Got Content?

May 15th, 2012

From the Customer Retention NOW! Newsletter

April, 2012

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Do you have enough content to support the needs and interests of your prospects and customers? Most companies would say no. The two biggest challenges for companies engaged in content marketing are:

  1. Finding a way to create quality content
  2. Creating enough of it

These are major challenges for a lot of the readers of this publication. And hearing about these difficulties from so many of you is the reason we’ve been creating custom content for small and medium size businesses since 2010. It seems you can never have enough of the content that is designed to drive visitors to your web site, build a reputation as a trusted industry resource, or increase awareness for your brand.

Getting new content created on a regular schedule is a great strategy. But sitting down and writing articles is a task that many of our clients never seem to get to. Fortunately, it isn’t always necessary to start from scratch. With a little editing and reinvention it might be possible to meet some of your immediate needs for content without isolating yourself in an undisclosed location for a week or more – just so you can get some thoughts down on paper! Most companies have existing sources of content that are not being exploited.

Here are some ideas for harvesting content that may already exist:

Trade show literature – You may have some great stuff that could be shared online, but the printed collateral was created before you redesigned your web site or developed your content marketing strategy. Summarize the main points in the handouts and you’ve got the basis for a blog entry or newsletter article.

Documentation and user manuals – Scan through material like this looking for a subject that suggests some real-world applications of one of the features of your products. A couple of opening and closing paragraphs bracketing a list any you’ve got an article called “11 Ways Feature X Helps You Accomplish Objective Y”.

Materials from the sales force – Either created by the company or by the salespeople themselves, you might find some statistics, infographics, or charts that provide some evidence that backs up marketing claims. Data like this can be highly relevant to prospects, since it comes right from the front lines. Build an article for your newsletter, blog, or web site around compelling tidbits of information.

Previously-published articles – Were you creating more frequently at some time in the past? Go through the archives and find some content that can be relevant today with just a little updating. It’s OK to re-visit the same topics more than once in the same channel or publication. Just put a little different perspective or spin on the article and it can be ready in no time!

Customers – Check with customer service or technical support. What are the questions that they handle most often? How do they answer them? This kind of material can result in a checklist, hints and tips, or FAQ’s. Or you can put together a quick tutorial video, perhaps with the help of engineering or technical support. Video that is shot with a flip camera or even a phone can be good enough for this purpose. Or you can use screen-capture utilities to demonstrate how to accomplish a certain task with your software product or use your web site to get help, order supplies, etc.

Eventually you will want to create some new content from the ground up. Customer case studies get stale after a while, so you’ll want to update them regularly. An original article written especially for a trade publication is more likely to get published. A forward-looking white paper should include current trends and conditions. When you’re ready to add to your content library with some items like these that are part of your long-term strategy, give us a call.

In the meantime, look around your own organization. You may be surprised to find there is plenty of source material to meet your short-term needs.

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Transpromo, Transinfo, Transconfusion

May 15th, 2012

From the Practical Stuff Newsletter – April 2012

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I’ll admit I’m venting. But a document I received from my broker really got to me!

When I opened my IRA statement, the envelope included a 12-page letter-sized booklet entitled “Important Information about Your Account”. Naturally, I was curious about what this information might be.

The contents of the booklet included some disclosures – a privacy policy and some other financial-industry information. What caught my eye however was the first subject in the document – the 2012 Fee Policy. Of all the information in the booklet, this seemed the most important to me.

Too bad it took four pages, including footnotes, to try to explain what my fees were going to be. After reading it twice, I still couldn’t tell if my fees were going up, down, or staying the same. This simple information seems to be what most people would want to know. And yet, those details are never clearly spelled out.

The Fee Policy booklet is a great example of what happens when someone creates a one-size-fits-all document and just stuffs it in every customer’s envelope. That’s the way we used to do it back in the 80’s and 90’s! Because this pre-printed booklet had to explain all the different scenarios, customers were left on their own to try to pick out the parts that applied to them. According to my financial advisor, most of the content was irrelevant to the majority of account-holders.

What a great opportunity to utilize the capabilities of variable data printing. This is a trans-info application if there ever was one!

