Selling the idea into the organisation

Selling the idea of transpromo into your organisation can be greatly simplified if the right process is followed. Firstly, buy-in and general support for the concept inevitably starts with marketing. Marketing quickly appreciates the channel, frequency and cost effective benefits of transpromo and can formally put it on the corporate agenda without too much resistance.

The next step is to introduce product owners to the opportunity by illustrating (at an individual product level), the benefits in the context of customer retention, cross and up-sell. You might find some product mangers too busy or simply not interested in the opportunity, but there are usually a few individuals who are open to exploring the opportunity further. Once the product campaigns are better defined (see strategy and planning), and the resultant data requirements better understood, it is a good time to present the opportunity to a combined IT, billing and operations audience. At this stage the benefits of transpromo to both procurement and billing need to be clearly articulated for the opportunity to progress. The next stage is to align all stakeholders with a low risk, low cost test of transpromo.

Stakeholders

Although transpromotional campaigns are usually initiated by marketing, other stakeholders are critical to its successful implementation, including representatives from IT, service delivery, billing, operations, procurement and data. The reality is, however, is that transpromo is not usually seen as a compelling proposition for non-marketing parts of the business. It's often seen as creating additional workload and cost. The challenge is to articulate the non-marketing benefits of transpromo to these stakeholders to gain their support for a trial. See benefits by job title.

Strategy and planning

It is critical that transpromo campaigns are aligned with the strategic objectives of your organisation. If the focus is on customer retention, then the first test campaigns should illustrate how transpromo can support this. The same logic applies to up-selling and cross-selling priorities. If transpromo trials successfully demonstrate they can support the priorities of the organisation, the chance of a small trial turning into a full roll-out is very good. With this in mind, it is essential that meaningful and measurable campaign metrics are agreed upon by all stakeholders prior to trial.

Mail house capabilities

Before embarking on a transpromo journey, it is advisable to assess the capabilities of your mail house. Transpromo can be effective in black and white, spot colour or full colour digital print. Each offers distinct cost and flexibility benefits and each requires a different planning approach. Printing capability is, however, only one dimension of the overall transpromo solution. Your mail house needs to be competent in the types of workflows associated with transpromo programs, which in most cases will require receiving and merging different data streams from collaborating partners. Your mail house may also be able to advise you on the best way to include targeting variables within your current file data streams.

Data capabilities

Data is the lifeblood of any transpromo campaign with the quality of data available dictating the level of targeting. Depending on the application, there are different data requirements for different types of transpromo campaigns. There are also different approaches to accessing and leveraging data both internally and externally. From an internal perspective, stand-alone files can be extracted from your database and sent to your mailing house to wash and or merge with bill runs. A simple example might include a list of customers who have recently been targeted with a direct mail campaign. This same group of customers would then receive a supporting message on their bill. Data variables may also be added to existing data streams that are already going to your mail house. Examples may include segment codes that change the look and feel of messages or offers. Transactional data within the statement can also be mined by your mailing house to target offers to specific customers based on their past purchasing behaviour. This allows data that is already being generated to be leveraged rather then having to rely on your own organisation's resources to extract and mine data that might not even be available to them internally. An example of this may be identifying specific triggers such as a spike in spend and following this up with relevant product and services offers.

Phased implementation

A phased implementation approach to trialing transpromo reduces both risk and cost exposure. Listed below are the three implementation phases that organisations typically choose to pursue:

Phase 1 : May require a contact history file (or flagged variable within a billing file) to nominate certain customers receiving a specific message (in the same way intelligent insertion works). A phase 1 implementation might also include re-enforcing an already delivered DM offer or even migrating an insert onto the bill itself.

Phase 2 : May involve including segment flags within billing streams to help refine the offer, proposition, look and feel of the message. Data mining insights can also be applied to drive individually targeted offers.

Phase 3 : Requires a level of automation where transactional data within the bill file automatically dictates the marketing messages included on it. This may be based on simple business rule applications or a more sophisticated trigger and events program.

Creative requirements

Transpromotional mail not only creates new opportunities for creative execution, but the process of transpromo also makes new demands on creative. As opposed to traditional direct mail campaigns where campaign creative is designed on a campaign by-campaign basis, transpromotional mail requires a repository of offers and creative treatments that can be selected (or triggered by the customer) on demand. Decisions about workflow, data and the creative treatment play a significant role in how customised the offer becomes. The regularity of the transactional mail channel also allows for longer term planning of a series of messages that can reinforce business objectives over a period of time, allowing flexibility in messaging based on changing business requirements or customer needs .

Measurement / evaluation

Knowing what to measure and ensuring a structured evaluation framework is in place prior to first execution is critical to building a business case. Transpromo trial activity should only be undertaken within a rigorous test and control environment where multiple indicators are monitored. The very nature of transpromo and its frequency and cost effectiveness benefits, require that a different approach be taken to measurement both from a tactical and longer term strategic level. Measures of success such as cost of response or cost of conversion (rather then simple response rates) are typical evaluation criteria when comparing transpromo to other channels. Transpromo's ability to integrate with other channels is also a key issue to consider in overall measurement and evaluation

Integration with other channels

Transpromotional mail works equally well supporting existing campaigns across other marketing channels as it does as a standalone statement-only channel. The fact that transpromo is able to reinforce campaign messages makes it useful in getting more value out of other marketing media. Case study evidence proves the media multiplier effect of transpromotional mail helping increase direct mail response rates.

Supplier collaboration

Almost all successful transpromo programs rely on collaboration between the organisation and a combination of external suppliers. Resources related to education, strategy, planning and data management are all areas that you might look to access externally to give your transpromo trial the best chance of success.

Tips and common obstacles

Tips:

1. Get marketing on board first - successful transpromo programs are almost always owned by marketing.
2. Focus on the easy stuff first - use a phased implementation approach to test transpromo.
3. A collaborative approach using specialist suppliers is often the easiest way to get a transpromo trial underway.
4. Always test and control transpromo using a small (away from business-as-usual) sample. It's the only way to build a business case.
5. Don't let workflow issues get in the way before you even start - you will often need to manually piece a solution together to prove the concept first.
6. Integrate (offers, look and feel) with other campaigns across other channels - this will help your transpromo campaign achieve better results.
7. Don't let data issues hold you back - look to use the data you're already sending to your mail house. Billing files often include useful variables for targeting messages.
8. Spend some time figuring out what defines success - for example, "cost to acquire" may be a far more important indicator than response rates.
9. Select campaigns that have broad learnings for the organisation - your business case will look more attractive if other parts of the business can benefit from it too.
10. Get your mail house involved early - they can quickly help identify what executions are practical and which are not.

Common Obstacles

1. Lack of corporate vision of how customers see transactional documents within their overall relationship.
2. Lack of a senior champion that is willing to review and overhaul transactional document content to align with overall corporate objectives.
3. Workflows that do not support collaboration between marketing and billing / operations.
4. Billing teams that focus only on meeting delivery service level agreements and ignore the content and potential of the communications that are included in their streams.
5. Marketing has a limited view of the organisation's transactional documents or the marketing opportunity offered by them.
6. Lack of coordination of all marketing messages (including web, email, mass media) with statement message and design.
7. Lack of understanding from agencies who do not fully appreciate the process or opportunity of integrating transactional mail into the overall marketing mix.
8. Unco-ordinated budgets that allow silos to grow and become entrenched to the detriment of the corporate vision.
9. A fear that marketing offers will have a distracting influence on bill payment behavior. (This has been shown to be completely unfounded.)
10. A misconception that transpromo simply involves putting an advertisement onto a bill.