Addressing the Cross Media Marketing Challenge

May 6, 2014

These days, consumer analytics and big data help marketers develop highly targeted and customized campaigns for reaching buyers. This means that marketing campaigns are more complex, with the goal of reaching a target audience using the individual’s preferred medium — email, mobile, social media or traditional print.  Rarely do I talk with marketers who are only using traditional print approaches – it’s all about multichannel campaigns. They are executing on campaigns that leverage variable data variable images, QR codes and PURLs, depending on the channel – social media, email, or mail. See “One to One Marketing – Its All About the Data” (My Print Resource).

Many of the print service providers I visit are looking to transform their business to offer new services that directly address the challenge of cross media marketing. By aligning with marketing departments and investing in new technology solutions,  these printers are able to expand their businesses and better meet their customer’s needs.

Konica Minolta offers a cross media solution that makes data management, segmentation, creative design and deployment of multi-channel marketing simple. With our solution, direct mail, email, SMS, social media, PURLs, QR codes and more, are created, deployed and reported on, through a single platform. While there are multiple platforms on the market for cross media, Konica Minolta offers customers some key advantages. Our cross media solution provides one platform for all of the user’s marketing needs – combining digital marketing and print. Essentially it transforms a print service provider into a marketing service provider. This is also deployed as a SaaS which makes it incredibly affordable to any size print service provider. There are absolutely no hassles with a server or the capital costs associated with setting up a solution of this type.

Additionally, the solution is completely automated, using data to feed to intelligently drive relevant messages where responses automate triggers to bring a recipient through a campaign that either nurtures or converts into a valid lead. Wait time and costs with creative designers and multiple vendors for direct mail pieces, emails, web pages PURLs and more, are reduced with the use of plug and play templates. Users can easily load the library with images and then populate their marketing pieces with customizable assets and text. Highlights include:

– Email can be automatically triggered to reach customers at precisely the right time.
– Web pages supporting a campaign are hosted within the system.
– Data sets collected from clicks to any hosted landing page are immediately appended back to the customer contact record in the database.
– Text messages are easily sent to customers either as a general message or customized to the recipient.
– Personalized URLs and general URLs are generated on demand within the platform and  easily integrated to an email or a direct mail campaign.

The most successful Print Service Providers use cross media technologies today and help their customers execute on complex marketing campaigns that deliver higher ROIs. Contact Konica Minolta to learn more about how implementing a cross media solution can benefit your organization.

Join the conversation @KonicaMinoltaUS and hashtag  #ProductionPrint, #CrossMediaMarketing, and #multichannelmarketing.

Gavin Jordan-Smith
VP/GM, Industrial Print and Graphic Communications

Gavin Jordan-Smith is responsible for developing the strategic direction to grow Konica Minolta’s solutions business in graphic communications, general office and vertical markets, including oversight of software planning, vertical market strategy, engineering and production print business planning and software development. In his spare time, he enjoys many activities, from hurling tennis rackets with deadly accuracy at small moving objects or jumping off a bridge with a thick elastic rubber band tied to his ankles.