Huge Missed Opportunity
My financial institution knows what kind of accounts I have with them (they were, after all, listed on the statements that were delivered in the same envelope as the Fee Policy novella). Yet none of that information was used to tell me what MY fees will be. I can’t figure out why they thought I should care about everyone else’s .

Not only was this a confusing piece of communication, the bank missed a valuable marketing opportunity. What if they told me I’d save money on IRA fees if I re-financed my mortgage through them? What if they enticed me to move my business accounts from a competitor by waiving or reducing fees? Wouldn’t having more of my finances lodged in accounts under their control be a positive thing for them?

A personalized Fee Policy insert would not be a complex task to achieve. In fact, to make it really easy, the bank could have still used the booklet containing all the mandated language but just printed MY 2012 IRA account fees at the top of my statement and referred me to the booklet for more details. They probably could have avoided lots of calls from confused customers.

Customers Want to Feel Valued
My financial institution may have thought they sent information about a new fee structure. But the message I received was more about how the bank believes their customers are not important enough to put a little thought into it and produce some clear, concise, and relevant communications.

Yes, government regulations sometimes dictate language and format. But regulations usually don’t require companies to inform customers about conditions that do not apply to them. And there’s probably a chance to augment regulated, boiler-plate language with simpler content that personalizes the message. Doing so will result in appreciative and informed customers while at the same time reducing calls to customer service.

If there’s any chance that the organization for which you work (or those organizations you serve) are not utilizing the capabilities that are present in your document creation workflow to communicate more intelligently, I suggest this is an opportunity. Take a look at communications from a customer’s point of view for a change and see if you are fulfilling their needs.

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No Content = No Customers

April 6th, 2012

From the Customer Retention NOW! Newsletter

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Who believes that it is not necessary to educate, engage, and provide relevant information to prospects if you want to turn them into customers?

(Imagine sound of crickets chirping right now)

That’s what I thought. I think we all know that business-to-business buyers want access to information about the companies they may consider as vendors or partners. They want to know about products and services, of course. But the buyers also want potential vendors to understand the problems and challenges that they face in their businesses. They want to know how you solved similar problems in the past. They seek vendors who are willing to share some knowledge without trying to sell something 100% of the time.

So why is it that so many companies hold back on that kind of information until they’ve established a relationship with a prospect? Isn’t that too late?

Buyers are looking
A survey of B2B buyers by DemandGen Reports in 2011 revealed that 40% of buyers said they did their own internal research before they made initial contact with a sales representative. Another 23% went so far as to make a short list of possible vendor candidates before making contact.

Given that kind of information, it baffles me why so many companies are not making more efforts to create informational content and generate more awareness in the marketplace. 63% of buyers are looking for that kind of thing. Why wouldn’t you want to let them have it? It seems to me that if you want to make the cut and get on that short list of potential vendors more often, you’ve got to give the prospective buyers enough information – usually before you even know they are shopping!

Today, this is not especially difficult. Nor is it nearly as expensive as it might have been in the past. Businesses have access to wonderfully inexpensive but influential channels through which we can communicate our messages. At Print/Mail Consultants we use newsletters, a lead nurturing system, our web site, publications, speaking opportunities, blogs, Linked In, Twitter, Chirbit, Slideshare, and You Tube. We distribute informational content that helps prospective customers keep us in mind, provide some benefit with no expectation of payment, helps us with search engine ranking, and more.

And we are a tiny company with almost no budget! If we can manage all that, anyone can.

Brand awareness & lead nurturing works!
I can tell you from first-hand experience that this strategy that is built around informational content works great! Results are being produced. We regularly get unsolicited inquiries and referrals from people who read our newsletters or articles. We’ve grown our contact list by a factor of ten since we started. We get invited to participate in interviews, panels, and conferences which extends our audience even further.

Who do they find – you or your competitors?
Content marketing and lead nurturing are not big secrets. Your competition knows about these strategies. If you have competitors that are publishing content and building awareness for their brand, they are being found by those 63% of potential buyers who are using Google and Bing to find them. The competitors case studies and white papers are what the buyers are using to make their short lists.

If we agree that providing content that the B2B buyers say they want is a good idea, then it makes sense to get started at whatever level you can manage. The tools and are easily acquired. So is the knowledge – we do our best to give you access to various ideas and guidelines through those channels I mentioned above. Even the excuse of not enough time isn’t really valid anymore when there are organizations like ours that can provide custom content at reasonable prices.

