Tips and Bits

Please Respond to Our Survey

When we planned the feature set for the Pageflex 7.7 release that we launched this week, we decided to enable multi-channel campaigns created in Pageflex Campaign Manager to be orderable through a Pageflex Storefront catalog.

This decision was based on consistent feedback we received from customers about their need to:

1. simplify the process of selling multi-channel campaigns, and
2. expand the types of services that they can sell through their Pageflex Storefront sites.

We often hear I wish I could just let my customer self-order a campaign through my Storefront site…

Tell Us Your Experiences

Understanding our customers’ business needs is fundamental to planning the future development of Pageflex products.

On Tuesday we emailed a survey to a cross section of our North American customers to discover best practices for printers making the transition to offering marketing services. If you received this email, please take the time to complete the survey online or get one of your colleagues to complete it. You do not need to be offering marketing services today to participate in the survey.

Prizes and Knowledge

I know that finding time to complete a survey is difficult, so as a thank you we are entering all customers that complete the survey in a drawing. The prizes include an Amazon Kindle 3G, $75 Amazon gift certificates, and $25 gift certificates to our sister Bitstream product line Myfonts.com. There are 7 prizes in all, so your chances are pretty good of winning something.

And everyone that completes the survey will get an executive summary of the report from InfoTrends, a leading market research and consultancy firm that we have partnered with on this study. InfoTrends is exploring the current state, critical steps, best practices, and go-to-market strategies for offering cross media marketing services.

I look foward to sharing the best practices and trends resulting from this study with all of our customers in future blog posts and webinars.

Driving More Product Integrations

In addition to learning what works and doesn’t work when offering cross media (or as I prefer, “multi-channel”) services, this survey is also intended to help us understand what other components our customers are using in their production workflows. This information is critical in helping us determine which other companies in the industry we should partner with, and which integrations with other products on the market may offer the most benefit to our customers.

Of course, we love it when we get this information through one-on-one conversations with our customers, so please do keep talking to us directly. We hope this survey will jump start more of these conversations.

If you are a printer that uses a Pageflex product in North America and would like to take the survey, but don’t have the survey email, just let us know at marketing@pageflex.com. We’ll gladly send it to you.

Conversen Brings Variable Print to Their Digital Platform

Conversen’s customers are innovative marketers. And Conversen is an innovative company also. Conversen offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that lets marketers communicate with their consumers through a variety of digital channels, including email, Web, SMS, RSS, and social media. They have now added print to this mix by licensing Pageflex Server and integrating it into their platform. Traditionally, we work with companies that are experts in print communications and are expanding their efforts to support digital forms of communications. It is nice when we see the digital frontier acknowledge the importance that print, and especially VARIABLE print, still plays in marketing to consumers.

Paul Mandeville, Conversen’s COO, recently explained to me the market need that lead them to use Pageflex. “CMO surveys consistently show that integrating offline and online communications is a high priority, and this partnership with Bitstream to bring Pageflex digital print capabilities into a platform that already supports email, web, SMS, and social content is powerful.”

Paul went on to say that ““Marketing services companies and agencies will tell you that they spend more time being general contractors of multi-channel programs than they spend creating the program concepts and creative, and that’s an imbalance that needed fixing.  By integrating Pageflex into the Conversen platform, we’ve essentially untied the hands of marketers everywhere.”

Conversen uses business rules within their platform to drive the variable composition of Pageflex templates using both demographic and relational data sources, as well as Conversen’s built-in activity- and response-based logic. The result is a highly personalized, print-ready, digital asset that can be downloaded and printed locally, or sent to the client’s print vendor.

Conversen CEO Philip Chischportich calls it “an amazing efficiency play,” and says that “we’re already seeing clients save between 30%-50% on printing costs.” I’m looking forward to sharing some real-life case studies in the coming months!

