Written by Dharminder Biharie, Business Development Manager
Xerox Graphic Communications, The Netherlands                                                                                                                                           

There’s a good chance that prior to the economy taking a major hit in 2007 and 2008, you didn’t have to spend too much time pulling hairs over your sales process and strategy. Business was running well, sales were high, and your printing presses were running non-stop. And your sales rep – why would you have possibly worried about him? He was achieving the organization’s goals, customers loved him (he was always on the phone with them!), and he was a likable guy who had worked at your company for many years.

But now you have customers who don’t love him. He is not connecting with customers and prospects on his phone, e-mail, or social media. His cubicle was always vacant from being onsite with customers, but now he is always in the office. The fact is that most sales processes have changed over the last 5 years. The graphic arts industry has become a high tech business, where automating business processes to reduce costs is a key to survival. If your commercial department hasn’t grown to meet outside changes, you are probably facing challenges with sales and proposition.

Here is a list of 10 challenges in the sales process:

1. If you can’t explain the added value of digital or litho print, you will end up with customers basing their purchases solely on price comparison. Always sell using return on marketing investment (ROMI). Even business cards deliver ROMI.
2. You don’t understand the environment of your customers. Are they specialized in specific markets with specific requirements? Are there trends that you can use to offer recommendations and solutions?
3. Your proposition doesn’t match your online profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) or your website is old and out-of-date. Keep online information updated and use free metrics software such as Google Analytics to see how you’re doing online.
4. You don’t actually know what problems to solve. When you are offering digital print, always ask if you are solving a logistic or a marketing problem for your customer. Otherwise you will run into the same price comparison problem mentioned above.
5. You are not familiar with the changed landscape of communication. Today we have more channels to communicate with. Be prepared so you can use them to your advantage. Integration is key.
6. You do not have a system in place to calculate and discuss return on marketing investments (ROMI).
7. Maybe you have calculated ROMI, but you still present it as a proposal. Communication plans should always be presented as projects, not proposals. Help your client visualize the experience.
8. You have a top-10 list of your customers in order of % revenue in your account plan but you haven’t asked your customers who comprise their top-10 in % revenue. Also ask what kind of headaches they have in communication, marketing, sales and adding/selling value. This will help you help them.
9. Are you a sales (500 doors to cover), account manager (100 doors to cover), key account manager (5 doors to cover) or trusted advisor (customers come to you)? Knowing your role can improve the quality of engagement with your customers.
10. You don’t know what customers think about you and your company. If this is true, you almost certainly don’t know what your customer’s end-users think of them. Knowing this information can help you to improve your customer’s business, and as a result improve your business as well.

Don’t start to panic as you read all of this. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and improvement is a constantly evolving process. Try to improve your quality of sale by starting with a goal to focus on 3 of these 10 points. I am convinced that this will help you improve your relationships and interactions with customers, and in turn, impact your business.

Interested in similar topics? You may want to check out:

• Profit Leaders Automate with Print MIS Systems More
• 5 Keys to On-Call Staffing Strategy
• Four Web-to-Print Issues You need to Overcome
• Direct Marketing: Get Relevant, Get Results – Part I

Written by Bill Michael
eMarketing Manager, Xerox Corporation

You understand the benefits of direct marketing, its effectiveness for your customers and the value it can deliver for your bottom line. But actually doing it, and doing it well – now that’s a completely different story!

DMA states the response rate of direct mail is more than 30x higher than that of email, with an average response rate of 4.4% compared with the 0.12% of email. Offering direct marketing services can help you deliver endless value to your customers, transitioning your company from a print provider to a trusted adviser for marketing strategy and print production.

But becoming a strategic partner involves more than simply adding to your service offerings – you’ll also need a sales team in place capable of selling direct marketing services. If this sounds intimidating – just remember, you aren’t alone and Rome certainly wasn’t built in a day. If making the jump into marketing services was so easy, everyone would be doing it!

We recently gathered with a large group of print providers, marketing service providers and industry experts to discuss everything-direct marketing at the Gil Hatch Center for Customer Innovation in Webster, New York. Our Thought Leadership Workshop covered:

• Psychology based marketing and how to trigger the unconscious minds of your consumers
• The art and science of selling direct marketing
• Real examples of how customer database information can be utilized to market more personally
• Integrated direct marketing opportunities using XMPie offerings

Psychology-Based Marketing: Direct Marketing that taps into consumers’ unconscious mind
During our workshop, Jeanette McMurtry of e4marketing explained the importance of understanding the thought processes and unconscious mind of your consumer. This allows you to better position direct marketing campaigns for success. Brand loyalty doesn’t exist today like in the past. 52% of a company’s ‘highly loyal’ customers will be reduced in one year’s time, with 33% leaving for a competing brand. 60% of brands will lose at least half of their customers from year-to-year.

