects as highly proprietary in nature. They think of them as the competitive advantage that gives them the edge in winning new customers and retaining their old ones. The word “system” doesn’t even begin to describe what really goes on. These implementations are environmental by their very nature and affect practically every aspect of a company’s structure.

After months of preparation the first trial run will a test that is limited in scope – one of many – and it will be run time and again. It will be constantly analyzed, revised, and refined. The willingness to keep going back to evaluate the process over and over again is implicit in the design and implementation process. To abandon something with that kind of scope after just one outing is ludicrous.

So, when I read that Heidi says 1:1 print jobs are seldom repeated I am really not too terribly surprised. Without the underlying C-Level commitment, professional design, data modeling, and the exhaustive analytics these 1:1 print jobs are destined to be one-offs. Variable data printing continues to evolve but when we compare 1:1 and TransPromo we see two different markets, two different kinds of print jobs and, two different marketing models driving them.