Check Out Pageflex at Cross Media West

On Monday (February 22) Pageflex will be exhibiting at the Cross Media West Conference in Anaheim, CA. We'll be showing attendees how Pageflex Campaign Manager can be used to produce targeted multi-channel marketing campaigns with print, email, and pURL microsite components that dramatically increase response rates over traditional direct marketing campaigns. We can show you how easy it is to setup, manage the campaign, and track results. And we'll be handing out several case studies about past successful campaigns.

The Cross Media West Conference is a new one-day event developed for print service providers, marketers, and creative designers. The educational sessions appear to be jam packed with educational information and tips for each of these groups. And best of all, the conference is very affordable with registration fees ranging from $99 to $139 for each half-day segment.

Cross Media West is co-located with the annual conference of the Photo Marketing Association (PMA). There is going to be a lot to see there, so don't forget to stop by and say hello to our Pageflex team first!

Upcoming Webinar: Configuring Campaign Manager 7.5 on February 24th at 2:00 PM

Please join Rick Golba, Pageflex's Training Manager, for a discussion and mini-training on some of the new capabilities of Campaign Manager 7.5. We'll cover including the ability to self-register for a campaign, setting up refer a friend on a campaign and tracking email bouncebacks. 

The event will be February 24th at 2:00 PM EST. 

Click here to register.

This webinar will be hands-on. We'll set up the necessary workflow steps to enable self-registration, add the fields and actions for referring friends, and discuss the new API which opens up the possibility of tracking email bounceback and more. The discussion of the API will be an administrator-level overview, not a developer session on specific SXI/SINI functionality.

This webinar is primarily intended for current Pageflex customers and will assume administrative knowledge of Campaign Manager. We'll be jumping in to the middle of a campaign and just focusing on the new features, so if you're new to campaign manager, click here to arrange an introductory demonstration of the product.

New Feature: Pageflex Campaign Manager API Gives You Direct Control

Hi, welcome to Thursdays with Jeff.

 

I’m Jeff Perk, Director of Product Management at Pageflex. Last Thursday I wrote here about a new module for Pageflex Server that lets you use Adobe InDesign Server. Today, I’m excited to tell you about the new API for Campaign Manager that we’re including with Pageflex 7.5. And next Thursday (or Wednesday if you prefer) customers are invited to join me for a webinar during which I will review all of the new functionality in Pageflex 7.5 and give you a sneak peak at the related UI changes.

 

Ever since we released Pageflex Campaign Manager customers have been asking for an API. Many of you are very adept at using our published APIs for Pageflex Storefront and Pageflex Server to extend our products in more ingenious and exciting ways than we could have imagined. And I know you’re dreaming about what you could accomplish with Pageflex Campaign Manager, if only there was an API…well, now there is!

 

The new application programming interface (API) for Campaign Manager allows deployers to automate key aspects of a campaign. You now have access to  API methods to:

 

· Import recipients,

· Configure the connection to the campaign’s mail server,

· Schedule the launch of an email blast, and

· Generate reports.

 

The ability to import recipients allows you to synchronize your multi-channel marketing campaign with a CRM system. Now you can really produce campaigns that react to and feed all of your other customer communication efforts. This is why I expect to see lots of exciting projects from you power users in the next few months! Of course, you also can use this method to swap the underlying data list driving a campaign if you happen to realize at the last minute that you forgot to include some Very Important Person (sorry, boss) in your initial data file.

 

Additionally there are API events for getting and deleting bounced email records, which opens up all sorts of tricks to extension developers with appropriately programmable email servers. We’ve used these capabilities ourselves in the new extension connecting Pageflex Campaign Manager to a separately downloadable SMTP server, which Greg discussed yesterday on this blog. Check out his extensive post about our new ability to measure the deliverability rates of your email campaigns and manage bouncebacks.

 

I’m eager to see what great projects our customers will produce with the Campaign Manager API. What ideas do you want to try out?

