Direct Marketing Magazine May 2016

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Data is the essence of marketing

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Cognitive commerce: The new creative disruptor

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vol. 29 • No. 5 • May 2016

The Authority on Data-Driven Engagement & Operations

Driving car sales with data-based market analytics Gary Tannyan

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Jason Easton, General Motors’ director of sales, service and marketing for the Toronto/GTA market, is on a mission to incorporate data analytics into the company’s everyday thinking and decision making.

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Cognitive commerce is the new creative destruction for marketers Vol. 29 | No. 5 | May 2016

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EDITOR Sarah O’Connor - sarah@dmn.ca

Big Data analytics: Isn’t it still just analytics?

PRESIDENT Steve Lloyd - steve@dmn.ca DESIGN / PRODUCTION Jennifer O’Neill - jennifer@dmn.ca Advertising Sales Mark Henry - mark@dmn.ca CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Laurie Dillon-Schalk Patrick Bartlett Steve Holder Richard Boire Sharmin Kent Stephen Brown Craig Piotto Leigh-Ann Clarke Alison Whiteside Shaunna Conway

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Data intelligence driving key decisions for market trailblazers

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Data Analytics

Data intelligence driving key decisions for market trailblazers

By Leigh-Ann Clarke

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ntelligence: According to Merriam-Webster it’s “the ability to learn, understand or to deal with new or trying situations.”

Intelligence is what market trailblazers like data centre giant Q9 and health benefits manager Express Scripts Canada have in massive proportions.

Express Scripts is a Fortune 50 company with over $100 billion USD in annual revenue and is one of the top 20 largest companies in the North America. They have served thousands ❱ DMN.ca

of Canadian pharmacy patients over the past few years, as the company transforms the way organizations and employees think about and participate in their drug benefit plan.

Steve Nowak, director, sales & marketing of Express Scripts Canada, believes that their commitment to data intelligence informs their marketing strategies when it comes to acquiring new patients and better managing patient outcomes, giving them a huge competitive advantage.

“We diligently track marketing analytics across all channels. Our

data analysis supported the creation of clearer, more direct new member acquisition communications, resulting in greater member enrolment in the Express Scripts Canada Pharmacy. We also gleaned from our data that our members want us to be more active on social media. For example, the data indicated that they want us to post more information on health-related topics. Our blogs, tweets and LinkedIn posts have focused on the disease states that the data tell us are most relevant to our members. This element of member satisfaction has also generated positive

changes to our member outreach processes,” says Nowak.

Q9, a BCE company acquired for $1.1 billion in 2012, has data centres across Canada and houses a secretive and secure who’s-who of corporate information. Peter Kerr, director marketing communications at Q9, offers a sentiment similar to Nowak’s.

Kerr, whose career beginnings were as a database marketer, knows that gathering market intelligence and interpreting it into go-forward strategies that his customers will buy is critical.

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Data Analytics

“Analyze what channels are working and understand that the application of ongoing intelligence leads to continuous improvement.” years ago data-driven marketing existed almost exclusively in the direct mail and telemarketing fields, where database marketing emerged. The data coming out of digital campaigns today is very similar, but on steroids. The challenge now isn’t accessing the data—it’s knowing what information to look at, given how much is available.”

Toronto-based advertising agency Clever Samurai has the formidable task of guiding and supporting both these trailblazers with their marketing and communications strategies including new national campaigns for each. And with data intelligence at the core of the campaigns, guessing what will work is not a strategy requirement.

Stuart Lewis, president and CEO at Clever Samurai, says, “sophisticated

One of Q9’s Calgary Data Halls.

Kerr explains: “There is a disconnect in the marketplace in terms of how IT decision makers want to be communicated with and how technology companies speak to them.

Using analyst research reports, digital analytics and marketing automation tools like Pardot, we are always able to drill down to understand this communication gap and transition to more customer-benefit messaging.”

For Q9, who has just repositioned its brand and launched a new customer acquisition campaign, ongoing data review is critical. Kerr feels that “25 may 2016

sustainable new business wins.”