So what does ESP and direct marketing have in common? Jeanette explained how human behavior is based upon two fundamental premises: the avoidance of pain and pursuit of pleasure. Identifying the pain your customer’s end-users are trying to avoid, and addressing through a well-thought out direct marketing campaign can drive incredible results. Each consumer’s behavior is guided by its id, ego, and superego, as explained in Freud’s theory of personality. If your customer is looking to create a campaign to reach 100 consumers, they are actually reaching out to 300 because of the varying personalities! As a marketer – it is critical to understand how different personalities affect loyalty to brand and purchasing behavior.

Do you know what makes your customer’s target audience feel happy and what they value? Happiness and an understanding of what is important to them can drive purchase behavior. By knowing what messaging will resonate with end-users, a campaign can more accurately be designed. Edelman Good Purpose Survey found that 71% say they will make a point to buy from companies with similar values as their own. Is it a coincidence that this year’s Super Bowl ad that generated one of the top purchase-intent scores was created for Got Milk? They understood their female audience and what messaging would resonate, crafting an advertisement that conveyed how their product can help in the caring for their family.

Jeanette then went into detail on the importance of color and messaging in campaigns, and how they each uniquely affect consumer response. Studies show within 90 seconds, a consumer will make an unconscious judgment of a product, and 60-90% of that judgment is based upon the use of color. Choosing the right messaging can help tap into consumers’ unconscious. Words such as ‘dependable’, ‘limited time’, and ‘approved’ are proven to be emotionally charged. How a message is framed is also a critical consideration, as ‘free’ speaks louder than ‘two-for-one’.

Easier said than done, but by understanding the unconscious mind of your customer’s end-user, you can better develop a psychologically relevant campaign that will drive a desired behavior.

A Look Inside Relevant Direct Marketing Programs
Shelley Sweeney, Vice President Service Bureau/Direct Marketing at Xerox, shared several examples of direct marketing campaigns that have utilized database information to market more personally. One that really stood out was a campaign for the New York Mets, who were moving into a new stadium but were struggling to drive attendance. In a typical day, a consumer is exposed to roughly 3,000 media messages. They pay attention to 52 and will positively remember 4. For the Mets, a relevant and highly personalized campaign was necessary to drive a behavior – purchase of season tickets!

The campaign targeted group sales, using a database of 3,000 groups that had attended games in the past, as well as a purchased mailing list that brought the total to 6,800 groups. Database information included the organization name, contact name, address and email address. Variable marketing pieces were created and included the name of the organization, the group leaders surname sprawled across the back of a jersey (using XMPie uImage) and specific messaging and imagery reflecting the group’s category and likely interests (boy scout organizations included different messaging/images than business organizations, for example).

The list of 6,800 groups was split in half to create a test group (Shelley emphasized this during the workshop), with 3,400 receiving static mass-marketing pieces similar to what the Mets had been sending in the past – while the other 3,400 received the newly- created customized mailers. Three weeks later, a follow-up mailing was sent to the same divided list.

The results were quite impressive: the data-driven mailer saw a 57.2% increase in group ticket sales over the static control mailer. Revenue from the data-driven mailer was 40.9% higher than revenue from the static mailer. Even more impressive, the Mets saw an 80% increase in group ticket sales over the previous season.

What have you found to be critical considerations for successful direct marketing? Check out these other direct-marketing related posts:

• Define Your Target Market as Tightly as Possible
• Tough Questions about the PSP-MSP Evolution
• Leveraging a Self-Promo Direct Marketing Campaign to your Benefit
• You Don’t Have to Become a Marketing Services Provider to Offer Marketing Services

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Part II of our Direct Marketing recap will discuss the art and science of selling direct marketing services, as well as a look into integrated direct marketing opportunities using XMPie. Jeanette McMurtry of e4marketing can be contacted for more information on the Psychology of Direct Marketing.

Written by Fred Ramsey
Worldwide Marketing Product Manager, Xerox Corporation

Do you know the significance of today? If you were wearing your mathematical cap this morning when glancing at your mobile device or calendar, perhaps you associated today’s date, March 14th (3.14) with Pi Day. Pi, the Greek letter π, is the symbol that is used to represent a constant that is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. As an irrational number, the digits beyond its decimal point continue infinitely without repetition or pattern.