 

New Feature: Measure Your Email Deliverability with Pageflex Campaign Manager

Hi. I’m Greg Burrill. In the role of Pageflex Technical Account Manager I spend my time helping customers implement their Pageflex products in the best ways possible. While email campaigns and the use of pURLs are very popular and effective marketing tools, the technical infrastructure needed to administer them often is not part of our customer’s employee skill set. Pageflex Campaign Manager simplifies much of the process, and now Pageflex 7.5 takes this one step further by simplifying the tracking of undeliverable emails.

 

Tracking and managing which email addresses bounce is important for several reasons. First of all, since the email never reaches the intended recipient it should be excluded from your campaign statistics for open rates and response rates. The person didn’t ignore or not like your offer; they never even knew you tried to contact them!

 

Additionally, it is essential that you capture which of your email addresses are undeliverable so that you can maintain a clean mailing list. High bounce rates can lead to ISPs blocking all emails coming from your domain. Once you are “blacklisted” none of your communications will get through to anyone serviced by that ISP. This could mean that your best customers and prospects never hear from you!

 

I see many companies struggle with managing their email lists. Pageflex 7.5 will help. It includes a new Campaign Manager extension that supports the tracking of e-mail bounce backs. The extension works with a separately downloadable SMTP server. Campaigns that use this server will be better able to measure the deliverability of outbound messages within Campaign Manager. This means that you and your client, if you’re producing campaigns for others, will be able to review bounceback statistics and details on the Campaign Manager tracking site.

 

If you prefer to use a different SMTP server, the underlying enhancements that power this new capability have been exposed in the extension programming interface. (Yes, you heard right, there is now an API available for Pageflex Campaign Manager! More about that tomorrow on this blog.). This enables extension developers to integrate Pageflex Campaign Manager with any other SMTP server that has a suitable API.

 

I’m excited about these new Campaign Manager capabilities and look forward to helping customers with their campaigns. Do you struggle with managing and tracking undelivered emails when you conduct email-based marketing campaigns?

 

New Feature: Add-a-Friend in Campaign Manager 7.5

During the holidays, I always think more is preferable to less.  I want more presents, more celebrations and more friends, which is why my favorite new feature in Pageflex 7.5 is Add-A-Friend in Campaign Manager. I’m Shana Lyons and I manage our Inside Sales team here at Pageflex. Our team uses Campaign Manager all of the time to follow-up with people we meet at trade shows and events.  Add-A-Friend is actually a combination of related features that enable marketers to respond to and track friends of campaign recipients that opt-in, unknown visitors to a campaign website, and anyone responding to a marketing campaign that includes the base campaign URL.  Add-A-Friend will allow my team to reach beyond the people we directly meet by encouraging recipients to forward along our information when they think their friends and co-workers might find it useful.

Beyond what we do internally, I think Add-A-Friend is a brilliant tool for direct marketers because it lets you:

• Take your Cross-Media Campaigns Viral –  Add-A-Friend gives you an easy way to expand the number of people in your cross-media campaign. On average, each user of email and social media is connected to between 150-200 other individuals, many of whom have similar professional interests or demographic characteristics.  By including an appropriate link in your cross media campaign, you open the potential to have your campaign read by any one of those friends. In a 2,000 recipient cross media campaign that can equal up to 400,000 potential readers. You can further expand your campaign by providing Share to Social Media links where appropriate to incorporate Facebook or Twitter sharing and Delicious tagging.

• Create List-less Campaigns- Add-A-Friend also opens up a completely new workflow for Campaign Manager. You can now create a campaign that starts with an empty or partial mailing list. You can combine known recipients with new recipients who get added while the campaign is in progress. For example, let’s say you did a campaign for a health club that was looking to expand its membership. The health club’s marketing department may have provided you with a list of people who had toured the club but had not signed a contract. You then worked with the club to craft an incentive to give those potential members a reason to come back and a campaign to let them know about the deal. In a typical cross-media campaign, you would launch your campaign with that list and then potentially re-launch it on a monthly basis with new lists from the marketing department. Unfortunately, in a month potential members could have lost interest. In an Add-A-Friend enabled campaign, the health club’s membership directors could be given a website where they could add potential members to the campaign immediately after they left the club. Campaign Manager would then instantly generate an email and/or a print piece plus a pURL specifically for that potential member. By the time the potential member got home they could have a fresh reason to reconsider joining.  Add-A-Friend pages let you empower sales representatives to strike while the prospect is still engaged and thinking about your product, maximizing your chances of closing the deal.

