Some Thoughts Apropos a Sleepless Summer Night

By Scott Gerschwer, Megaspirea

The other night, my daughter, just hours away from officially turning five years old and alarmed at the noise of a passing storm, began to shriek in her bed. Her hands clamped over her ears. I ran down the hall, slid in beside her and held her, cooing soothingly until she fell back asleep. I lay there awhile as she curled up in my arms falling deeper and deeper asleep, reveling in this particular role as her father: the protector/comforter.

My other two children are 10 and eight; they don’t need me to play that role very much anymore. My little one is, unbelievably, going into kindergarten in just a few weeks. After a while, knowing that she was soundly asleep, I untangled myself from her and slipped out of her bed and down the hall and began to think about all the roles we play for our children: advisor, teacher, coach, playmate. This led me to think about how we all play so many roles for our spouses, siblings, friends, co-workers, bosses, partners…and customers.

And then I started thinking about what you can be for your customers---trusted advisor, sounding board, facilitator, partner---and how these roles are facilitated nowadays with virtual communities and networks. And I tried to think of what companies I do business with that create good digital communities. Surprisingly (or maybe not since it was about 3 a.m. that I was doing this), I thought of my Weber grill. Way back when I became a homeowner and bought my grill, I started getting newsletters from Weber with cleaning tips, recipes and stories from around the country about the grill. I’m sure that community has moved online now, but I’ve kept many of the newsletters for the recipes, for when I play my role as grill master to my friends and family.

The Virtual Community

Apple has virtual communities built around the iPhone and iTouch. I have the latter and I am interested---now that I have downloaded nearly every song and album I can think of into it---in adding other applications and finding other uses for it. Amazon, of course, is a good place to go for reviews and they always suggest products that other people who bought what I am looking at have found interesting: my trusted advisor (not). I kind of miss browsing around in used record stores as I used to in high school. And, for the sake of my children and this whole millennial generation, I worry about the effects of selective exposure. 

More virtual communities: I read various websites and get numerous e-newsletters about marketing, about technology, about print and mail. OutputLinks has helped me forge relationships with many people I wouldn’t ordinarily know. LinkedIn has been an especially fruitful resource for networking with former colleagues and people I like and respect, but have lost touch with. I wouldn’t be involved with LinkedIn if it weren’t for Marc Morelli, a former colleague who is now the VP Strategy for Neopost, and Doug Quine, a former colleague who is a Fellow for Pitney Bowes Advanced Concepts and Technology, both of whom got in touch with me to join their networks. What a marvelous thing an introduction can be: I’m deeply grateful to both of them.

The Role of TransPromo

And somewhere around 4:27 a.m., I began to think about transpromo again (this may explain why I’m sometimes a little logy when you talk to me). Transpromo can play an enormous role in helping create virtual communities in a multi-channel environment.

Used strategically, transpromo can be used to facilitate a viral campaign that can help bring in new recruits and new prospects: a role that is now mostly filled---poorly---by direct mail. From a tactical standpoint, transpromo can fulfill much of what these virtual communities do best---perhaps for a different audience, perhaps as an introduction to a whole new world ala Mr. Morelli and Dr. Quine, perhaps as a simple tool for up-sell and cross-sell. Minnegasco, which became Centerpoint and is now Reliant Energy, had great success using transpromo to introduce gas customers to its unregulated product lines: anything from electric garage doors to wood-burning stoves.      

One unsung problem faced by would-be users of transpromo is the fact that many statements and bills are regulated and that there may be compliance issues. The envelope is generally not regulated, which is why Megaspirea has such a strong play in the transpromo space; you can leave the statement as is and use the white space on the envelope.

The Summit

Just before dawn I began thinking about the upcoming TransPromo Summit. I’ve looked at the agenda and I can see that a lot of very bright, experienced people are speaking. There is ample leadership present, although the expertise tends to be fragmented (data, design, color, etc). Nonetheless, there’s real value in that agenda. I do wonder about the audience: how many decision makers will be there? I’d guess that the audience will be largely made up of marketers (a choir to be preached to) and a smattering of IT, print and mail vendors, print service providers...but before a transactional document is put to use for promotional purposes, before you mess around with the document that brings in the revenue, I’d think that Finance would have something to say about it.

I’ll further venture that the decision to tamper with such an important corporate asset would have to be made at the highest levels of the company. And forgive me for being cynical, but the forces that promote ignorance within organizations often outweigh the drive to innovation. What will be needed is a “two-step flow” in reverse, with opinion makers reaching upward within the corporation to influence the S/E VPs and the C Suite. That’s a challenge that many have faced before, with mixed results.

If I was the head of an organization that sends out transactional statements or bills, I sure wouldn’t sleep on transpromo. There are material benefits in these key customer interactions. The benefits are both top line and bottom line. Efficiency is its own reward.

I’d want to ensure that transpromo was part of my overall customer communication strategy. I’d want to make sure that I had the infrastructure to make it successful. I’d want my hard copy communication totally synched up with my online communication. I’d want to have the CRM tools in place, functioning properly, and my customer service organization ready for the migration. I’d want to let everyone in the enterprise know that even the right path is fraught with blind alleys and the occasional mine field but that, based on research, the benefits clearly outweigh the risks. That we need to be on top of our game. I’d want plenty of numbers crunched and my approach to transpromo be fact-based and not a shot from the hip.

In a session I’ve done a couple of times at Xplor on bringing in new technology, I discuss the need for a champion, someone highly placed in the organization. What we need next in transpromo is a Summit of Champions. Only then will we see real progress. But I think we’ll get there. The technology is ready, the benefits defined, the risks mitigated, the strategy set. Thoughtful people are already ahead of the pack.   

I concluded my sleepless night with a sense of optimism for transpromo, for print and mail, for the future of multi-channel customer communication. I drifted off to sleep only minutes before the alarm went off, but that’s OK. An alarm clock is like a starter gun---before the ring is gone from my ears I’m on the ground running. My children are growing up fast. My baby is five years old, adorable and bright-eyed, ready for her next challenge. That’s what it’s all about---the next new thing, new challenges and new roles to play.