There are many unique ways to celebrate Pi day; observing the history of pi, baking and eating pies (blueberry is my personal favorite), telling pi jokes, seeing how many digits of pi you can memorize (my son has memorized 27 decimal places)…the list goes on, much like pi itself.

The Xerox Color 550/560 Printer has found its own unique and fun way to celebrate National Pi Day, highlighted by a print application printed on 11”x17” (279.4mm x 431.8mm) paper, complete with more than 500,000 digits of pi, in 0.6 font contained within a 6” x 13” area. We’re talking about text that is just 1/100^th of an inch high and requires a magnifying glass or loupe to legibly read.

This print sample with its insanely small text illustrates much more than just some fancy magic trick you can whip out during cocktail hour to impress your friends. Think of the real-world usages enabled through the Xerox 550/560, its outstanding image quality with 2,400 x 2,400 dots per inch (DPI) print resolution and the patented Xerox specialty imaging security print technology, such as:

- MicroText (text printed at smaller than 1 point size)
- Correlation marks (printed text that is only visible when superimposed by a ‘key’ overlay)
- GlossMark text (printed text that isn’t visible on straight-on view but becomes visible under inclined illumination)
- FluorescentMark/InfraRed text (printed text that is only visible under UV/black-light or in the dark with an infrared camera)

All of these specialty imaging technologies provide outstanding opportunities for you to provide your customers with applications rich with security features, such as coupons, tickets, ID badges for university students or employees, and invoices.

The ability to print such small text is a good example of the 2,400×2,400 DPI of the Xerox 550/560 in action, offering incredible production capabilities and image quality at a value price. As you can imagine, there are real-world benefits to being able to address the smallest of dot sizes. Greater print resolution and more accurate dot control allows for even print coverage and better density while using less toner. And by using less toner, supplies costs are kept in check. With special polyester EA low melt toner, the 550/560 output fuses to polyester in a chemically bonding way, ensuring outstanding image quality on specialty substrates such as plastic, polyester and more.

What digital print applications do you think are prime examples to effectively utilize specialty imaging and security print technology?

Help us celebrate National Pi Day by responding, as we will be giving away prints of the ‘500,000 Digits of Pi’ print sample complete with Xerox magnifying glasses and mini LED microscopes!

Interested in more topics similar to application ideas, the Xerox Color 550/560, and security printing? You may like:

• Documents Can’t Defend Themselves!
• 3 Application Ideas for your Shop
• Xerox Color 550/560 Printer: It’s Time to Crossover
• The 5 Senses at drupa 2012: Best-of-the-Best Winners

Written by Brian Segnit and Chris Irick
Graphic Communications Marketing Managers, Xerox Corporation

What an exciting day for Xerox Corporation! After much anticipation, we are thrilled to announce new additions into our production portfolio, with today’s launch of the Xerox Color J75 and Xerox Color C75 Presses. Both the J75 and C75 are available immediately in North America, with worldwide availability beginning March 1, 2013.

The Xerox Color J75 and C75 Presses were designed with many production environments in mind, including in-plant operations, quick printers, commercial printers, creative agencies, photo specialty retailers and departmental environments.

Both press’ tout impressive features, including the new Simple Image Quality Adjustment (SIQA) toolset, which empowers the user with alignment and registration accuracy by automating registration control and density uniformity, eliminating the need to involve a technician. Also new to the J75 and C75 Presses is Intelligent Fuser Tracking technology, allowing users to designate commonly used paper sizes to specific fuser rolls, and alerting them if there is a mismatch between the job being printed and the fuser setting. This helps to minimize wear and extend the life of the fuser.

Xerox Color J75 Press.

For commercial print shops producing high-volume, high-value applications, the Xerox Color J75 Press offers enhanced productivity by running all paper stocks, including heavyweight up to 300 gsm, at full rated speed of 75 pages per minute (ppm).

It can easily match corporate and industry colors through its embedded Xerox’s Automated Color Quality Suite (ACQS). With ACQS’ inline spectrophotometer and color management tools; accurate, reliable color can be achieved through automated calibration and profiling, all while limiting operator involvement.

Adding to the press’ productivity are Xerox FreeFlow solutions, including templates and automated workflows that simplify job prep and production of applications ranging from postcards to booklets. To help printers create high-value applications, Xerox’s Variable Information Suite and XMPie make it simple to add personalization, whether one name or a robust cross-media campaign.

Xerox Color C75 Press.

The Xerox Color C75 Press makes it easy to start, or expand, a digital printing business. With the ability to run up to 75 ppm on uncoated stocks and up to 51 ppm on coated – the Xerox Color C75 can help open new opportunities to produce more profitable jobs.

