The Digital Skinny

Transpromo. It sounds like it might be something to do with promoting transportation. Not too far off, transpromo is the combination of transaction and promotion, cross-selling based on information harvested from or added to transactional documents such as monthly statements, notifications, explanations of benefits and similar documents. Think of it as a new way to communicate with your customers, using existing resources—similar to a “piggyback” approach to marketing.

Two ways to use transpromos:
1. Print offers in the white space on transactional documents.
2. Harvest data from transactional documents to use for cross and up selling.

Transpromo benefits are many
High open rate. Involvement. Credibility. According to InfoTrends market research, 95% of statements are opened, with consumers averaging 2-3 minutes review time. This, coupled with the statement originating from a credible source, turns a once considered business cost (statements, etc.) into a tangible new marketing tool/revenue source .

Repeat customers. By targeting existing customers, you can increase your existing business through special offers. What if you had an 8% increase in existing business next month from targeted messages to your customers? Great ROI.

Variable data offers customized offers. Based on historical transactional data, customized offers are easy to use.For example, John buys a new laptop. You use this information to send him a special offer on laptop sleeves.

With targeted, relevant messages you can turn a business expense into a profit center, while maintaining a positive relationship with your customer.

For more information about transpromos, call Holly Sanger at 602.437.4545.

Defining what constitutes a lapsed customer is a challenge

The first order of business is to define what constitutes a lapsed customer. It sounds a lot easier than it really is—it’s difficult to enforce a one size fits all policy. Is it by sales, by interaction? You’ll have to put some thought to it.

Once you begin defining a lapsed customer, one of two things will happen: you’ll find your tracking metrics are solid—or not. If you don’t have a good vision of the past it will be a challenge to plan a future. It’s a good time to take a look at your systems and calibrate for strong performance tracking and reporting in the future.

Post card utilizing a pURL

A pURL is a personalized URL. When a marketer sends a direct mail piece such as a postcard, each recipient in the marketer’s database receives a personalized URL to visit for special offers. For example, recipient Vicki Carroll’s pURL is VickiCarroll.MySpaDay.com.

When Vicki Carroll receives a postcard mailing from Spa Day, she reads about the terrific offers that can be found online by typing in her personalized URL into her browser. Once she visits her pURL, she can choose to receive more offers at her email address or via her cell phone that can be redeemed at Day Spa.

Why use pURLs? Why not just add your web site URL to your print ads? The answer is simple—traditional media campaigns are unable determine if the readers went to your web site and if they did, for how long and why? With a pURL, visitors’ habits can be tracked to establish preferences for better targeting in the future. For example, if a visitor encounters a pre-populated form on a pURL that asks them to receive a newsletter, get a special offer or even join a club, you will have a history of their activity, which means you can fine-tune your target marketing (which also means you’ll know where every dollar you spend on direct marketing goes and how it performs). You will know exactly who visits your site and where they travel. This type of knowledge allows the sales team to focus on every customer who visits their pURL. Whereas a web address on a print ad tells a salesperson nothing, a pURL saves prospecting time, making the sales staff’s time more efficient and productive—it’s almost like having another sales person on staff.

A pURL is a personal experience for the visitor, where traditional media such as newspapers, TV, radio and magazines, lack the ability to personalize messages simply because of their shotgun approach to reaching a mass audience. The challenge with traditional campaigns featuring a web site has been the inability to know which particular recipient visited your site but never made additional contact. These potential customers remain anonymous unless there is a method to capture their information. Unique URL tracking per prospect overcomes this challenge. In addition to tracking consumer behavior, pURLs are a marketing success for many reasons:

• Increase your ROI
• Track responses
• Harvest customer data
• Seek customer input via surveys
• Consumers prefer personalized communication
• Consumer communication via multi-channels is vital
• Provide new engagement with existing customers
• Enlist new customers

pURLs are an easy, economical, turnkey solution that get prospects involved in marketing campaigns with a strong conversion rate. pURLs drive consumers to your web site through personalized and relevant communication that also allows you to track direct response offers. The information that consumers provide from this process allows you to engage them, developing an ongoing relationship.

For example, if you were Spa Day and wanted to explore the idea of a new type of massage, you would be able to contact your customers and get their opinions using pURLs. Since we are in the age of the consumer, this is an ideal opportunity to let consumers – and your customers – know that you value their input. What a great way to develop relationships!

pURLs provide the opportunity to focus on a very specific audience, build rapport, nurture relationships and engage new and existing customers, track responses and garner a respectable ROI.

For more information, call Holly Sanger at 602.437.4545.