If you have the authority, I urge you to make a decision today to up your game. If you don’t have the authority, have a talk with someone who can permit you to take some beginning steps. Then take some action to get the ball rolling.

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What scares you?

March 31st, 2012

From the Practical Stuff Newsletter – March 2012

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Worldwide economic collapse?
Terrorism?
Global warming?
Gas prices?

I’ve got something more for you to worry about – privacy breaches in your document center.

I was browsing an interesting web site last week produced by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. What caught my eye was a list of security breaches they have been compiling since 2005.

It got uncomfortable as I browsed some of the entries were descriptions of accidental privacy violations. It was easy to envision similar circumstances happening in document operations centers.

When we see vulnerabilities we help our clients fix them. But there are lots of document centers that we’ve never seen. There’s nothing we can do for them until we’re invited.

It’s Not Just the Hackers That Should Bother You
Many of us think about security breaches in the context of hackers who are actively trying to steal identities. Those invasions definitely happen. But the incidents that got to me were a lot more innocent. For instance:

A physician printed out patient information that was subsequently stolen out of his car – How many times have programmers or others in your organization taken work home with them? Once it leaves your environment (often without anyone else being aware) sensitive data can be at risk. The same thing can happen with laptops or flash drives that employees may take with them.

Documents containing private information are discovered in dumpsters or trash bags – What happens to the test print you created using live information or the damaged documents? It might be your policy to shred them, but are you sure that happens every time? I’ve seen employees take reams of documents awaiting pick-up from the shredding vendor home with them so their preschoolers can color on the back!

Printed names and social security numbers were found unattended in the lobby of a building – Do you deliver output to your customers? Are the pages locked up or are they stored in cartons and stacked in the reception area which may be unobserved for long periods of time?

Taxpayers received forms containing the social security number and tax refund of another taxpayer – We’ve seen countless stories like this where data from one person got merged with another’s name and address. Jams that cause duplexing to get out of sync, pages that get jumbled, and cutters that fail are just a few ways to make these kinds of mistakes.

A Nightmare Waiting to Happen
If stories like these are not keeping you up at night, maybe you don’t feel you are at risk.

I’m here to tell you that, regardless of what you may think, you probably ARE at risk of experiencing an accidental security breach of your customer’s private or sensitive information.

A False Sense of Security
I have had conversations with operations managers who tell me they had nothing to worry about because they had barcodes on their documents. After a little probing, they reveal that the barcodes upon which they are staking their reputation are OMR (optical mark recognition) – a series of hash marks that do NOT guarantee document integrity.

There are dozens of ways that security breaches can happen in most document operation workflows. Many can be prevented. Those that cannot be prevented can be caught before the damage is done.

So What? We Don’t Process HIPAA Data…
The accidental breach of any kind of information that might be considered private or sensitive by mail recipients can cause a lot of grief. Today’s trend of individualized and targeted messaging means we’re using more personal and demographic information as segmentation criteria or variable data in documents. This increases the risk even on applications like direct mail marketing where production controls have been relatively loose in the past.

I feel strongly about the need to raise the security standards in document centers of all kinds. Operations that ignore the risk are putting their companies, their reputations, and their jobs on the line. So I’ve put together a document security audit to help your company avoid the negative publicity, fines, and customer loss that can happen after a breach occurs.

There’s some new information and a short video that I urge you to take a few minutes to review. Then let me know what you think. If you can convince me that there is no risk of privacy breach in your organization I’ll leave you alone. Otherwise, we should probably have a conversation.

Sweet dreams!

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Have You Seen Kevin?

March 1st, 2012

Customer Retention NOW! newsletter – February 2012

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No, Kevin isn’t a wandering puppy or a lost child. In fact, he’s not lost at all. But he is extremely busy.

You see, Kevin works for a small to medium sized business. His company has less than 500 employees. In fact, Kevin most likely has fewer than 200 co-workers, maybe just a handful of them. This means that Kevin has lots of responsibilities. He may do some product development, general management, administration, customer support, and sales.

Kevin’s company has some great products and services. But they’ve got competition. In fact, some of their competitors are practically household names in the industry. These large competitors have internal marketing departments or a PR firm on retainer. They create advertisements, sponsor conferences, hold webinars, and are seemingly featured in every issue of the trade publications.