In today’s digital marketing world, Steve Nowak believes that providing ongoing content that delivers his members value is akin to increasing profitability. “Data analytics provide us with insight into how to create better, more targeted content. Our content is relevant and valuable to our audience because the data helps us come up with our next blog or our next tweet. If we don’t leverage our marketing data then we are missing out on key opportunities to improve our company’s marketing strategy and ultimately our return on investment. “ Kerr echoes the sentiment and believes his content strategy was a key decision point in Q9’s repositioned brand. “Developing a content strategy in

“If we don’t leverage our marketing data, then we are missing out on key opportunities to improve our return on investment.” and market-leading organizations understand that anticipating customer requirements, even before the customer does, can be a winning formula. In the case of both Q9 and Express Scripts Canada, they absolutely have a better mousetrap than their competitors. The key is to simplify messaging for their complex offerings, constantly analyze what channels are working and understand that the application of ongoing intelligence leads to continuous improvement. It removes the guess work and allows for incremental and

B2B technology marketing is a daunting task. We’ve been able to short-cut trial and error by understanding what information IT and line-of-business decision makers need at each stage of the buying cycle. This has made content decisions far easier.”

Underpinning Q9’s strategy is their new Clever Samurai developed ad campaign, which delivers the customer-focused message of “make your business thrive.” Express Scripts Canada’s campaign messaging promotes better health decisions for plan members, while managing and

reducing drug benefit costs for plan sponsors.

“We’ve got clients that understand the notion of channel analysis, ABC testing, lead scoring and brand building,” says Lewis. “But, we don’t have the luxury of simply building these brands, we’re here to ensure that potential customers sign deals with these great organizations. And there’s one thing that’s easy to measure—you sold the deal or you didn’t.”

Kerr does have a cautionary tale regarding the use of data. “All of the data available today is fantastic and I get very excited by it. The trick is to not fall victim to analysis paralysis.

Marketers still need to make decisions quickly and sometimes it can be difficult to see the forest from the trees. Start out at a high level with key metrics and drill down where you need to. It is a more practical approach and you can still be market responsive.”

Nowak points out that data isn’t only for new business wins. It also helps Express Scripts Canada better manage patient outcomes.

“The analysis of key member data pointed to the need for a better first touch point with our members. This resulted in the creation of a better, more streamlined member welcome experience.”

While both Q9 and Express Scripts have very successful and very different businesses, one thing they have in common is this: Merriam-Webster might just add their names to the definition of intelligence.

Leigh-Ann Clarke is director of sales, North America for 360 Leads. The company provides qualified sales opportunities through digital, direct, inbound and outbound services. She has been with 360 Leads since 2014, following her progressive management career at Yellow Pages Group.

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Data Analytics

Data is the essence of marketing

By Steve Holder

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y now, most organizations know that the ability to understand what data means in a business context drives differentiation, competitive advantage and a fatter bottom line. And we’re generating and capturing more data than ever before, in structured and unstructured forms.

All this data can overwhelm companies already managing thousands of campaigns per year or retailers dealing with hundreds of thousands of product SKUs. Then there’s the growth of emerging marketing channels like mobile and social, adding increasing layers of complexity for marketers setting out to monetize their customer information and transform data into a competitive advantage.

There are many tools to help us understand this data and put it into a context where it becomes actionable information. And though the terms ‘business intelligence,’ ‘data visualization,’ and ‘analytics’ are often lumped together or used interchangeably, in reality they’re three very different, though related, disciplines.

Three disciplines Business intelligence (BI) is the older of the disciplines. In fact, the term was first coined in 1865 by Richard Millar Devens, describing the ability to collect information and react to it accordingly. BI as we understand it was defined by Garner Group analyst Howard Dresner in 1989 as a term for technologies that provide fact-based ❱ DMN.ca

decision support.

BI allows an enterprise to drill down into past performance—by region, by store, by product, by sales rep, by any discretely collected data point.

Data visualization (DV) applies a visual and graphical interface to the data. This allows a user to see things in the data that might be impossible to discover by poring over BI reports, especially as data volumes grow. The ability to visualize, explore and pivot on data is the key difference between DV and BI. Analytics gives a user the ability to anticipate and predict relationships in the data; for example, how a 20% decrease in promotional budget in a certain region would affect revenue or who we should target a discount to in order to raise customer satisfaction.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of analytics. Descriptive analytics are the simplest and are used to provide straightforward information or answer the question ‘what has happened?’ Predictive analytics up the game and use mathematical techniques to model and forecast the data to understand the future or answer the question ‘what could happen?’ Prescriptive analytics take it a step further and use statistical models and machine learning techniques to optimize the possible outcomes and answer the question ‘what should we do?’

The short version: BI is simple reports; DV is visual exploration; analytics is optimizing the outcome.

In a retail context, for example, BI can tell an enterprise how many units of a particular stock-keeping unit

(SKU) were sold in July; DV can help determine that sales are affected by customer vicinity and promotional activity; analytics, on the other hand, predict that a specific promotion delivered to customers in a particular postal code will drive up sales while other promotions will not. Analytics provides the why behind the what.

