Dscoop7, scheduled for March 22-24, 2012, in Washington DC, is coming up fast! It’s a presidential election year in the U.S. (and many other countries), so I guess we can expect a campaign theme, and indeed, the theme this year is Campaign for Next.

As always, the Dscoop annual meeting is a blend of education and networking opportunities. This year, the session is preceded by an invitation-only event for marketers, designers and creative. The DSee conference was sold out in one day! I am flattered to be allowed to attend, so watch this space for feedback on what some three or four thousand of our marketing and designer friends had to say about the capabilities for advanced cross-media marketing that I am sure many of them don’t even realize exist…. Read more »

MindFireInc is sponsoring the keynote address at Dscoop7 Annual Conference (March 22-24, 2012,  Washington D.C.) This year’s keynote is taking place on Friday, March 23, at 8 to 9:30 am, and is delivered by the author, Sally Hogshead: Fascinate: The Shortcut to Persuasion.

The concept of “fascination,” is what captures the attention of your prospects and acclaims their loyalty. During the keynote, Sally Hogshead will be revealing the secret to the science of fascination. She will be sharing her research and how her internationally acclaimed book, Fascinate, about a study done on the science of fasciation, has helped marketers reach more prospects and customers through seven specific triggers.

Check out Sally Hogshead’s blog on her research about fascination:

For the past year, I’ve been getting ready to show you something pretty cool. It’s a new personality assessment. (We haven’t released our newest personality research yet, but you can get a first look today).

It all began with my researching the science of fascination. I wanted to understand a few simple questions:

• How do certain people immediately captivate us?
• How do certain leaders influence our opinions?

And more to the point…

• What makes your personality fascinating?

… Read more »

You may have already switched your personal page on Facebook to the new timeline layout (what is it?). Now, if you have a Page for your company on Facebook, you can do the same. According to AllFacebook.com:

Facebook’s new design for pages combines the much anticipated timeline with pinning.

There are three ways to see a preview of it that also presents you with the option to upgrade to timeline right now:

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Have you made personal and professional New Year resolutions yet, in the spirit of the season?  I’ll leave the personal ones to you. Professionally, New Year resolutions—or at least specific and measurable goals for 2012—are of critical importance, especially in today’s dynamic and often disconcerting business environment. Here are a few suggestions you might want to take into consideration.

• Are you making the most of your existing customer base?  Common wisdom says that mining existing customers for more business costs six times less than acquiring a new customer, yet many businesses place an undue amount of focus on customer acquisition, letting customer retention/expansion efforts fall to the back burner. Do the research on your best customers.  What are they doing differently these days? What are the key trends in their respective industries? Who are you working with inside each company, and how can you best expand beyond those group(s)? Don’t let valuable existing customer relationships languish. Make sure they know about the full range of your offerings, and don’t be shy about asking your best contacts for internal references.
• Another way to grow revenues is to work on growing the average revenue per sale for your business…. Read more »
  

Determining a marketing strategy for a client’s campaign can be the biggest challenge faced by the Marketing Services Provider. Many times, campaigns are launched will little or no strategy, with disastrous results. (See my other posts on Three Common Mistakes in Cross-Media Marketing on this topic.) The good news is, determining a strategy is easier than you think. In this article, I will review the three basic marketing strategies. One of these three strategies can be applied to almost any cross-media marketing campaign to promote the client’s product or service.

Low Cost Leader – The low cost leader in any market has a competitive advantage that is easy to convey to the consumer.  Examples of the low cost leader strategy might apply to an auto dealer who uses a cross-media campaign to guarantee they will beat any other dealer’s lowest price. Another example of the low cost leader strategy does not reflect the cheapest price at all. High margin services such as invisible braces can afford a larger marketing expense due to the low cost per sale of the item.
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One of the challenges in making the transition from a print service provider to a marketing services provider lies in understanding how to charge for—and sell—new services. This is not an issue that is exclusive to the printing industry by any means. Anytime a company makes a business shift such as this, there is also a cultural shift that must happen.

Conventional printing sales are generally priced using a cost-plus model.  That is, all of the costs are added up, a margin is added, and voila! You have a price. The cost elements are fairly straightforward, and the margin is determined by taking a number of factors into consideration, including how competitive the bid is.

While this model can certainly be applied to cross-media services, companies who do so are likely leaving money on the table.  Why?  Because deployed right, cross-media services bring more value to the customer than a simple printed piece.  What’s more important is that the value is measurable. Can you double or triple the response rates the customer has been receiving by deploying a personalized, multichannel campaign? There is certainly value in that.  Can you improve the customer’s return on marketing investment (ROMI)? There is significant value in that as well. These and other metrics can generally be improved when cross-media campaigns are deployed…. Read more »

Cross-Media campaigns today have grown way beyond the typical personalized URLs, landing pages and thank you emails. Today, we are driving traffic with direct mail, email messages, SMS text messages, QR Codes, Intelligent Mail barcode triggered messages, as well as links from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more. Landing pages can contain multiple dynamic elements and automatically display content fitting the detected browser, whether desktop or mobile. Other advanced integrations are possible with other solutions such as CRM systems and payment gateways.

Taking advantage of all these capabilities can be difficult for the typical staff of the print service provider. There’s no time like the present to begin to integrate staff with the right skill sets into your business. To prepare your company for the coming growth of high value cross-media services, consider adding staff members with the following skill sets to your team:
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