By now, we’re all aware of the emergence of the blended transactional and promotional document, now commonly referred to as TransPromo. In the last few years, TransPromo documents have come to the attention of those in the industry that track trends, and stories of TransPromo successes are outpaced only by projections of explosive growth. But before everyone leaps to TransPromo, there are several topics that need to be addressed.

Marketing experts want to know what makes a good TransPromo document. Operations managers want to know how TransPromo documents are produced. And all of us want to know what the future holds for TransPromo documents.

What Makes Good TransPromo?
The growth of TransPromo documents is driven by several key market factors. Technology provides us with the tools required to create effective TransPromo applications, such as powerful new document composition tools, expanded enterprise databases, and new color printing platforms.

We’ll discuss some of this technology later. First, though, it’s important to understand where the drive for TransPromo came from. Increased competition in many industries—telecommunications, financial services, banking, insurance, and others—plus the emergence of ever-improving technology has given marketing departments new incentive to find the most cost-effective way to get a meaningful promotional message to their customers and encourage them to take action.

Successful TransPromo provides marketing departments with a strong return on investment (ROI), and there are several ways to achieve this. TransPromo documents contain personalized promotional data designed to trigger the customer to take action. Credit card statements may contain special offers based on transactional trends. Telecommunications statements may contain special offers reflecting preferences revealed through phone, Internet, and entertainment transactions.

The key to a successful TransPromo document is the relevance of personalized data. Personalized data must be accessed and used in an accurate and timely fashion or it becomes a negative factor. Consumers cannot be motivated to take advantage of special offers if they are based on dated intelligence or inaccurate data. Whether the personalized data contains specific geographic, behavioral, demographic, or psychographic information about customers or a combination of data, it must be relevant to be effective.

Studies verify that successful TransPromo documents grab the attention of customers with a well-placed, meaningful, promotional, motivational message in a prominent place. While common TransPromo offers might entice customers to place an order or change their service level, the messaging may simply convince a customer to remain a customer. Customer retention is as valuable a measure of success as increased response rates.

ROI grows quickly if documents—through personalization, creative design, and the use of color—increase consumer action. Not surprisingly, a large percentage of consumers say they prefer TransPromo documents to volumes of impersonal direct mail. Consumers who prefer TransPromo documents are more likely to read the messaging. Personalization is good. Personalization plus color is better. But personalization plus color plus a specific offer or discount based on a customer’s history is best.

Producing TransPromo
Now that we’ve defined what makes a good TransPromo document, we need to review the best practices to produce them. There are three keys to producing TransPromo documents, namely using the right data, document composition tools, and production platforms including color print.

The Right Data
Using out-of-date or inaccurate data on a TransPromo document can negatively motivate a customer. For example, if a financial services company sends a current mortgage customer a special offer for a mortgage loan based on out-of-date information, that company not only wastes the investment in the Trans-Promo document, but, more importantly, hurts its branding and image by seeming out of touch. Accurate and timely data is always critical.

Getting the right data is a hard task in TransPromo document production. Enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) databases are a valuable asset and must be rigorously maintained to ensure accuracy and timeliness. When CRM databases are mined and special marketing offers are sent to customers, that effort should be linked to a campaign management system that will track individual responses and update the CRM databases. Marketing experts will want to know which of their customers responded to offers and which offers had response rates worth repeating to a larger or different customer base.

The Right Composition Tools
Improvements and additions to the document composition tool market regularly occur. Studies note that there are several elements supporting the efficient production of TransPromo documents, data mining chief among them.

First, the document composition tool must contain the capability to build the conditional logic that can mine data and match the personalized data intelligence, the appropriate promotional data, and the transactional document. Second, a document composition tool must provide interfaces that allow the marketing experts to interact with the document creation. This functionality takes the responsibility of marketing message content off the plate of document developers and allows marketing experts to play an important creative role in the creation of TransPromo documents. Additionally, a content management tool should be considered to store and manage images, logos, and graphics that may be accessed throughout multiple enterprise TransPromo marketing campaigns.

The Right Production Platforms
The biggest TransPromo production consideration is color. As mentioned, color is a key ingredient in increasing response rates. But it is also a substantial change to a production environment and is factor that must be planned for carefully.

First, color changes document design characteristics: Will the document employ highlight color or full color? Will color be used only for promotional messaging or throughout? Document designers need to understand the impact of the use of color before implementation.

Next, the selection of a color print platform comes into play. Highlight color, high-speed inkjet printers, or full-color digital presses are all options, but each presents a different cost basis and a different impact on the document appearance. Choosing the right platform involves making financial, marketing, and technical decisions. It is important for clients to embrace this research or solicit experts to help them understand the cost basis of each color print technology, the operational impacts such as level of color management practices required, and the benefits of each color technology—such as print quality, production speed, and ease of implementation.

The Future of TransPromo
Not all technology predictions come true. The paperless environment envisioned by many never materialized, although we all are more environmentally aware. The switch to electronic document delivery channels exclusively was prophesied to displace large volumes in the mail stream. But to date, electronic delivery shows only minor ad-option rates in most industries.

The importance of more sophistication in data gathering, data mining, and more applied technology to produce not just TransPromo documents but also TransPromo packages will grow. Trans-Promo packages contain both TransPromo documents as well as inserts. Inserting platforms have been offering selective inserting capabilities for a long time. Inserts are dynamically placed in documents based on criteria passed to the inserting platform by barcodes or an IDF control file. Taking that technology one step further, selected inserts can be personalized and matched up with promotional messages integrated into documents. For example, a credit card company may create a Trans-Promo document containing a monthly statement and a promotional message based on recent buying habits. The inserting platform can selectively match a personalized coupon containing a special offer for that promotion.

It need not stop there. To catch a customer’s attention, a TransPromo envelope can contain a personalized color message designed to entice them to find the offer inside. Several technologies are available to realize the TransPromo future. Several vendors offer inserting platforms—such as Böwe Bell + Howell, Kern, and Pitney Bowes—that use closed-face envelopes and inline inkjet printers to apply an address and a personalized marketing message to an envelope.

Additional new technology allows the envelope to be printed inline with the document. At last year’s GraphExpo, both Kern and Megaspirea International showcased new platforms that ingest material, print envelopes inline, and fold the envelopes around the documents.

The color messaging, graphics, and personalization possibilities are endless. The future of TransPromo, be it document or package, has arrived.

Kemal Carr, kemalcarr@madison-advisors.com, is the president of Madison Advisors, www.madison-advisors.com, an advisory firm that specializes in print and electronic communications. Steve Watters, steve watters@madison-advisors.com, is a principal analyst with Madison Advisors. Steve specializes in transactional print and mail production environments.