If you use Google Trends as a barometer, interest in BI is waning; the use of the term has been in a slow but steady decline. By the same token, DV and analytics are on the uptick yet all three have relevance and applicability for organizations today. Many organizations are using all three disciplines for different departments and different purposes within the enterprise. For example, logistics may be using simple BI tools to determine the frequency and number of deliveries to each store, while marketing is using an advanced analytics platform to predict the sales impact based on promotions used to boost sales. And that’s ok, but it’s important to create a closed loop decisions system so that the forecast funnels back into the BI solution to ensure logistics and manufacturing are prepared to deliver.

How marketers are capitalizing on advanced analytics The rise of data has undoubtedly improved the science of marketing but in a world of seemingly infinite data possibilities, one thing is true: not all data is created equal or capable of yielding equal returns back to an organization. While technology is at a unique stage where it can consume

more data than ever before, and at a rapid pace, when faced with decisions about which data to connect and bridges to build between systems, management will always need to prioritize.

The lens through which to view those decisions always needs to be from the customer first. A data strategy which traces the interactions that a customer has with your brand—both sales and service, direct and indirect are essential to understand because they shape the brand experience and resulting loyalty and share of wallet. The outer layers of information (and there are many) which don’t directly touch a customer are always secondary in a customercentric business model, so prioritize them accordingly. Be excellent at customer-level data availability, freshness, quality and governance and your customer insights will be exceptional too. That data will form the foundation of solid customer interactions.

Marketers who are nimble at converting data into insight through analytics will stand to gain a great competitive advantage but those that take an integrated analytics approach and put analytics at the core of their business stand to benefit most.

As the national practice lead for analytics at SAS Canada, Steve Holder is responsible for driving the software go to market plan for SAS and providing customers with thought leadership around analytics, BI and Big Data. Steve is focused on defining creative opportunities to apply SAS technology to drive tangible benefits for clients. @holdersm May 2016

INTEGRATED MEDIA

& NG

INTEGRATED MEDIA

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NC.

AVANT I MAG I

NC.

AVANT I MAG I

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Avant Imaging & Integrated Media Inc. 205 Industrial Parkway North, Aurora, ON, L4G 4C4 [t] 416.798.7110

[tf] 877.841.2446

[f] 905.841.2177

[e] help@iim.com

Avant Imaging & Integrated Media Inc. 205 Industrial Parkway North, Aurora, ON, L4G 4C4 [t] 416.798.7110

[tf] 877.841.2446

[f] 905.841.2177

[e] help@iim.com

Dear Marketers, AIIM changes its name, but NOT its brand to better reflect our transformative business services.

From: Avant Imaging & Information Management Inc. (AIIM) To: Avant Imaging & Integrated Media Inc. (AIIM) Dear Marketers, As business has its evolved over lastits 25brand years, so AIIM.reflect Meeting exceeding customer expectations AIIM changes name, buttheNOT tohas better ourand transformative business services.was our mandate from the beginning, and is still our guiding principle today, delivering nothing short of exceptional customer solutions.

From: Avant Imaging & Information Management Inc. (AIIM)

Technology has been&the cornerstoneMedia of AIIM’s To: Avant Imaging Integrated Inc.growth (AIIM)and service evolution. Pushing the limits, AIIM has pioneered print on demand applications since the early 1990s – well before the commonality of “just in time” printing.

As business has evolved over the last 25 years, so has AIIM. Meeting and exceeding customer expectations was our mandate AIIM built a strong foundation based ontoday, the industry’s best practices andoftechnologies in the hands of craftsmen. from has the beginning, andbusiness is still our guiding principle delivering nothing short exceptional customer solutions.

Today, AIIM still believes in these principles and has diversified into providing customers a suite of proprietary software Technology has been“AIIM the cornerstone of “AIIM AIIM’s ViciMap”. growth andAIIM service evolution. the limits, has pioneered print onour solutions, including Connex” and continues to bePushing an industry leaderAIIM in solutions by integrating demand applications since with the early – well before the commonality of “just innon-traditional time” printing. tools such as Print Smart customers’ business needs their1990s communication to deliver choices. In addition, AIIM has built a strong business on the industry’s best practices and technologies in the hands of craftsmen.

Analytics, Data Analytics, A/Rfoundation Augmentedbased Reality, AIIM Social Media Amplification and Web-to-Print provide custom Today, still believes thesewhile principles and has diversified into providing customers a suite of proprietary software deliveryAIIM channels to eachinclient providing an ROI that is real! solutions, “AIIM Connex” and “AIIM ViciMap”.

