A Conversation with Andy & Julie Plata, owners of OutputLinks and Graphic Communications World

Julie Plata:
Transpromo --- what a great word! In a recent trip to visit our associates around the world, we heard transpromo in every language and accent you can imagine.

Andy Plata:
Through our companies, OutputLinks and Graphic Communications World, we communicate daily with the global output community. I usually interface with the vendors, and when we discuss transpromo, their comments seems to primarily center around …..”How do we help companies maximize their transpromo opportunity and buy our solutions to enable their success???” 

Julie:
I usually interface with the users where I hear lots of talk about transpromo. The most interesting conversations are with those who are already using transpromo and are now looking to enhance the effectiveness of their applications.

Andy:
It seem like those who began with early versions of transpromo --- which I will call transpromo 1.0 --- were just putting simple advertisements on the transaction document. Transpromo 2.0 is where cross media integration was added through the use of personalized URLs (called PURLS) on the documents. PURLs invited recipients to go to the Web for offers personalized to them. This was created with the data that the company had about them such as their past buying habits and income levels.

Julie:
If the past few years have been about transpromo 1.0 and 2.0, maybe it is now time now to move on to transpromo 3.0. Then the real question is: What would transpromo 3.0 look like?

Andy:
Well, 1.0 and 2.0 seem to have been driven by the vendors, so maybe 3.0 should be driven from the perspective of the recipient  of the transpromo document. Looking from the recipient ’s perspective, we would want to make interacting with the transaction document as easy as possible.

Julie:
And that's where QR Code technology becomes a major part of transpromo 3.0. Since QR codes can be read by cell phones and PC cams, it means that almost everyone can have a QR reader. All the recipient has to do is point the camera at the QR code to launch the recipient from the document to an immediate online experience with no keying required. This interactive communication between the company and its clients is the dream of a corporate chief marketing officer (CMO).

Andy:
Many people have seen QR codes on magazine advertisements and bill boards, especially in Japan, where QR codes are everywhere. In Australia, the largest phone company now includes QR-code readers on all the cell phones they sell. QR is quite an exciting technology, and it all will allow seamless interactions between recipients and their transpromo documents --- and that is the objective of 3.0.

Julie:
QR codes are going to radically change the way recipient s interact with transactional documents by hyperlinking them from the document to the online world. QR codes unleash the full potential of transpromo by giving recipient s the ability to quickly and easily link from promotions on a document to a Web site for the promo. Once online, the recipient  will then have the full power of the web to guide them to the products, information or services that they seek.

Andy:
This ease of interaction will help overcome many of the obstacles that marketers currently face in trying to reach recipients with their transpromo campaigns. It will also vastly improve the recipient ’s transpromo experience by providing them access to information about products or services they may need. This ease of interactivity will result in much higher response rates to transpromo campaigns.

Julie:
Transpromo 3.0 solutions generate PURLs (personalized URLs) unique to each recipient for each promotion in each document in the print stream. And since the QR codes can quickly launch the recipient to the PURLs with no keying they can deliver the recipient  to a dynamically generated page that provides them with the personalized experience they desire and expect.

Andy:
QR codes aren't just a tool for marketers. They are an asset that proves valuable for every part of the company. QR delivers tremendous return on investment (ROI) by leveraging existing investments in document composition and production equipment. QR helps to transform the statement output department into to a profit center that can be invested in rather than just simply a cost center that must be contained. QR is the missing link to help organizations realize the full potential of their transpromo documents.