What goes into the transpromo mix

Transpromo contains two main ingredients; transactional print and proactive marketing. Most medium to large organisations have these ingredients already, but need support to find the right blend.

With the help of a transpromo specialist businesses can find that blend and create a cocktail of revenue boosting customer communication. Add a splash of bold design/colour and a slice of variable data and your transpromo will be guaranteed to get the kick it needs.

Transactional print

The Transactional Print market is boundless and comes in many guises. Industry chiefs often claim that Transactional Print set the precedent for the variable print industry. Every day, week or month, millions of statements, invoices and cheques are printed throughout the world. The vast majority of these documents make use of some form of variable print technology, most being digitally overprinted, in black, on pre-printed stock.

With advancements in printing and Internet technology, and the cost saving benefits invloved, many businesses are now outsourcing the production of thier transactional documents. Not just the pre printed stock, but ALL the key elements involved.

Stock, secure data processing, variable print and fulfilment can now be undertaken by specialist compaines geared up to provide a complete Transactional Print Service (TPS). Getting this ingredient right before it goes into the mix is essential. If it is wrong, your transpromo could turn sour.

Proactive Marketing

Proactive Marketing, direct marketing, direct mail... call it what you will. Marketing is huge business, and covers many areas of promoting your business. According to one particular institute specialising in proactive marketing, it can be defined as a “...system of marketing which uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable response".

Proactive marketing evolved from the mail order business, and has become one of the largest but most misunderstood promotional tools. It has been subject to considerable change due to the Data Protection Act, which has sought, somewhat unsuccessfully, to end the amounts of junk mail that many consumers receive.

Proactive marketing can also include the use of telephone, fax, e-mail, internet, and field marketing. Whatever method is used, it works best when highly targeted, using customer data and spending patterns to influence a message and target users directly in order to get a measured result.

Proactive Marketing is not just about increasing sales of a product or service, it can be used to spread information and help customers understand an offering. It can also be used to generate sales leads or adopt a trial period of usage (e.g. a no obligation three month trial period).

OPTIONAL EXTRAS:

Once you have your main ingredients you are ready to begin the mix. Be sure to get expert advice because mixing them together in a successful way can be hard to achieve. Once the blend is correct you can add any number of extras to give you transpromo a little pizzaz.

Many print management companies offering Transpromo will likely employ the services of a graphic designer who will have the knowledge and skills necessary to create eye catching promotional peices. By using bold design your are more likely to draw the customers eye towards a specific promotion.

Businesses who are currently experimenting with Transpromo should try taking the pre-printed stock out of the mix. The data processing centre is able to take almost any amount of variable data and build a transpromo document from scratch. White paper is the starting point in the print process. The customer data is imported combined with targeted marketing graphics that reflect the individual customer's deomgraphics.

Add colour! The whole future of Transpromo is based on variable data printing combined with targeted marketing messages... all in glorious colour! Whilst we believe colour is the key to great Transpromo, we don't fool ourselves by believing everyone will switch to full colour documents overnight.

A recent article in Print Media Magazine stated that " the gestation period  for changing the design of a transactional document might be as long as two years in some cases". This may be so, however you can add colour into existing black and white Transpromo documents right now, by making effective use of pre-printed base stock. Transpromo purists would argue that this is not Transpromo at all. Maybe? Maybe not... but it is definately a step in the right direction.