AIIM continues be an industry in solutions bytrue integrating our Our clientsincluding are our partners, and together, we succeed in executing criticaltostrategies whenleader working together in customers’ business needs with their communication to deliver choices. In addition, non-traditional tools such as Print Smart partnerships.

Analytics, Data Analytics, A/R Augmented Reality, AIIM Social Media Amplification and Web-to-Print provide custom Every project begins with client understanding.

We strive to learn delivery channels to each while providing an ROI that more is real!about your business objectives, allowing us to identify the right direct marketing service that will enhance your print and direct marketing programs to deliver the best results.

Our clients are our partners, and together, we succeed in executing critical strategies when working together in true To accurately reflect the solutions that AIIM provides today and in the future, we’ve changed our name from AIIM: Avant partnerships.

Imaging and Information Management Inc. to AIIM: Avant Imaging and Integrated Media Inc. Every project begins with understanding. We strive to learn more about your business objectives, allowing us to identify the We forward in continuing to provide you with integrated that exceed yourresults. expectations. rightlook direct marketing service that will enhance your print andprint directmarketing marketingsolutions programs to will deliver the best To accurately reflect the solutions that AIIM provides today and in the future, we’ve changed our name from AIIM: Avant Sincerelly,and Information Management Inc. to AIIM: Avant Imaging and Integrated Media Inc. Imaging We look forward in continuing to provide you with integrated print marketing solutions that will exceed your expectations.

Mario Giorgio Sincerelly, CEO

Mario Giorgio

Frank Giorgio President

Frank Giorgio

aiim.com CEO

AN INTEGRATED MEDIA COMPANY President

aiim.com

AN INTEGRATED MEDIA COMPANY

Data Analytics

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Gary Tannyan

Driving car sales with data-based market analytics

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© General Motors

Data Analytics

Opposite page: Jason Easton, General Motors’ director of sales, service and marketing for the Toronto/GTA market. This page: A selection of Chevrolet’s 2016 fleet.

By Allison Whiteside

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here are few tougher markets for selling new vehicles than Toronto. With its mix of young renters, culturally diverse suburbanites and wealthy older families, the Greater Toronto Area is very complex, hypercompetitive and much different from other parts of the country. No one knows that better than Jason Easton, General Motors’ director of sales, service and marketing for the Toronto/ GTA market. And a recent analysis of Chevrolet buyers drove home the distinction, according to Easton.

“We know how to reach our loyal customer base, those consumers who already buy Chevrolet vehicles, consume our media and engage with the brand,” says Easton. “But in urban centres like Toronto, where consumers behave very differently, different approaches are required.

This is something that our senior leaders fundamentally knew, but no one had shown them quantifiable and actionable data to support that.”

Easton, a professional engineer, is a recent convert to the senior marketing team. Having worked at GM for more than a decade in a variety of demanding roles—from assembly plant engineer to communications manager to lead strategist—he moved into marketing in July 2015 to spearhead GM’s strategies in Toronto and “move the needle for Chevrolet.”

As a Millennial who lives in the heart of the city and is connected within Toronto’s social fabric, he was a natural fit to start thinking differently about new approaches for this market.

In just a few months, he’s begun to shake things up with his data-based approach to decision making.

Instead of focusing on aspirational targets at the national or regional level, Easton wants to map a may 2016

different course, using data to better understand Chevrolet’s current car buyers at the local level. “Who’s going to drive sales today and tomorrow?” is the question he posed for himself.

“There can be disconnects between aspirational brand targets and our target sales group. And we need to bridge those gaps.”

Last spring, GM contacted Environics Analytics (EA), the marketing services and data analytics company, for help analyzing its Toronto car buyers.

Examining the car buyers around GM’s 18 Chevrolet dealers in the GTA, EA analysts identified seven distinct target groups—with names like “City Renters” and “Multicultural Suburbanites”—and provided detailed information on their demographics, media usage and psychographic social values.

Getting to know Chevy fans The study revealed which segments accounted for the most sales of Chevrolet vehicles in Toronto, which were underperforming and which offered the greatest opportunity for growth. The data also helped GM plan Chevrolet’s media spend, showing that City Renters, for instance, were heavy consumers of TV, newspapers and direct mail—insights that would help dealers determine the best media plan to reach this buying segment.

Meanwhile, the data revealed that radio was a better channel for reaching Multicultural Suburbanites.

But the analysis also aided Toronto dealers in their local marketing efforts, with maps indicating the concentration of Chevrolet target groups in each dealer’s market area and the two or three primary target groups in their audience. Last November, Easton and his team took their data findings on the road, spending

countless hours reviewing the EA data with each Toronto dealer, along with other complementary research and analytics. The presentations highlighted the differences between target groups so dealers could understand the nuances as well as the commonalities within their market in order to be more efficient in their marketing efforts. Most dealers plan to use the information in their 2016 marketing plans, says Easton.