Unfortunately, Kevin’s small company doesn’t have those kinds of resources. Nor do they have a huge budget. His company has tried to publish a newsletter, do press releases, or write articles for trade magazines, but they never seem to be able to sustain those efforts. As a result, Kevin’s company is not always on the short list when a prospect decides which vendors to consider. They have missed out on some great business opportunities because they never even got a chance to make a presentation.

Buyer Personas
OK, by now you’ve probably figured out that Kevin isn’t a real person. He’s a persona – a detailed description of the ideal customer for our Custom Content, Brand Awareness, or Lead Nurturing products. A buyer profile if you will. But he’s real enough to us. That’s Kevin at the top of the page there.

Personas are helpful for making it easier to focus on what is important to your customers and prospects, visualizing the challenges they face, and understanding how they make decisions. Once you’ve got a good profile, you can develop a strategy for messaging and create content that your prospects find to be relevant, interesting, and valuable. Without a persona in mind companies tend to publish content that tries to speak to everyone. That’s usually not very effective.

We know that people like Kevin simply don’t have the time or the money to launch large-scale marketing campaigns. Their efforts are sporadic and they don’t really produce great results. And dealing with urgent issues always takes priority over producing quality content. Making an improvement in the way they promote their brand just isn’t going to happen under their current methods, despite their best intentions.

Practicing What We Preach
So what did we do? We started creating resources to help Kevin and his many counterparts at companies all across the country! Our newsletter, Customer Retention NOW!, is a good example. So are our 90-Second Content Marketing Lessons. Additionally, we’ve got guides, papers, tips, and presentations on lots of other subjects related to raising awareness for your brand and turning more prospects into customers. We’ve even got a guide about creating buyer personas!

All this material was produced specifically for the benefit of people like our fictional Kevin. We’re not trying to sell our products to huge multi-nationals. Our focus is on helping the smaller companies compete more often. The buyer persona has really helped us keep our eye on the ball.

Communicating with Kevin
We are constantly looking for Kevin. Now that we know what he looks like, how he thinks, and where he works, it’s pretty easy to recognize him. And once we start communicating with them, the Kevin’s of the world appreciate our understanding of their situation. Some of them become clients, others do not. That’s OK. We’ll keep generating tips and ideas to help them along. Someday, when they decide that the time they are spending to create content, mail newsletters, and develop automated lead nurturing strategies is keeping them from other important tasks, they will remember how we can help and they will call us before they even consider any other alternatives.

Everyone knows at least one Kevin. If he sounds familiar to you, do him a favor and forward this email to him. Let him take advantage of the free resources we provide if he joins our no-obligation mailing list. From your experience with us you already know that we’re pretty low key. There’s no high-pressure selling going on at Print/Mail Consultants. Your colleagues and acquaintances won’t be bombarded with spam and non-stop marketing messages just because you referred them.

If at some point in time you decide that we can help you out by creating case studies, white papers, articles, or newsletters, we’d love to chat with you about your objectives. In the meantime, we’ll continue to share our knowledge and bring you resources to help you achieve your brand awareness and lead nurturing goals on your own.

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Making Tough Outsourcing Decisions

March 1st, 2012

From the Practical Stuff newsletter – February, 2012

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Talking about outsourcing document print and/or mail operations can be a touchy subject. At in-plant operations, rumors about an outsourcing discussion can be a cause for concern among the staff. They start to wonder if their jobs are in jeopardy, and morale can be severely impacted.

This is especially true if the consensus among operations people is that any decision about sending work to an outside agency will be the result of purely a financial analysis. The staff people may suspect that their value as document industry professionals and their contributions to the success of corporate communications may not be accounted for in those columns of numbers that someone is using to decide the fate of their careers. In a great many cases, these concerns are justified.

Most of the companies I’ve known that have considered outsourcing their document operations have relied on internal financial analysts or people from the project management office to compile the facts and figures. Corporate management uses that data to weigh the pros and cons of shutting down internal document operations. The data is heavily oriented towards cost-cutting strategies. Other effects are not considered and are rarely even understood. Some of the information is provided by potential outsource service providers.

Input from document operations managers may or may not be solicited. But it is a rare case when the operations people believe they’ve had sufficient influence.

