Psycho for Psychographics!

Toward the end of July, a dialogue evolved at the Growyourbiz.kodak.com blog around how TransPromo is portrayed in the press and how much was hype versus reality. As we dug into the topic and saw responses from some industry thought-provokers, another voice emerged from a colleague who shared his mail moment.

He started at the point where he retrieved the bill from his mailbox and tore open the envelope to discover an offer for a charming handbag. The problem, of course, is that he has never bought a handbag in his life, but spends tons of money on camera equipment and home improvement items. His question was why, since they knew everything he had purchased for the last ten years, they insisted on trying to sell him a handbag instead of telling him about the closeouts in camera equipment or the availability of new types of blades for his weed whacker?

Good point. And therein lies the problem with the concept of TransPromo. A lot of companies get the idea of placing advertising and marketing inside the envelope but completely miss the fact that consumers are beginning to expect that communication to respect their time and the relationship.

To build that relationship requires two things of a marketer: an investment in understanding and using the data you have about your customers and the ability to dynamically format the document to speak to the needs of the recipient.

The concept of investment in data sounds funny to many billers. After all, they have the data because they send the bills. That isn’t the investment, however. The investment is in mining and analyzing the data to gain insight into who the customers are, how they manage the relationship, how they use the services, and to understand the patterns across demographics. Do people in cities use the services differently than those in the suburbs or in rural areas? Are there differences by zip code? Do people buy the same things over and over, or do they vary their spending? Do they appear to have children or do they appear to have a higher than average disposable income? These are all things you can know from the data you already have, and these are exactly the things you should know before you start to try to market to these customers.

Sure, you can earn a bit of income by inserting a sales piece into the bill for that charming handbag. But, if my colleague opens the envelope and sees that offer, he is going to toss it out and he is likely to ignore any further offer you try to make him using an insert. Honestly, he already made the decision. Most people we talk to around the world don’t even look at the inserts – they drop them straight into the waste bin. Okay, you earned some income on it, but wouldn’t it be a better use of envelope space to add some on-statement marketing of things he really wants and would likely run to the store (online or brick and mortar) to buy? That’s a real revenue opportunity with real growth potential, unlike inserts in the envelope.

How do you mine the data? First, check with your marketing group and see what tools they already have. Perhaps they have tools from SAS, Siebel, SPSS, Teradata or others. Or perhaps tools from Aprimo, Unica or others in the marketing management space. Perhaps there is a group of really smart folks sitting there waiting for you to ask.

If that is not the case in your company, there are a lot of places to get help. There are companies such as AccuData, AmDocs, and Tata Consulting that can help you figure out what you need to do and get it done. And, don’t forget that there are a lot of service providers who can work with you to provide data mining as an ASP. Companies such as Epsilon, Island Data, or Kinetic Networks can help you if that is your path.

In all cases, the goal is to find the internal or external resources that can help you understand what you already know, and help you take that knowledge past the point of being data to the point of being information you can use to make better marketing decisions.

Come back next time when we take the next step into formatting issues. No, a template isn’t good enough – you need to be flexible! And, don’t forget. This is a dialogue! Send your questions, ideas, concerns and challenges, and let’s make it a conversation.

Pat McGrew, EDP, is the Data Center and Transaction Segment Evangelist at Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group. Her email address is Pat.McGrew@kodak.com