“We wanted to make the information dealer friendly so it could be actionable and used for localized marketing plans,” says Easton.

“Instead of paddling against the current, we should first be marketing to those consumers who are already receptive to our brand. And our dealers want to move the needle through these local opportunities.”

Easton envisions building a “culture around analytics” that will impact decision making at the national, regional and local levels. Already his marketing team in Toronto has declined sponsorship opportunities because they didn’t align with their target audiences. Last October, his marketing team revamped an age-old new car sales tactic, the test drive, with a customized program to promote its Chevrolet Cruze brand with a “mini road trip” aimed at Millennials and young, budget-conscious families. Prospective buyers could sign up for a test drive by going online or sending a text; they could also bring along a couple of family members and friends for the ride and even request loading the car with their favourite music and snacks.

“We received amazing customer feedback that our approach was completely unexpected and delightful,” Easton says. “We used targeted young Millennial segments that exist in

downtown marketing areas, and the EA data informed that effort.”

Shifting away from a mass mindset Admittedly, not everyone has enthusiastically embraced the targeted approach that the analytics have informed. “Change is hard. And it’s harder for some than others to change from the mass mindset to the targeted mindset,” Easton observes. “But the foundation of the EA data is to determine who we are already selling vehicles to and where can we find more of them.”

Despite some of the challenges, Easton says he’s encouraged by the customer insights revealed in the EA data. Although dealer results from their data-driven approach for 2016 won’t be available for some time, Easton’s already promoting its use in other markets, including Vancouver and Calgary. “If we can successfully use this approach here in Toronto, we can do it anywhere,” he says.

Meanwhile, other marketers at GM Canada have taken note of the EA findings in Toronto and have asked for similar analyses for their efforts.

Easton, the engineer turned marketer, is only too happy to oblige.

“One of my secret missions is to enhance our overall capability and willingness to incorporate analytics into our everyday thinking and decision making,” he says. “So I’m very excited that the approach we’ve taken in Toronto is spreading. I’m happy it’s starting to influence how people in the company think.”

Allison Whiteside is the director of business

development in the consumer packaged goods, automotive, federal and provincial government, health care and not-for-profit practice at Environics Analytics.

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Data Analytics

Best practices for using data to unify your sales and marketing departments

By Sharmin Kent

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nterprise companies have come to rely on sales and marketing to drive innovation across organizations, which has compelled the two departments to work together more closely than ever before. Because sales and marketing teams haven’t always seen eye to eye, however, efforts to align them are often complicated.

Aligning sales and marketing teams isn’t easy. But when those disjointed efforts are connected by data and clear communication at the leadership level, companies of any size can build a consistent and reliable sales process, as well as craft a better customer experience. These two outcomes can result in a faster sales cycle, more closed deals and longer customer relationships.

Why data has become the unifier between sales and marketing Despite the robust marketing technology market and the rapidly growing sales technology space, the gaps between sales and marketing systems remain. It’s a reality that creates friction in the buying experience, contributes to an inconsistent and inefficient sales process and costs companies deals.

Those gaps don’t just impact sales; they impact marketing as well. With marketers being saddled with the responsibilities of sales, tech or even finance executives, the traditional attributes of marketers—creativity, ability to craft and identify trends—are stifled. It’s a problem for creatives whose core job functions are being crowded out by more administrative tasks.

Marketers don’t want to be told how to think or how to use marketing technology. According to Sean Brady, president of the Americas for marketing company Emarsys, larger companies need to take the lead in disrupting sales and marketing tech.

“There’s going to be disruption,” he said. “You have these big companies that were not marketing-focused

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to begin with acquiring marketing technologies. But they expect the marketing customers to engage with them the same way the rest of their portfolio engages with them.”

A positive customer experience begins with the team members who serve those customers—that means providing departments with overall guidelines but allowing for autonomy as well.

Sales and marketing teams must also align their goals to ensure all viable opportunities in a pipeline are pursued both aggressively and consistently. Leveraging marketing and sales data can enable sales leaders to broaden their view of the sales pipeline and gain insight into every aspect of the process, from high-level team progress to individual team member and deal progress. Applying data-driven knowledge can also help craft marketing content and messaging to attract the right buyers at the right time.

Using data to influence the customer experience As customer experience continues to become the centre of the sales process, the efforts of an aligned sales and marketing team are more important than ever. When sales and marketing employ data to help them personalize customer experience throughout the sales cycle, a company’s efforts are more effective.

