Developing Cross-Media and 
Marketing Services

An article in the December issue of IPG ("Cross-Media and the In-plant") called out in-plants for being far behind commercial printers in developing cross-media marketing services. The charge has significant implications. For in the face of the world's ongoing digital transformation, print increasingly delivers its value by playing a strategic role in measurable, multi-channel communications campaigns that reach customers where they live.

The article's writer, Lisa Cross of InfoTrends, makes her case by referencing a 2011 InfoTrends study "The Evolution of the Cross-Media Marketing Services Provider." The study includes a comparison of in-plants' cross-media adoption rates with those of print-for-pay firms. Some key findings included:

• Only 58 percent of in-plants offer variable data printing (VDP) services, compared to 89 percent of commercial print service providers.
• Only 21 percent of in-plants offer pURL tracking and reporting, compared to 71 percent of commercial firms.
• Only 42 percent of in-plants offer marketing strategy development, compared to 78 percent on the commercial side.

Consider it a wake-up call. Most in-plants need to get in front of this trend, or they run the risk of losing their relevance—and their franchise. Here's a look at how some in-plants are making the transition.

Changing With the Times

The InfoTrends study found a natural pattern of gradual evolution in adopting cross-media services. Typically, print shops began by developing VDP, mailing services and Web storefronts. Next they introduced more online offerings, basic data services and personalized Web sites (pURLs). At a more advanced level, they offer more extensive campaign and customer relationship management, data mining, analytics, mobile barcode tracking and marketing automation. Mobile services, already embraced by early adopters, appear to be the next wave.

The University of Missouri's in-plant in Columbia is in an early stage of cross-media adoption. It moved services online after observing that students and faculty preferred doing business online. Initially, the in-plant developed a simple, Web-based ordering and PDF-proofing system. Now the operation is moving into variable data cross-media services, using software from XMPie, a Xerox company, to support student recruitment and other initiatives.

"We need to stay up to date," says Rick Wise, director of printing. "To be successful, we need to have the ability to provide any service our faculty, staff and students might want. The bottom line is we never want to give our constituents a reason to go anyplace else."

Many in-plants find they need to educate their internal customers on the benefits of VDP and cross-media services. At Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., VDP with the in-plant's XMPie software was slow to catch on. But when Dwayne Magee, director of Messiah College Press, learned at a conference that the software could be used to create QR codes—two-dimensional bar codes that call up Web locations when scanned by smart phones—he ran a webinar promoting the capability. Subsequently the shop produced a number of QR code applications, including a poster for "Welcome Week" with a QR code linking to an online schedule.

The in-plant at St. Antonius Hospital, in Utrecht/Nieuwegein, The Netherlands, introduced cross-media services to help lead the hospital to improve its marketing communications.

"We believe that it is precisely the combination of print and a digital communication medium which works the most effectively in approaching your target group," says Wenny Braam, manager of the hospital's Graphic Services Department.

Among the hospital's initial campaigns: a seminar invitation to cardiologists integrating a personalized mailer with a pURL offering the full agenda and a registration page. The approach also is being used successfully for staff-wide meeting invitations and for marketing to targeted groups, such as social workers or family doctors.

"XMPie offers the capability of wrapping up cross-media activities for both external groups and internal staff-members," Braam says. "Each department now maintains its own mailing lists, which we can manage far better and more interactively with XMPie. With just a click of a button we can select all staff members who live within less than 10 kilometers, or all the family doctors in a specific region."

Easy Adoption with SaaS

An easier way to adopt cross-media services is by brokering an outsourcing arrangement with a local service provider or a software-as-a service (SaaS) provider. For example, XMPie offers the cloud-based e-Media Express Edition, which provides full-featured personalization services for print and digital media in an SaaS arrangement, enabling in-plants to deliver sophisticated campaigns right out of the gate. And Xerox offers communications and marketing services that can address nearly every non-print component of a cross-media campaign, including strategic consulting, creative services, data management, response management and results reporting.

Ithaca College in upstate New York recently turned to Xerox for cross-media services to improve upon its direct-mail-only alumni campaigns. Xerox helped develop the campaign strategy, then produced its personalized e-mails and Web sites, and delivered print files to the college's in-plant.

The campaign sought to connect with alumni using direct mail postcards and e-mails to drive recipients to personalized landing pages. The pURLs provided several ways for alumni to interact with the college—by taking a survey, reading recent college news, reconnecting with alumni on an online network or making donations.

"For the first time we reached out to our alums with not just the same old variable data form letter," remarks David Wilkins, director, Ithaca Fund, Ithaca College. "It put information in front of them that they were truly interested in. That made them feel valuable, and you can see that in the response rates."

Of 29,687 alumni who received campaign communications, 4,000 (13.5 percent) visited their pURLs and 1,700 (5.7 percent) completed surveys. It also inspired a significant number of first-time donors. For the in-plant, the campaign is among the new digital printing initiatives that have helped the shop double its share of the college's print work, from 40-50 percent to about 80 or 90 percent.

Taking it to the Next Level

Now Ithaca College is using the data from its alumni campaign to hone in on the preferred communication methods of alumni and to shape future campaigns. That's how successful providers build their expertise—by tracking results and gaining new information in each campaign that can improve subsequent efforts.

Indeed, by tracking results in real time, campaigns can even be adjusted on the fly to fix elements that aren't working. Over time an in-plant can develop a valuable base of knowledge about target groups that will drive optimal results and make their services hard to replace.

In-plants can build their cross-media services in a number of additional ways. The key is building relationships with internal customers to understand and respond to their challenges and strategies. For example, in-plants in firms with networks of retailers, franchisees or sales reps have great opportunities to develop a Web portal system containing corporate-approved marketing materials for sales reps and channels to personalize online.

Newer technologies can improve the scope and effectiveness of cross-media campaigns. Print pieces can be made more interactive by including QR codes, as Messiah College is doing. Photos and now even video can be personalized—making the recipient's name appear on a street sign, for example—giving them even greater impact. Increasingly, cross-media campaigns incorporate social media and mobile applications, which some experts see as the new marketing frontier.

Cross-media services can help the in-plant generate better results for the parent organization, serve as a highly relevant strategic resource, and perhaps enable entry to the organization's marketing strategy discussion. Keep in mind that this transformation doesn't need to happen all at once. But also keep in mind that for most in-plants the transition does need to happen.