In addition, the press features advanced scanning and copying capabilities, allowing auto-duplex scanning up to 200 images per minute (ipm). These workflow efficiencies are huge for businesses entering the digital marketplace. This versatile press even offers optional mobile and cloud solutions, providing printers with new ways to do business as jobs can be submitted and printed securely from smartphones, tablets, laptops or desktops.

First Reactions.

We gave a sneak-peak of the Xerox Color J75 Press to attendees visiting the EFI Connect Users’ Conference on January 15. In attendance was Jyske Bank, the 3rd largest bank in Denmark, a company whose built a solid reputation by delivering excellence in quality, service, security, and privacy…extending all the way to their in-house print operations.

Impressed with the Xerox Color J75 at first sight, Jyske Bank purchased two presses. Jyske’s Print Shop Manager, Carsten Gaarde, stated:

“Print is one of the ways we build and maintain our customer relationships. The J75 offers many high-end press features in a smaller footprint with very impressive print quality.”

You can see the Xerox Color J75 Press on display at Graphics of the Americas, in Miami, FL, Feb. 21-23, 2013.

Interested in similar topics? You may want to check out:

• Technically Speaking… The “Magic” of Printing
• How do you measure the productivity of your digital press? (Part 1)
• How do you measure the productivity of your digital press? (Part 2)
• How do you measure the productivity of your digital press? (Part 3)
• Performance Based Metrics

Written by Dharminder Biharie
Business Development Manager
Xerox Graphic Communication, The Netherlands

Would you like to be helped by a surgeon who flunked out of med school? Or a dentist with extremely bad teeth? Or how about a social media guru with only 10 connections? I can’t imagine that prospective customers would be lining up to be helped by an amateur surgeon, an inept dentist or a clumsy self-made social media guru.

The same applies to direct marketing. Having the skills, knowledge, and expertise to implement a successful direct marketing campaign is great – but there comes a point where talk must turn into execution. How do you show prospects and customers that your business is capable of transferring that knowledge and delivering a campaign with tangible results?

Time to execute.
I see many companies struggle to propose and sell cross-media campaigns to their customers. When I ask them how many times they have executed a proper cross media campaign…too often I get the response ‘none’. That’s a shame. If you sell direct marketing campaigns, I strongly advise you to use your own sales skills, eat your own dog food, and impress your customers with your own brilliant direct marketing campaign. The reasoning behind a self-promotion direct marketing strategy is quite simple … because nobody wants to be helped by… yes, you guessed it, the infamous amateur.

Simply put, a client is much more willing to place their trust with a successful, proven business model. If your company’s self-promotion campaign is delivering results beyond expectations, tout it. Your own results are a great starting point to promote yourself and your business. This will also help you catch the attention of your prospective customers.

But proceed with risk. You must realize that every minuscule hiccup has the potential to drive prospective customers away from your offerings. A QR code leading to a page not optimized for mobile may not be forgiven, as well as a faulty PURL or pages that are ultimately illegible on mobile devices. Every click and any negative distraction will not help your cause. It is therefore imperative to extensively test your campaign with a target sample group, capturing and measuring the responses and optimizing as appropriate.

Success is the Foundation of Persuasion.
Cross-media campaigns, or campaigns with multiple touch points carry a certain ‘cool’ factor. They resonate with customers, stay in the forefront of their minds, and leave a lasting impression. A successful campaign generates more buzz (think free advertising) – especially in the world of social media we live in today. If you find a lot of positive tweets and your campaign has yielded a substantial number of likes, then consider your efforts well done. This, in turn, offers you the opportunity to further market your company’s services and capabilities by creating a web promotion, success case or sales presentation complete with metrics, images, and examples of your campaign’s success. Your self-promotion campaign has now provided a first-hand illustration of your capabilities, knowledge and expertise…a persuasive power boost for sure!

And be sure to realize that the power of your campaign (and the future campaigns you implement for your customers) extends beyond the screen. Results can’t always be measured purely by analytic software. The most significant metric is the impression your messaging has left in the mind of your customer, inspiring him or her to act. When done successfully, you will be known by your customers as, yes, the trusted provided of direct marketing services, rather than the amateur.

Interested in similar topics? You may want to check out:

• To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Are You Old or New School?
• Newspapers: Sustainable Business Model or Yesterday’s News?
• Four Ways Brands Can Avoid Losing Followers
• Are Online Ads Less Effective Than TV and Print Ads?