According to a recent Forrester study, marketing automation software contributes 44% of the sales pipeline via marketing programs, compared to 34% from companies without it.

If a company’s sales tech stack isn’t optimized to accommodate and leverage data from its marketing tech stack, the existing gaps between sales and marketing will only widen.

Investing in tech and processes that use prospect data gives sales and marketing teams the power to deliver value with every interaction.

Marketing automation software does more than just bridge the gap

between demand generation and the handoff to sales; it offers valuable information that enables marketers to guide buyers—and the salespeople who serve them—further into the sales process. Benchmarking performance across shared sales and marketing metrics also ensures that the overall sales process is both effective and efficient.

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Using customer intelligence to help guide departments Although data will ultimately serve as the glue that holds sales and marketing together, it’s customer intelligence that will help the two teams work together seamlessly. Using prospect and customer data to inform companies on customer behavior makes it easier to personalize the sales and post-sale process and build longterm customer loyalty. But consistency is key: making customer intelligence an integral element of a sales and marketing platform is critical.

Another purpose of using data and technology in sales and marketing is to help companies forecast the benefits of spending revenue. When determining which tech to choose, sales and marketing leaders must work together to answer the following questions:

Answering these questions allows sales and marketing leaders to create a shared roadmap that guides both prospect efforts and the target buyer journey.

While the battle between sales and marketing persists, engaging leadership in both teams and using data and analytics to create a common sales and marketing process will make it easier for team members to adopt the technology and techniques necessary to exceed customer expectations. It’s up to sales and marketing to work together and improve customer experience—that’s the most effective way to maintain a healthy business.

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How do our customers engage with our products and on which platforms?

Should advertising budget be moved to customer growth and retention?

Which customers are spending and how are they spending? How can we get our existing customers to move to the next level of monetary value?

Sharmin Kent is the content and

communications manager at TinderBox. Find her on Twitter at @STMKent.

May 2016

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Data Analytics

Cognitive commerce is the new creative destruction for marketers

By Shaunna Conway

T

oday’s rate and pace of technological innovation is blistering. In its wake entire industries are being tipped askew; some are converging, some emerging and others are being overtaken by new competitors.

Just consider the impact of Uber’s mobile app business model on the taxi industry, or Airbnb’s online marketplace on the hospitality industry.

Chief marketing officers (CMOs) are on the front line in this age of digital disruption. Indeed, they’re more aware of potential pitfalls than CxOs in any other role. For the recent IBM Institute for Business Value’s special report Redefining Markets: Insights from the Global C-suite Study – The CMO Perspective IBM surveyed 723 CMOs from around the globe and found: ❯❯ 67% of CMOs anticipate much more convergence in the next few years; and ❯❯ 60% of CMOs expect more competition will come from outside their industry versus from within.

How are CMOs navigating these turbulent times?

Those who are market leaders are embracing this creative destruction; striving to make their organizations more digitally literate, deepening their engagement with customers and injecting more data-driven insights into every marketing decision they make.

It’s the customer journey that matters, not just the destination While 82% of leading CMOs are studying the customer journey more carefully—all with an eye to developing deeper, richer customer experiences— they are also becoming more data savvy.

They realize that analytics tools are key to more accurate, targeted marketing strategies; allowing them to better engage with ever more sophisticated customers.

With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data ❱ DMN.ca

created every day—the equivalent of 170 newspapers being delivered daily to every man, woman and child on the planet—CMOs understand that only data-driven decision making will allow them to deliver relevant, timely customer interactions on a large scale. By leveraging predictive The North Face’s new interactive online shopping tool (currently in beta) is powered by Watson and built by Watson developer partner Fluid. and prescriptive analytics, retailers could type: “I need a jacket for a are better able to identify the best to gain superior results, it also helps Vermont ski trip.” They are then asked marketing plans and pilot cognitive them understand which actions will refining questions on factors such as technologies, which have the potential build more profitable relationships with gender, activity and time of year, and to reinvent customer interaction. customers, how to generate better ROI then receive a recommendation that Indeed, 69% of leading marketers are from marketing programs and how to meets their specific usage and climate leveraging predictive analytics and 45% transform the flood of social media data needs. Deep insight gathered through are using prescriptive analytics all to into successful marketing strategies. these responses will enable the retailer explore new trends in the marketplace.

