It is amazing that more than half a decade into the use and widely successful deployment of transpromo, more than three-quarters of marketers do not know what the term means. This is according to the Chief Marketing Office Council.
This organisation operates as the premier knowledge transfer agent and affinity group for chief marketers worldwide. It acts as a catalyst for marketing transformation, best practice development, and functional accountability and improvement in global organisations.
Transpromo is short-hand for transactional/promotional, the use of existing postal media, such as invoices and statements, to carry advertising and other insert material.
These postal items are a sunk cost: they simply have to be sent out, and as such it is well worthwhile to use them to carry promotional material. People have to open them, and they view them for longer than they would an e-mail, an SMS or a newspaper insert.
Many uses
Most people who have bought into transpromo see the practice as one for the business-to-consumer, or B2C market. But it can also be used for business-to-business, or B2B.
The reason is that every company has to engage with another: supplier, customer, potential customer, long-term prospect... the list is endless.
At heart, transpromo is a direct mail method, but it can only work if it's tied tightly with database marketing analysis. This is at the very heart of transpromo, which is why I recommend that any transpromo solution provider partner with local and international data specialists. Correct, analysable data, sliced and diced down to a granular level, lies at the heart of transpromo.
This is because of its infinitely personalised nature and the ability to direct a personalised message to a recipient based on observed trends, buying patterns and other proclivities extracted from a database, such as a customer data mart.
Correct, analysable data, sliced and diced down to a granular level, lies at the heart of transpromo.
Konni Hoferichter is MD of LaserCom, a division of Bytes Technology Group.
The communication should embrace the customer's historical choices, buying behaviour, specific requirements, locations, historic, current and potential value and specific triggers to enhance the possibility of a customer reaction.
I have found that database-centric marketing can help clients mine and maximise data about customers to ensure personalised transpromo communications. This is all about deepening share of wallet, rather than share of market.
Now, if it has worked in the B2C market, and it has, as countless studies around the world show, there is little if any reason for it not to work in the B2B market.
Getting personal
A famous business case study from the early days, two decades or so ago, shows that when IT outsourcer EDS entered the South African market, it did so with highly personalised communication through the appropriate gatekeepers to executive decision-makers. EDS executives and sales people worked through personal assistants to deliver their message to CEOs' and CIOs' desks.
The consequence: hundreds of millions of rands worth of revenue for EDS. The same opportunity is open to transpromo solution providers today.
The critical difference between B2C transpromo and B2B transpromo is that B2C is about mass customisation: the ability to customise, even personalise, marketing communication to millions of people in such a way that each recipient feels they are unique. B2B is about customising and personalising communication to a far smaller number of gatekeepers and decision-makers, but with a far higher value in terms of revenue for each successful outcome.
This is where a technique such as cross-media can be highly instructive. Cross-media combined and supported with transpromo can be the missing link in B2B communication. Cross-media delivers exceptional returns in marketing, and should always be considered in support of and complementing transpromo.
Research shows that the ability to reach business decision-makers and gatekeepers with highly targeted, personalised and intensely focused messaging drives response rates to unprecedented levels.
It must always be borne in mind that gatekeepers and decision-makers are bombarded every day with marketing messages. There are few new ways to get through the clutter. Transpromo is one of them.