Make transpromo work

In the previous Industry Insight, I looked at some of the issues to address before embarking on the transpromo journey. In this Industry Insight, I review the capabilities needed in order to do transpromo.

Here, it is instructive to point out that few organisations can do transpromo on their own, and most are well advised to work with external consultants. In this regard, it is good to look at the concept of capability sourcing, which posits that if an organisation wants to be world-class, each function should be world-class.

Where the internal capability is not world-class, it is best to outsource the function to a specialist, or to partner with someone who is at that level.

The first two capabilities that will be needed are a mailroom function, and top-notch data processing.

This is where the rubber really meets the road. It is where the investment has been made, or will be made, to deliver transpromo. The power, or restrictions, of printing, collating and sorting equipment will determine a company's success or lack thereof.

Fact is, few companies can afford to invest the tens of millions needed to bring their mailroom capability up to world-class level. It is hard enough in these economic times for a dedicated mail house to motivate for major investment to deliver best-in-class transpromo; for an internal department to request a major capital upgrade to its printing equipment is just not possible.

Then the external mail house will have experience in variable data printing, costing monochrome, spot colour and full colour and other critical skills and experience.

For most companies, the decision is relatively simple: work with an external service provider.

Konni Hoferichter is MD of LaserCom

For most companies, the decision is relatively simple: work with an external service provider.

On that point, this is a decision that some large corporates make in tough financial times, then they revisit it when times are a little easier. It should be made once, and for good. This is the only way to evolve towards world-class.

If the mailroom is the physical manifestation of transpromo, data is the invisible, but critical aspect.

The quality of a company's data, and its ability to manipulate it, will be the determining factor that ensures the transpromo campaign works.

However, this is where the first hiccup can and typically will occur. As noted many times before, the parochialism of the IT and billing departments means they will not easily cede control - even temporarily - of customer data to the marketing folk. This is a battle that must be fought and won.

This done, a few factors must be grasped: company data must be beyond question (and seldom is corporate data this trustworthy and reliable); it must be able to be profiled; and the marketing department must be able to segment it by customer value: current high and low value, future high and low value, and anticipated lifetime value.

The ability to segment customers by current and future value across a spectrum of measures is key to the ability to communicate to the right customers in the right way, at the right time, through the right channel.

This is also underpinned by the right messaging, the right product offering (don't offer a gold card to an existing platinum card holder), and the right tone, among other issues, to ensure the company resonates correctly with an existing and potential customer.

Such a data-driven approach needs to be underpinned by a corporate will and capability to maintain data quality, and a customer buy-in. It costs far more to maintain data on behalf of customers than for them to do it themselves. And the potential for data accuracy is far greater if customers maintain it themselves.

Working with transactional data in customers' statements now becomes key to transpromo success.

A data specialist can mine this data to identify existing and predict future customer behaviour. This allows a company to target individual customers or customer groups with highly customised, even personalised offers.

* In the next Industry Insight, I will look further at the capabilities needed to make transpromo work.