According to one of the participants to create a more engaging shopping Cognitive commerce is also an in IBM’s CMO study, Lisa Claes, experience. Currently in beta, the emerging trend that harnesses chief customer officer at ING Bank: tool has yielded positive feedback and the power of data and analytics to “Industry competition is heating results. provide businesses with a better up and businesses must sharpen In Canada, Buffalo David Bitton—a understanding of their customers in their focus on the customer or risk global fashion brand headquartered in increasingly new ways by learning losing them to the competition. By Montreal, Quebec—is looking at ways about their specific behaviours, embracing the latest analytic and the company can integrate cognitive personalities and emotions, as well cognitive commerce technologies, technology capabilities to analyze as identifying which brand messages marketers can tap into this explosion massive amounts of unstructured resonate most. These insights allow of data to deliver a personalized data to further extend its business marketers to build relationships and customer experience precisely at the performance. By better understanding interactions that foster stronger right time and place.” consumer behaviours, the retailer can customer engagement.

You can find “Redefining deliver more personalized products and Boundaries” at ibm.biz/cmostudy, services that meet growing consumer The disrupted has become the or via the IBV tablet apps on iOS and expectations. Until recently, the disruptor Android. company used advanced analytics and Take the North Face, an outdoor performance management tools within apparel, equipment and footwear Shaunna Conway is IBM’s commerce leader for their business channels to understand company which recently launched Canada. With over 10 years of demonstrated sales trends and increase product and an interactive online shopping tool success in consulting, services, sales and vendor performance insight. With powered by Watson and built by leading teams at IBM, Shaunna brings energy cognitive commerce, Buffalo David Watson developer partner Fluid. and vision to her clients. Her team’s primary Bitton expects to directly connect to Using IBM Watson’s natural language mission is to deliver innovative marketing, their customers, stay competitive and processing ability, the tool will customer analytics, e-commerce, portal, increase market share. help consumers discover and refine payments, procurement and B2B solutions, Not only does marketing analytics online product selections based on all in support of helping customers grow and cognitive commerce provide their specific responses to a series of and engineer deeper relationships with their marketers with the insights they need questions. For example, a shopper customers.

May 2016

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Data Analytics

Big Data analytics: Isn’t it still just analytics?

Tactics must evolve but the mission hasn’t changed

By Richard Boire

A

s ‘Big Data’ continues to dominate discussions in the analytics space, along comes the notion of ‘Big Data Analytics’ to add confusion in the marketplace. If big data analytics warrants its own discipline, then its methodologies and approaches should be significantly different from what has been used in traditional analytics. On closer examination, I would argue that the analytics at the heart of big data analytics remain fundamentally the same, but require even greater focus on the core business problem to be solved.

Big data has always been with us, it just wasn’t discussed as widely as it is today. The traditional users of big data were direct marketing firms and credit card companies but the growth of digital technology and new devices have altered the paradigm so that many organizations now have easy access to large volumes of information. Technologies like Hadoop have facilitated the processing and consumption of ever-increasing volumes of data.

Indeed, data scientists—or ‘data miners’ in the last-century vernacular—have always contended with volume. And they have always earned their salaries through their ability to transform raw source data into meaningful insights. In any exercise, creating a meaningful analytical file is still the most important first step but now data scientists must also be able to both identify the business problem and create a data environment that provides the information foundation to develop a business solution.

The new reality Before the digital explosion of the Internet and social media, a typical project would involve the data miner asking for as much data as possible. The rationale was to allow the data miner to filter out all the noise in the data which represented structured data. But in our big data world, massive volumes of semi-structured and unstructured may 2016

data no longer lend themselves to this approach. The initial ’ask’ of the data needs to be filtered.

Historically, raw data consisted of transaction records, customer files, campaign data and, perhaps, geodemographic data. All this data was structured but the information was meaningless in its raw state. Data miners had to ’work the data,’ applying an extensive variable derivation to process it all into meaningful variables or fields. It wasn’t unusual for this type of data transformation process to generate several hundred variables.

By contrast, in much of today’s exploding digital environment, the data arrive either in semi-structured or unstructured format. The newer challenge for data scientists is to first convert this raw data into meaningful variables. Extraction tools now allow the data scientist to identify key fields and information without knowing the data structure or location of the information. The use of NOSQL databases and programming languages such as Python, R and Java provide one approach to transforming semistructured and unstructured data into some meaningful format.

But this extraction is meaningless unless a further transformation occurs. Data scientists need to remember the business problem they are trying to solve.

For example, if I am trying to understand how engagement with Coca-Cola in social media has changed both prior to and after a marketing promotion, I might do the following: 1. Extract all tweets with keywords related to Coca-Cola that occurred two months prior to the promotion date and two months after the promotion date.

