Friday, June 19, 2009

Some free advice to Oce about Transpromo

Oce signs as worldwide sponsor for TransPromo Summit
- Printing Industry News from WhatTheyThink:

Friday, June 19, 2009

Venlo, The Netherlands -- Oce, an international leader in digital document management, has signed as worldwide sponsor for the 3rd annual InfoTrends TransPromo Summit and their inaugural European TransPromo Summit."

Transpromo is an ok word to talk to printers. It's not the right word to talk to CMOs or end users. The exact right word depends on what the CMO or end user wants to buy.

You might try something like:
"Our approach can significantly lower your cost of response. Plus it gives you the data you need to make better marketing decisions going forward."
Don't talk about ROI. Never say the word transpromo to anyone but a printer or someone in the trade.

If you can't get them on a path they understand and believe, it's mostly a wasted effort. If you can, margins galore.

If you can't deliver on the path to predictive analytics, focus on talking to people who can. They need the boxes that are ready to do whatever they are going to have to do going forward.

3 comments:

  1. Why not talk about ROI? I can understand that the word TransPromo does not have great connotations. Not sure what's wrong with ROI though. I like to talk about the use of "dnamic messaging" as way increase your response rates from cross-selling and up-selling.

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  2. Sorry, that's "Dynamic Messaging"

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  3. This is worth a post, but the short story is
    that ROI is usually used as buzzword without appreciating the complexity it implies.

    How exactly do you measure the value of "actionable intelligence?" I'm not saying it can't be done, but it's not for an amateur. There are very highly paid management consultants who get millions to do just that.

    In most cases what I hear is an assumption that everyone knows what ROI means and it usually means cost per response. I think that's a hangover from the days of direct mail.

    To be able to do program sales, with a long time frame and the upfront investment, it means you have to have pretty good numbers on customer acquisition, customer retention and lifetime customer value.

    To make life even more complicated you need to know how those numbers relate to each other and are effected by different approaches over time.

    Then you have to show how "transpromo" fits into those equations.

    The dirty little secret is that most CMO's are not close to having real customer acquisition, retention or life time customer value numbers.

    Of course they will not admit it. But there it is.

    Of course there are sells to be made on the basis of lowest cost per response. But that's just direct mail on steroids. It's a low margin, high volume business.

    It's not selling "actionable information." Which is a low volume high margin business.

    If ROI means low cost per response, call it low cost per response> Just don't call it ROI which actually means alot more.

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