By Brett Dashwood edp, OutputLinks’ Asia Pacific vice president

It’s not new news that one of the most prolific industry buzzwords over the last few years has been transpromo or transpromotional documents---the merging of traditional transactional documents such as invoices and statements with promotional, direct mail style documents.

But none of this is new, it is simply a new way of looking at an old idea…but if it gets new people looking into the benefits of effectively communicating to audience, great!

When I first gave my presentation “Colorfully Transactional” back at ON DEMAND in 2005, I showed a diagram merging transactional and direct mail documents to create “Response rated transactional documents.” Although the concepts were the same, I was very glad to see Kodak come forth in 2006 with the term “TransPromotional” (a little easier to remember than mine).

For many years, many industry experts have been predicting that transactional documents, like a lot of direct mail applications, will move to being printed in color as the norm.

I must admit that this is why I chose the title for that presentation, however in that presentation (delivered in six different forms in five different countries over subsequent years), I was actually dispelling this myth about color being the only way to add value to a document.

Transpromotional techniques are not about color, they are about response rates and data; the response could be many different things, but essentially someone responding with a desired result.

Surveys and studies have shown that adding color to a document does increase response rates, however, by targeting information by using data about the recipient--- creating a more valuable document---has a much larger bearing on the success or failure of the message being delivered, and therefore the level of response to that message. Don’t get me wrong, adding color can definitely enhance this further, however, there is not much point adding color to a document that doesn’t work. Color doesn’t create the value, but it can enhance the value of an already valuable document.

Understanding document communication
But even in 2005, this was really nothing new. In the early 1990s (and even before then) companies such as utilities and financial institutions started to look at the documents they were sending out to their customers. Every month or few, they sent out a statement or invoice to customers, and either in the same envelope or as part of a separate marketing campaign, they also sent out marketing literature. I’m sure I’m not the only one that opened my bill and more often than not, put the inserts in the trash with the envelope (of course, these days into the recycling bin). A similar action occurs with many separate marketing pieces, if they were lucky enough to get the envelopes opened (sorry marketers).

Understanding that this was a fairly common occurrence, but also knowing that the statement or invoice was essential mail, these utility and financial companies started to realize that if the recipient “had to” open their statement or invoice, then that is where the marketing should be. By adding this information to the document itself, they were adding greater value to the prime piece of communication that they already had with their customers.

Scott Draeger edp  (senior product manager of HP’s Dialogue Software) put together a good article, “TransPromo---Going beyond the buzzword”, in which he wrote, “look at both spam and junk mail. Both are defined as unsolicited messages that often are irrelevant to the recipient.”

Who wants to receive irrelevant information? I don’t. When I receive irrelevant information, all it says to me is that the company sending me the information is more interested about telling me something that I may or may not be interested in, but that they don’t know me or don’t understand what it is that I want or need.

This focus on targeting information so that it is relevant to the recipient is the key to transpromotional concepts---and it all starts from the data. Data about your customer---what they like, what they want, what they do, what they’ve bought---is often readily available information to companies, yet they choose not to use it to communicate effectively to their customers.

Beyond the printed document
But of course, now the concepts behind transpromo have extended beyond the printed document. I’m not just referring to an electronic version of the printed document, but to other technologies across the Web and even down to other ways to look at the value of a response.

In the article “TransPromo Communications: More than a Pretty Statement”, Barb Pellow (a director at InfoTrends and recognized industry expert on transpromo) talks about the idea of transeducational. A concept where companies should not only be looking at the marketing value of transpromotional concepts, but at the educational value of getting the right message to the right people.

From a technology point of view, we now have a world that has PURLs, pURLs, and even QURLs.

·         Persistent Uniform Resource Locators (PURLs) allow content to be pointed to by a standard format (or persistent) URL, meaning that a document can be reached regardless of backend folder and server movements. Something we may see more of, as PDF/A makes it’s way across document archive and storage systems worldwide.

·         Personalized Uniform Resource Locators (pURLs) allow content to be pointed to that has already been personalized to the recipient or is created on-the-fly, such as specialized offers or content based on demographic or even personal data.

·         QR code containing a URL (QURLs) is one of the latest sensations to hit the transpromo world. Companies around the world are now using QR code (a 2-dimensional barcode) technology that allows customers to scan codes via the camera on their phone. The codes then act as a gateway, leading them directly to a specific URL (which could be a PURL or pURL), all completed as simply as taking a photo.

Bottom line
Transpromo and the concepts and techniques driving it will continue to evolve, but the bottom line is that transpromo is about getting people to respond in a desired fashion. It proposes to achieve this response by communicating effectively to the desired audience with targeted and relevant information. This is achieved by knowing your audience, knowing your customer. Not simply understanding what you want to tell them, but understanding what they want to hear.

About the author
Brett Dashwood edp, has been working in the electronic document systems industry, in both service provider and vendor management roles, for almost two decades. He is a respected professional who has been involved in document solutions, managing training programs and presenting to varied document technology  audiences on five continents.

In addition to his role as OutputLinks’ Asia Pacific vice president, he is managing director of Dashwood Consulting, a technology and consulting company specializing in effective document and Web communication.

Dashwood can be contacted directly at bd@outputlinks.com.