This is a predictable outcome of course. It is practically impossible for document operations managers to be objective when a decision to outsource could result in their own termination or the layoff of some or all of their staff. Corporate management recognizes this shortcoming. So input provided by the existing operations team is assumed to be somewhat prejudiced.

Unfortunately, unavoidable bias on the part of the expert resources (the operations staff and potential outsource vendors), combined with the financial focus of the people doing the assessment (finance or PMO), results in a set of findings that may be inaccurate or incomplete. Many an outsourcing strategy has been expensively reversed after companies found out that there were aspects that were not considered or facts that were skewed to favor a particular outcome.

“It’s not our core competency” – Oh Please!
There are many good reasons to consider transferring an in-house document operation to an outside vendor. “It’s not our core competency” is the one we hear the most. Those words have been used so much that one might be inclined to believe that this statement alone is justification for handing the print and mail operation over to someone else.

In fact, companies spend a lot of time doing things that are not their “core competency”, including such functions as accounting, marketing, legal, and information technology. One could argue that putting toner on paper may not be mentioned in the company mission statement. But satisfying customers probably is. And the communications that pass through document operations on their way to and from customers can have a huge impact on the level of satisfaction that can be achieved.

Will turning the responsibility of managing customer communications over to a third party improve the level of customer satisfaction that is affected by the documents, or will customer satisfaction be at risk? These are the questions that may not be able to be answered by the junior accountant or general project manager assigned to the outsourcing assessment task. This is because effective customer communications involves much more than the cost-per-page or the monthly postage spend.

Outsourcing may be best
It may sound like I’m against outsourcing. But that’s not the case. As I mentioned, there are some very good reasons why a company may decide that it is better for their business to have someone take over the customer communication duties. I’d be happy to discuss those reasons with you individually some time.

What I am against is outsourcing decisions that are based on incomplete or erroneous information. At Print/Mail Consultants we try to come in and do a complete assessment to help clients make the right decision. We have no preference one way or the other so both document operations and corporate management are assured of getting an unbiased report of facts and opinions.

Outsourcing is neither good nor bad. But making uninformed decisions about the way to communicate with customers? That is never good.

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We ARE! The 61 Percent!

January 26th, 2012

From the Customer Retention NOW! Newsletter – January, 2012

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Protesters

In a recent study, 61% of marketers said their two biggest challenges were producing quality content that engaged their readers and creating enough of it. That’s no surprise. We hear that all the time from our clients. The most frustrating thing is that we also hear the same thing from our prospects!

OK, just to be clear here – we create content for companies that need articles for newsletters, blogs, web sites, trade show collateral, and more. We are branching out into other industries, but many of our prospects are in the document industry where we have over 30 years of experience. So the relevancy part shouldn’t really be an issue.

We’re pretty much the solution for the 61 percenters!

However, there are some companies who really want to create their own content. If you’re one of them, I’ve put together 4 quick tips to help you write pieces that will keep your content relevant and engaging.

Be clear about your objectives
Do you want to entice prospects to visit your web site, schedule a demo, find out more about your products and services, or add their names to your mailing list? If you have only a vague idea like “make more sales” you need to refine your understanding of process prospects go through to become buyers.

Speak to your audience
Who is going to read your material? Corporate executives, financial people, operations folks, middle management? This is important so that you can choose topics that are important to your audience and use language that is appropriate for that group. Using a bunch of acronyms and geek speak to communicate with a CFO if probably a mistake.

Craft strong headlines or subject lines
I can’t tell you how many emails I get with a subject line that contains some variation of “Company X Newsletter for June”. Those don’t exactly spark my enthusiasm for reading the content. Issues, questions, and statements make for good for headlines and subject lines. I rarely start a writing project with the headline, but write it after I’ve finished the article. That way I’ll be sure the headline is consistent with the content. Don’t bait and switch!

Design for easy consumption
This has become even more important as more people use mobile devices. Try using short sentences, write in an active voice, and avoid long blocks of text. I use all kinds of things to break up my content into pieces that are easily scanned like sub-headings, bullets, text boxes, side bars, and embedded quotes. And please keep the length of the content appropriate for the intended purpose and distribution channel. We try to keep newsletter articles in the 500-750 word length for example.

