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P.C. (Pat) McGrew, EDP is the Data Center & Transaction Segment Evangelist in the Graphic Communications Group at Eastman Kodak working worldwide to support the needs of customers involved in high-speed, data-driven customer communication. As the evangelist for TransPromo and other effective customer communication techniques she also works with the Kodak product groups and regions supporting solutions to enhance customer success. She is the co-author of 7 books covering information and multi-channel document delivery, and the author of research studies and articles covering business continuity, disaster recovery, print-and-mail innovations, compliance issues, document strategy auditing, and the worldwide statement printing markets.
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When TransPromo is a Bad Idea!
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Pat McGrewMcGrew's Communicating with Color
It's become like the elephant in the room or the gorilla in the elevator that no one wants to talk about. We know color is critical to good customer communication, but if we open up the discussion about how to use it effectively we quickly get into discussions about people, processes, and price tags. This column puts it all in perspective, with topics each month designed to help you guide the color discussion in your organization. We'll look at the right questions to ask and provide guidance on how to research the answers that are right for your organization.
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The TransPromo Toolkit Can Be Effective; but Maybe It’s Still a Bad Idea!
By Pat McGrew, EDP, Kodak
Is TransPromo a silver bullet that can overcome the most under-resourced marketing plans, provide double-digit increases in the revenue streams, and bring even the most confused product messaging into alignment? It seems a bit far-fetched to even ask, and yet if you read through the claims made for the power of TransPromo you would think it could cure the common cold. It’s no wonder that many of the calls I get each month are from team members and partners who want me to speak to a customer who has decided to embark on a TransPromo program and now wants to know what to do next.
The problem is that the decision to “do TransPromo” is often taken without a true understanding of the goal. TransPromo shouldn’t be the destination. In fact, in many cases, TransPromo is the wrong answer. Perhaps it shouldn’t even be part of the question.
Let’s make a list.
TransPromo is a bad idea when:
- …you don’t have buy-in from C-suite management.
WHY? It’s going to take resources from every department to engage TransPromo techniques and it usually takes the most senior management of the company to guarantee cooperation. If they don’t step up to support it in action and in speech, it doesn’t usually survive.
- …you can’t identify what constitutes a successful TransPromo program.
WHY? TransPromo is not a software package or a set of algorithms. It is a set of tools that can help you accomplish a goal – but you have to know what you are trying to accomplish. If you can’t articulate your definition of success, TransPromo is a bad idea.
- …you can’t identify the return rates on your current marketing programs.
WHY? If you don’t know where you are, how will you know when you arrive at your intended destination? If you don’t know what the response rates are to your direct mail programs and where your current customer retention/customer churn rates sit you will have nothing to compare to. The implication is that you will need to measure the results of any TransPromo pilot and be able to interpret results!
- …you don’t have your customers segmented into relevance buckets.
WHY? Just mining data to identify gender, age and location is good, but not enough to really help you understand how to market to each group. Until you know what information about your customers is relevant, how can you build marketing campaigns to speak with them?
- …your marketing department has never created more than 6 campaigns in a single year.
WHY? If you are sending 12 statements/invoices a year to each customer, and you have just three segments…that’s 36 unique messages. And, yes, they do need to be fresh each month to work. If your marketing team is not prepared to supply fresh, relevant, traceable marketing to your transaction document delivery system, the project is not going to produce the results you want.
Have some favorites of your own? Let me know!
Pat McGrew, EDP, is the Data-driven Communication Evangelist at Kodak. Her email address is Pat.McGrew@kodak.com, Twitter is PatMcGrew, and blog at http://patmcgrew.growyourbiz.kodak.com.
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