TransPromo – fact or fiction

TransPromo or Transactional statements with promotional messages has been the talk of the town for the last two years. Most of the global congresses like OnDemand, Xplor and Drupa have (or had) TransPromo as one of the key topics and developments. In talking to many vendors, organizations and consultants in Europe however, the whole topic of TransPromo was seen as not realistic and just pushed by the (American) print vendors and some market analyst organizations. Time for a better review and analysis. Is TransPromo a fact which we all should look at or just a fiction to sell digital color printing equipment.

 

TransPromo gets main attention at the congresses last year and this year. It is seen as one of the key drivers of revenue for the digital printing industry. The reason for this attention is based on the consumer. Investigations showed that the consumer always opens and reads an invoice or statement and usually ignores the direct mail pieces. Given this fact, the usually boring invoice or statement is transferred to a marketing message. The statement information is redesigned and the front page is changed from a dull black and white page full of text and numbers (transactions) to a colorful page with some transactional information, but mostly filled with additional information. When looking at most of the samples for TransPromo the additional messages are discount coupons for the local grocery, cross-selling advertisements and nice pictures which should resemble our family characteristics.

 

What is the hype around TransPromo in the last years? When being realistic TransPromo is nothing new. It’s already there for probably the last 15 years. With the development of the Variable Data Printing software, everyone could develop documents with variable data elements. The variable data elements could change from the title heading to adding of information from other applications or databases. TransPromo is not a new invention; it’s already used for the last fifteen years. The new hype and attention comes mainly from the digital printing world, software vendors and some economic developments. The economic developments are used to promote the TransPromo usability.

·         The customers of even large organizations want or need to be addressed personally.

·         Marketing budgets are shrinking, so the marketing campaign needs to be more effective.

·         The CRM systems have been deployed, but are not bringing the ROI as intended.

·         Consumers are bombarded with over 3000 marketing messages each day.

·         The call centre is overloaded with calls to explain the documents and correct errors or misunderstandings.

All valid reasons, but enough to make the switch from the current straight invoices and statements, to a redesigned document with promotional messages. One of the key elements in the discussion is missing. What does the recipient want? Is he or she really more interested in receiving an invoice with cross-selling messages, or a statement with a discount coupon for the airline we once flown with.

 

A quick poll has been done to check how recipients want to receive their monthly invoices and statements. The quick poll, just the one question, was sent out to 2.500 LinkedIn users. The number of respondents was 220. The honesty needs to say that the targeted group is all LinkedIn users. This means they are probably experienced PC users and spend more time than average on the PC. The results however are still shocking and easily leads to the question; “Why do we focus so much on TransPromo – there is hardly a market need”.

 

On the question: “How would you like to receive your monthly invoices?” five possible answers were given. (The five is a limitation of the LinkedIn poll mechanism)

·         On Paper

·         By e-mail as attachment

·         Internet electronic archive

·         Bank portal

·         Within my customer portal

No further explanation was given or could be given due to the structure of the LinkedIn poll

 

 

The overall result was that only 22 percent of the respondents wanted to receive their monthly invoices and statements on paper. The rest have chosen any form of electronic delivery. By e-mail as attachment was with 35 percent the highest. Then 18 percent choose to go to the Internet and retrieve the invoice from an electronic archive. Big question is how many of the 22 percent wants to receive also a TransPromo statement? An alternative is maybe the electronic TransPromo. The traditional paper document is transformed to a HTML page with graphics and cross-selling hyperlinks. Touches nicely on another hype: “Going Green”.

 

 

 

Segmenting the results by job function of the respondents gave some interesting indications of TransPromo – fact or fiction. The respondents working in the marketing sector choose with a 40 percent for paper and 60 percent for the e-mail attachment. So at least the marketing employees want to receive their own invention. The employees working in ‘product’ manufacturing doesn’t want to receive a paper invoice anymore. The Internet archive portal scores high with Business Development and IT employees. Within the IT group it’s also remarkable that portals, either the own customer portal or bank portal, each score a 25 percent and the retrieval from a electronic archive scores zero percent.

 

 

 

Is there a difference with respect to female or male respondents? The response shows hardly any differences. For each of the categories there are marginal differences. The female side is slightly higher in receiving invoices and statements on paper. The Internet electronic archive is slightly higher at the male side.

 

The last segmentation is by age. The highlights here are the group of 18 till 24 which chooses only for the portal environments. Don’t send me anything, I’ll retrieve it at the moment I need it. The other side is the group of 55 and older. Here 50 percent chooses for receiving a paper invoice. When looking closely at the results per age group, it might resemble the developments in the IT industry and Internet adoption. The middle aged groups are grown up with e-mail but less with portals.

 

The conclusion could be that TransPromo via paper will be beneficial if the recipient is;

·         Above 55 years of age

·         Works in the marketing industry

·         Is either male or female.

 

TransPromo – fact or fiction? I would choose the fiction option. The focus is not on the design of the paper invoice anymore. The demand is for electronic delivery. Within the electronic delivery there is room for marketing. This can be done very easily. When looking at most of the current document composition vendors they don’t care if the output is printed or send by e-mail. The formatting can be done in either PostScript or HTML. TransPromo should not be focused on the paper invoice and arguments of spending more reading time on a colorful and personalized letter. Some of the statements from the respondents also give this indication.

 

“My first choice would have been by e-mail but then for privacy reasons it had to be encrypted. Above all I prefer a push mechanism (like paper and e-mail). I don’t know how Internet Electronic archive works. I surely don’t want to go to all different customer portals to check for and handle invoices. So that is why I ended up with bank portal, but would like to receive an e-mail from the company issued the invoice that one has been posted at my (which) bank portal.” -  Project architect

 

“By having all of your invoices available in an e-banking portal, you could choose to link customers to a bank account and have one single view on all invoices. Beside this, invoices are then as close as possible to the payment application. With an email notification, I would be a happy e-customer.” -  Business Consultant and Project manager.

 

“I prefer an email with an invoice attachment and a link to a customer portal where I can reference reports and custom analytics” – CEO

“Call it traditional, but I know I will see it if it comes to me on paper. 100% delivery. Electronic is less that 100% for me” – CEO

 

“My answer is really that I won’t bother, but you didn’t give me the option… I really want paper and an email link to a portal that is easy to use and provides all info I need in one place with as few clicks as possible.” – Consultant

 

Have a great time during the upcoming congresses and seminars, but remain critical about the “facts” of TransPromo.

 

 

 

 

Oscar Dubbeldam

Partner at Strategy Partners

 

 

 

e-mail: Oscar.Dubbeldam@Strategy-Partners.com

blog: http://docstalkoscar.wordpress.com