There are plenty more aspects of creating quality content, but following these four suggestions can be a pretty good start. If you find yourself getting stuck or you just can’t keep up with the demand, give us a call. We’ll lift you out of that 61 percent!

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You’re Probably Missing Some Money

January 26th, 2012

Worried man with moneyFrom the Practical Stuff Newsletter – January, 2012

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Are you making money on every job you run in your shop? Before you answer, think about whether you are positive you’ve accounted for all the expenses associated with each job from the time it’s estimated until it is billed. There may be some parts of the workflow that are costing more than you planned.

Here are some examples:

• A sub-standard perforation in some customer-supplied paper causes printers to jam or pages to tear. These events lead to longer production times and manual operations to handle an excessive number of reprints.

• Jobs sometimes sit on a cart and get forgotten. At the end of the day you realize the driver from the presort house has come and gone so you meter the mail at full rate and make an extra trip to the post office to meet service level agreements.

• You based your postage quotes on 5-digit presort qualification but over time your customer’s mail volume has dwindled. You’re now paying 3-digit rates most of the time. Invoicing has never been updated.

• Jobs that were quoted based on machine inserting consistently include high page-count items. Inserter operators just walk them over to the manual inserting crew. No billing adjustment is made.

• Shoddy material causes inserter operators to slow the machine to avoid excessive jams. Labor for this portion of the workflow is 150% of the budgeted amount.

• Your estimating software is an Excel spreadsheet. Job steps sometimes don’t get included in the estimate – so they don’t get billed.

• You found a job jacket from six months ago in the warehouse behind a case of envelopes. The job got finished but never billed. How many other cases are there like this?

There are lots of small incidents that can happen during a work day that can increase your costs or cause you to under bill. You’ve probably built a cushion into the pricing to cover an occasional operational problem. But if you have chronic issues on repetitive jobs it can eat away at your profitability. Unless you have a workflow system that captures costs you may never know.

Inefficient manual workflows
Many shops I’ve visited spend lots of time doing things like keying information generated by one software system into another or running sequential processes over and over again. Estimates, order entry, job scheduling, postage deposits, inventory, and billing are all separate processes. Job cost data is randomly captured and rarely reviewed.

Besides being error-prone and inefficient, the scattering of information across an assemblage of spreadsheets, accounting software, and word processing systems makes analyzing profitability at the job level nearly impossible.

Fixing the problems
There are software solutions that help shops get a grasp on what is going on in document operations, how much it costs, and where changes need to be made. Installing one of these tools can streamline your workflow and collect all the relevant data in a single database. From there, you can run reports that will help you see where pricing needs to be adjusted.

These tools may also include some rules administration functionality that prevent costly quoting mistakes or they can issue alerts when something isn’t going as planned.

Identifying trouble spots and recommending solutions is one of our most-requested services. It often requires the objectivity of an outside expert to recognize the best opportunities to improve operational workflows. Please call us if you suspect you have profitability leaks that are hidden from view.

In an extremely competitive marketplace, small advantages can make a difference. Using available technology to make sure that every job is profitable may be just what you need to survive a rough patch or grow your business.

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Buyer Personas: Useful Information or Marketing Geek Speak?

December 29th, 2011

From the Customer Retention NOW! newsletter – December, 2011group of businesspeople

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If you shudder every time you think about some of the popular marketing lingo that gets thrown around these days, you’re not alone. Brand equity, content channels, CTR, effective frequency, symbiotic marketing, page views, permission marketing, drip campaigns, double opt-in, lead nurturing, viral marketing… the list goes on and on.

One term that used to really get me worried was “buyer persona”. It sounded like something that was part science and part psychological voodoo. I thought that trying to sell by taking advantage of a “persona” was one step away from subliminal advertising.

But it’s not like that at all. And, surprisingly, it’s not that hard to identify the personas of your customers and then use that information to improve the way you communicate with them. I found there are some distinct advantages to this approach – some I anticipated and some that I didn’t. If you take the time to consider your own buyer personas you might recognize similar benefits.

I’ve written a short guide that will lead you through the steps you need to take to get a handle on how your customers and prospects differ from one another. This guide will not only show you what to do, but will also give you some ideas about how to use what you’ve learned.

Download the Buyer Persona Development Guide.

