Product Reviews

In the future, how will typical direct marketing campaigns be managed? Chances are they will run a little something like this. In the first instance, the consumer will be sent a message via SMS, email or a piece of digitally printed direct mail (DM). The message will be eye-catching (containing lots of colour if printed and potentially video footage if it’s an email/SMS). It will also be highly targeted – as well as bearing the recipient’s name, the recipient would at some point in the past have probably intimated that they would not be averse to receiving information from the company that originated the message.

More importantly, the message will also include a URL address – if it’s an SMS/email, this will be a hyperlink and if it’s a printed mailer, the recipient will be asked to type in the URL address manually. And this is where the clever stuff starts – the URL will be personalised specifically for the individual recipient and his/her preferences. When they visit the ‘landing page’, it will say ‘Welcome Joe Bloggs’ and in addition to the recipient’s name, the page will contain further information based on data already captured about them.

Untapped potential
While this may sound futuristic, some companies are already undertaking campaigns of this nature. Although the technology is in its relative infancy and marketers are still trying to come to terms with its potential, many of them are marrying personalised URLs (PURLs) with digital print technology to produce innovative cross-media platform campaigns that use print or SMS to drive internet traffic, which in turn drives further printed or electronic messages.

One company blazing a trail in this area in terms of the enabling technology is US-based software company MindFire, through its core product LookWho’sClicking. The company was formed in 1999 and, according to co-founder and chief executive Moe Farsheed, LookWho’sClicking was developed in response to a very clear market shift – driven by the internet.

“The internet created several challenges and many more opportunities,” explains Farsheed. “Our vision was that every marketing impression will one day have a traceable, measurable link. We would like to provide that link and market intelligence to help marketers continuously improve their campaigns.”

Hence the development and launch of LookWho’sClicking in early 2000. The web-based marketing automation suite is built to simplify the creation, management and tracking of fully variable PURLs and landing pages, as well as pay-per-click (PPC) and mass media landing pages.

According to Carolyn Valiquette, MindFire’s executive vice-president of marketing, LookWho’sClicking is targeted at forward-thinking service providers, including printers or marketing companies.

“Over the past three years, our focus has been the print service provider looking to offer more value than just ink on paper,” explains Valiquette, who previously served as the general manager of the digital printing initiative PODi. “We try to help print companies move out of commodity sales and into value-based sales. We would like to position the print service provider as the company that helps drive improved marketing leads and thus more top-line business to their clients.”

Customers that sign up for LookWho’sClicking get four ‘campaign blueprints’ – templated workflows that MindFire claims “embody key marketing best practices”. The four versions are ‘attract’, for lead generation via DM or email; ‘hand off’, which captures web visitors for hand off to another system such as a corporate website or registration system that does not support PURLs; ‘click capture’, where users can track and improve the conversion of PPC search engine advertising; and ‘attract express’, which allows customers to track offline or online mass media like radio or print ads.

Each blueprint includes the same back-end features: automated follow-up emails to respondents; automated lead distribution via email or PDA; tracking of web activity and survey results; plus marketing manager login to real-time ‘campaign dashboard’ (more of which later).

The beauty of LookWho’sClicking is that it works via the internet – there are no servers to buy or maintain and no software to install – and is incredibly easy to use, according to Farsheed.

“Our focus is on providing technology that allows both non-technical and technical users to create, test and deploy personalised, relevant landing pages that are highly effective response channels for direct and mass marketing,” he explains. “They lead to higher response rates and trackable respondent activity, which is reported via the online campaign dashboard.”

Most marketing executives have a preferred method of reviewing campaign results and presenting them to their superiors, and to accommodate those preferences the real-time campaign dashboard displays campaign activity in ready-to-present tabular reports and graphical form, including line graphs, bar graphs and pie charts.

MindFire has already secured more than 400 ‘solution partners’ globally, including a number in the UK and
Ireland. The standard licence fee is $9,500 (£4,750) for the first year and $2,000 annually for renewal. In terms of usage, you only pay for the campaigns you run and these fees vary depending on overall volume – MindFire offers high volume and other special pricing on an ad-hoc basis. The price includes training (executive, sales and technical), free self-promotional campaigns, software updates and support – ROI Distribution has been appointed MindFire’s UK reseller.

The product has already been, and will continue to be, updated three to four times a year and Valiquette promises in future versions there are “lots of great things to come”.

Which will no doubt be music to many DM printers’ ears, because the future of direct marketing is anticipated to entail shorter-run, highly targeted mailings, but Valiquette claims LookWho’sClicking offers printers the perfect opportunity to offset these fewer digital clicks by helping their clients, and in turn generating further work for themselves.

“In adding PURLs and landing pages to the DM campaigns of their current clients, their marketing clients will enjoy: improved response rates, as many people prefer an online response channel today; improved quality of leads and conversion due to the personalised, relevant communication that is possible with this response channel; and improved trackability, measurement and real-time results reported via their private online campaign dashboard,” adds Valiquette.

In turn printers will enjoy: “Increased margins and profitability due to the ease of use of the software and the high value of the cross-media response channel; increased repeat business, once a marketer experiences great results; decreased dependency on print alone to drive revenue; plus there are many other opportunities for additional work from clients by adding email, PPC and mass media landing page service offerings,” she concludes.

The way that the future is shaping up it looks as if digital printers will be increasingly concerned by the click of a mouse rather than page clicks, so getting in early on cross-media action could eventually pay off in spades.

 

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SPECIFICATIONS
Price Standard licence fee $9,500 (£4,750) for the first year, $2,000 (£1,000) annually for renewal, plus additional fees based on volume usage. Pricing includes training, free self-promotional campaigns, software updates and support
Developer MindFire 001 877 560 3473, www.mindfireinc.com
UK reseller ROI Distribution 01354 659636 www.roidistribution.com

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THE ALTERNATIVES
Customer Paradigm PURL System
Colorado-based Customer Paradigm claims 150 customers for its PURL System software, including some printers and UK firms, but no UK printers. While the firm admits MindFire and XMPie have more bells and whistles than its system, it has one big advantage: its price of just $1,500, making dipping a toe in the water of cross-media cost-effective.
Price $1,500 (£750)
Contact Customer Paradigm 001 303 473 4400,  www.customerparadigm.com

XMPie Personal Effect
MindFire sees XMPie’s Personal Effect and Pageflex as its most direct rivals and version 4.0 of the former introduces two new features: the marketing console for tracking responses for the web and email components of a campaign; and the ability to manage email campaigns from within Personal Effect without having to go to a third-party application.
Price On application
Contact XMPie 001 212 479 5166 www.xmpie.com

Exstream Dialogue
Dialogue can build personalised web-based documents to match specific customers’ profiles and preferences and has a built-in tracking knowledge base that can be integrated with CRM systems to store all campaign activity. Exstream offers both subscription-based pricing and perpetual licensing as well as lease and PPC pricing options.
Price From £100,000 for a standard print service provider implementation
Contact Exstream Software UK 01344 742852, www.exstream.co.uk

Kodak Insite
Kodak has announced that the next version of its Insite suite of collaboration and print personalisation tools will include support for PURLs. The company will show version 4.0 of Insite at Drupa and expects customer shipment to begin at the end of the year.
Price TBA
Contact Kodak (UK) 01923 233366, http://graphics.kodak.com

Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite
Incorporates variable data and cross-media functionality from Pageflex into a desktop application and allows users to create coordinated print and email campaigns, variable-length document capabilities, flexible layouts and the ability to compose text in 60 different languages.
Price On application
Contact ROI Distribution 01354 659636, www.roidistribution.com