• Track the Social Value of Your Campaign - There are corresponding enhancements to Campaign Manager’s tracking capabilities in 7.5 that include offering a new filter view to capture these new types of opt-ins. The tracking site is also now capturing statistics on how many new opt-ins have been referred by each prior campaign contact.

I hope that you enjoy Add-A-Friend in Campaign Manager 7.5. Do you have ideas on how you will use Add-a-Friend?

Storefront and Campaign Manager webinar on December 2nd at 2:00 PM EST.

Pageflex Application Wunderkind Cheryl Watson and Training Manager Rick Golba will discuss how to mine existing customer data from your Storefront database and use that information in an email Campaign to drive additional holiday business.

 

First, we’ll talk about pulling information from your Storefront database about the most recent activities of your customers. That information will then be used as the data source for a marketing campaign.

 

We’ll discuss how to set up the variable data components of the campaign and build the microsite in Campaign Manager. We’ll build a form using Campaign Manager’s powerful form builder and implement a custom form built outside of Campaign Manager.

 

The microsite will also implement our popular Refer a Friend capability, allowing an existing customer to generate an ad hoc email to a friend, thus increasing your marketing presence.

 

We'll also discuss ways to use social networking sites, like Facebook, to increase your company's visibility.

 

This jam packed hour will show you how you can keep in touch with your customers during the busy holiday season and drive additional year end business to your company.

 

You can register for the webinar here.

2009 DMA Show Photo Gallery

Pageflex's DMA Photo Gallery

Pageflex headed out to San Diego, CA last week to attend the Direct Marketing Association's annual show. We'll be bringing you as much information as we can over the next few weeks from the seminars and sessions we attended while there. We came away from the show with a multitude of new tips and tricks that you can use to add value to your cross-media campaigns today. Until we get them typed up, enjoy this quick photo gallery of the event.

Electronic Output Solutions' Neat DMA pURL Campaign

When we opened our mailbox today we found this great Pageflex cross-media campaign from the team at Electronic Output Solutions. They're in Vista, California, which is just north of San Diego, so we trust them to have the inside track on what some of the interesting things to do during the DMA are.They turned that knowledge into a really fun pURL campaign with a local marketing twist. 

We did a little digging and got the inside story on the campaign from Terry Fyffe, EOS' President. "With San Diego being such a great resort town I wanted to build a “best of San Diego” list that could let people know how to use their spare time while they were visiting here in San Diego.  It then evolved into getting our favorite businesses some free exposure in exchange for a great offer for the prospects who gave us a visit at the pURL site."

EOS is hopefully going to be getting some exposure, too. Terry said, "The main purpose of the campaign was to generate interest in EOS, show off our capabilities a little bit. We are hoping for discovery meetings with agencies and end users to better understand their challenges.  We have already had positive exposure and feedback from the local vendors who participated in our DMA09 campaign."

The campaign is comprised of print, email and personalized URL elements. Terry's team sent out personalized 6x11 postcards that promoted EOS' capabilities in direct mail, web2print storefronts and transpromo marketing. They also enticed users to provide their personal information to EOS' sales team by offering emailed discounts to local San Diego businesses. "If the visitors are willing to share their email address they can receive discounts from local attractions, museums and restaurants.  One of our restaurants, Dick’s Last Resort, gave 15% off the entire bill and Casino Pauma offered $20 of free slot play."

To try the pURL yourself, visit:

http://www.SanDiegoMyWay.com/DMA09/Allison.Boxall

If you have any campaigns you'd like to see featured on this blog feel free to send them our way at tipsandbits@pageflex.com. We're happy to feature them.