Inexpensive and do-able
The first thing you need to realize is that you’ve already got everything you need to develop buyer personas (or “profiles” if that term is more comfortable for you). Do not go out and spend money on large-scale surveys, telemarketers, or outside lists. You don’t need those things – at least not to get started – and you’ll only make the process more complicated than it needs to be.

Next, put aside all your anxieties and insecurities about doing a controlled scientific analysis. Yes, there are companies that will happily charge you large sums of money to conduct this kind of study in a standardized and documented environment. You may decide that’s what you need at some point. But why not start with something a lot simpler, even if it does involve some intuitiveness in place of cold hard analytics?

Finally, be willing to be just a little creative. One of the steps I recommend involves inventing some facts and generalizations about each of your buyer personas. This is pure fiction, so let your mind wander. You won’t be acting on any of these generalizations directly but it really helps – especially months down the line when you are considering content and campaigns. By then the details of your buyer persona development project may be a little fuzzy. Imagining the personas as real individuals definitely makes these processes easier.

I’m always here to help, so if you get stuck just let me know. I’m also interested in hearing how you thought your project went or how you applied the Buyer Persona Development Guide to fit your particular situation. Just drop me an email to tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you.

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Document Operations Strategies: 2012

December 27th, 2011

From the Practical Stuff newsletter – December, 2011

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This is the time of year that I normally write about strategies to be considered by document print and mail operations for the coming year. There are usually some trends I’ve been watching. Most years I can make some educated guesses about best practices that will help our clients and other newsletter subscribers be more successful over the next 12 months.

This year that’s going to be tough to do.

The only trend I can honestly see for sure is one of continued uncertainty. And most of it is not our fault! Like practically every other industry you could name, the document industry is at the mercy of events that are far beyond our control.

In the United States, we’ve got a federal government that doesn’t seem to be able to function for the benefit of the citizens. There are extreme political influences that are skewing the judgment of elected officials to the point that even simple decisions are in danger, for fear of giving an advantage to the other side or losing votes in an election year.

The most obvious victims of government gamesmanship in our industry are the US Postal Service along with the companies and individuals who are directly affected by how the USPS is structured and how people use it. There will probably be continued ideas, plans, predictions and threats flying around in 2012. Maybe there will be some significant movement on funding, service standards, and facilities before the elections in November. Maybe not.

Worldwide, there’s the economy, social unrest, big money influences, and power struggles that will undoubtedly have an effect on our businesses in 2012.

So what do we do?

My advice is to stay as informed as possible and make adjustments when necessary.

All that being said, I do think we should be cautious about holding onto long-standing practices and philosophies that may not be as relevant in 2012 and beyond. Like it or not, the way humans communicate with one another is changing. We need to recognize what is not working so well anymore and create new approaches.

As they relate to the document business (or the communications business if you prefer), here are a few idle thoughts about the coming year. You can wash these down with your eggnog…

Communication Channels
Physical documents will continue to play a part. But there’s no way that anyone can rely upon only printed materials anymore. Expect printed documents to play a smaller part.

Be open to using a combination of methods to communicate with customers. Concentrate on finding ways of coordinating all those little snippets of conversations and indicators that are scattered across multiple platforms into a comprehensive customer profile and communication history.

Personalization
One-size-fits-all no longer meets the expectations of customers. They want to be treated like individuals and they want to communicate on a schedule they prescribe. This means going beyond the simple practice of plugging variable data fields into documents. For an industry built on high-volume batch processing, this is a new direction.

Accuracy
As communications become more individualized and on-demand, accuracy is becoming more important than ever. And privacy is a huge concern. If you’re in the business of creating or distributing documents, 2012 is the year to assess your document integrity processes and risk of violating customer privacy.

Volume-Based Decisions
As print and mail volumes decrease, decisions about investments in hardware, software, and facilities to support document production are going to be questioned. Interest in consolidating or outsourcing some of these functions may be high on the list of cost-cutting measures considered by finance managers. Managers of in-house operations that believe their departments may be in jeopardy will want to have current facts, figures, and justifications for maintaining an in-house capability within easy reach. They should also be ready to suggest strategies that lower their costs or increase their value to their companies.

2012 may be another distressing year for the document industry. But it is sure to be interesting!

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