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Dharminder Biharie is a Business Development Manager with Xerox Graphic Communication in The Netherlands. To get in touch with Dharminder, please contact Dharminder.biharie@xerox.com, + 31 (0) 6 2020 499 42.

Written by Larry Zusman
GM, XMPie Video Personalization Business Team
XMPie, A Xerox Company

With the holiday season freshly behind us, you may have seen “them”. In fact, we featured one of “them” just last week in a very special holiday blog post. What is this mysterious subject we speak of?

Whether it’s a movie showing a Santa Claus “Naughty and Nice” list with your name on it (you know which one you were on), targeted auto marketing videos displaying your exact car preference (Bond aficionados can enjoy Aston Martin DB5 footage), or maybe even something as inventive as a MTV-like college recruitment movie with images and audio targeted right to your 17 year-old (think Thriller for Pre-Meds), the world of video marketing is becoming a lot more — personal. The reason is because in the past year the marketing nirvana of easily and affordably changing text, images, graphics and even movie clips for each customer inside of cinematic quality videos destined for any device has finally arrived.

Lots of marketers are interested in developing personalized videos. They increase attention, response and most importantly sales. How do we know? Because we have data showing that static videos are markedly more effective over other media (Web Video Marketing Council and Flimp Media study, 2012) and we also have numerous studies demonstrating that variable media generates higher response versus static (www.podi.org). So video will surely follow suit. In fact, many marketing service providers, video production houses and creative agencies are exploring adding this specialized service offering to their portfolio. The reasons for this in addition to their effectiveness is the ability to extend 1:1 cross-media campaigns to 1:1 videos using the same database and content; use of affordable templates; and opportunities for new revenue and profit.

Videos directed to each person —individually— are created in different ways. However, in today’s rich media landscape the challenge is to generate high quality (HD), cinematic movies with a wide variety of variable content that can be displayed on everything from desktops to tablets and smartphones. A solution from XMPie meeting these requirements uses the Adobe® After Effects™ platform, which is commonly used for cinematic visual effects and motion graphics, and a plug-in from XMPie that links a database of text, images, graphics, and movie clips to the After Effects movie template. The end result is highly targeted MP4 movies containing specific content directed to segments or individuals.

For those of you who still have little idea of what I am blogging about, check out this link and you will experience this new media for yourself. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is just a fad. Video is here to stay as a powerful marketing tool perfect for the new tablets and smartphones. And personalized videos will exponentially increase in usage with improved demographic, geographic and psychographic targeting. By jumping into it now, either through a software investment or partnering with a professional service provider, you will have a leg up on your competitors and take full advantage of a new market with unlimited revenue potential.

For more information on how you can use XMPie video personalization for exciting, new business opportunities, contact your XMPie sales representative or Larry Zusman, GM, XMPie Video Personalization Business Team, larry.zusman@us.xmpie.com.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also be interested in:

• ‘Twas the Night Before…
• Are Online Ads Less Effective Than TV and Print Ads?
• Four Ways Brands Can Avoid Losing Followers
• To Tweet or not to Tweet? Are You Old or New School?
• Connecting Print to the Digital World One Scan at a Time

Written by Xerox and XMPie (with lots of help from Clement Clarke Moore)

‘Twas the night before the holidays, when all through the shop
The presses were humming, no time for a stop;
The pallets were stacked in the corner with care,
In hopes that delivery trucks soon would be there.

When into my office a sound filled the air,
Of music and laughter– I sprang from my chair;
Away to my partner I made a quick dash,
‘Round the corner and into his room in a flash.

The people were huddled all around him with glee,
And looking at something they all wanted to see;
For what was sent to his email address,
But a really cool video from Xerox and XMPie, no less.

This video card came alive on the screen,
It opened, it popped with holiday themes;
And the difference from others was clear from the start,
It was personalized throughout – very nice, very smart!

And then in a moment it became very clear,
That Xerox was sending me wishes this year;
For new business and profit with consistent growth,
For lowering my cost—success with them both.

So I left with a smile and lots of good cheer,
With hopes for a busy, successful New Year;
And I thought to myself as a walked down the hall,
“Happy Holidays to our Customers—to One and to All”.

- Larry Zusman, GM, XMPie Video Personalization Business Team

Please see above for a sample of the personalized holiday video mentioned in this blog, sent to thousands of Xerox customers. For more information on how you can use XMPie-driven video personalization to increase response and generate new revenues, please contact your local XMPie sales representative or Larry Zusman, GM, XMPie Video Personalization Business Team at larry.zusman@us.xmpie.com.