2. Convert that data to JSON objects and extract the date field using Java type programming or some API. 3. Create an analytical file of a structured table with only one date field.

4. Create a graphical trend report using a tool such as Tableau that

depicts tweet counts—prior to and after the promotion.

Further, if I want to learn whether a tweet refers to Coca-Cola in a positive or negative manner, I could turn to sentiment analysis tools and create a graphical trend report—again using a tool like Tableau—to graph the different sentiments over time.

But this general reporting of tweet behavior over a period of time is insufficient to effectively determine how a promotion has altered social media engagement. The extraction process needs to be much more focused in order to address the specific business question. Especially when it comes to social media, the old “give me everything” approach simply consumes too many resources in the attempt to make sense of the data. Identifying and understanding a business problem traditionally is one of the four key steps in the data mining process, but it is even more critical when dealing with social media data today.

The first issue concerns the ability to match customer records from the company’s database against the individuals who are engaging in social media. The second issue is one of reliability: some current research questions whether the comments of people on social media truly represent the opinions of the “silent majority.” Furthermore, there may be privacy issues raised in using this type of information. If our intention is to build better retention models, we might seriously question the usefulness of appending social media to customer records given these issues.

Big data and especially social media data will continue to grow.

As analytics practitioners, we can no longer respond by ‘extracting everything.’ Today more than ever, we truly need to understand the business problem so that we can effectively extract the right information when building the solution. While we continue to see great developments in software and technology, the real

The business problem must dictate how data scientists use social media.

Content adds context Besides identifying simple engagement and sentiment, the analysis should also probe more deeply into the content.

Are certain themes or topics emerging in the social media conversations?

The use of text mining and text analytics tools allow this type of more exhaustive probing. But again, what is the business problem we are trying to solve? If the challenge is creating more customer engagement, text mining may reveal that certain themes or topics are more relevant in driving this engagement to higher levels as a result of the marketing campaign.

Clearly, the business problem must dictate how data scientists use social media. Suppose we want to build a customer retention model that uses social media such as tweets to determine customer satisfaction.

challenge for analytics and data science is human-related: having the right analysts who are trained and educated on the principles of data mining as well as business analysis.

This ability to understand the domain knowledge of a given business, grasp its major issues and dissect its challenges will become even more paramount in any data scientist’s skill set. In that sense, big data analytics may differ from traditional analytics, but I regard it more as an enlargement of the discipline that makes data scientists even more valuable to the 21st century organization.

Richard Boire, senior vice president, Boire Filler, at Environics Analytics, is the author of Data Mining for Managers: How to Use Data (Big and Small) to Solve Business Challenges (2014: Palgrave MacMillan).

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Data Analytics

Harnessing social analytics for next-level creative

By Stephen Brown and Laurie Dillon-Schalk

A

s marketers, after 20-something years in the industry, we both find the term ‘big data’ humourous. While the data we rely on does accumulate daily, the ease of access to it and the tools to read and manipulate it have evolved to make that data significantly easier to comprehend and utilize for effective marketing. We’d rather call it ‘smart data’—it’s more inviting than ’big’ and way more attractive when faced with the marketing challenges we all need to champion daily.

The limits of CRM analytics Stephen’s roots are anchored in classic CRM data thinking—go back to the 90s and recall RFMP: Recency, Frequency, Monetary and Product.

Access these four variables on any customer file and you have massive amounts of opportunity to gauge where a customer sits in relation to your brand/product. Still relevant ❱ DMN.ca

today, this data gives us patterns; patterns illustrate opportunities; opportunities guide marketing decisions and actions; and these actions lead to measurable results.

There was one program around 2001—a telco back during the long distance wars. The tenure of the customer’s relationship with the brand (the recency), mixed with how often they made long distance calls (the frequency), merged with spend (the monetary) was enough for us to make smart assumptions about retention and future selling scenarios. And Lifetime Value Scores gave us massive amounts of focus and direction on customer investments and win-back strategies. We configured all sorts of segmentation plans and propensity models and they worked. And these same approaches still work, albeit we’ve gotten more sophisticated in how we analyze them now.

However, no matter how effective the strategies these modelling and segmentation efforts provided us, they never fully answered the ’why.’

Classic CRM analytics did an excellent job of aligning product offers with the right people from a ‘who-to-target’ perspective but the ’why’ was always

Classic CRM analytics did an excellent job of aligning product offers with the right people from a ‘who-totarget’ perspective but the ‘why’ was always elusive or speculative. When it came time to write the creative brief, the data didn’t fill in the blanks a creative team needed to understand the irrational or emotional side of the equation.

May 2016

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Data Analytics elusive or speculative. When it came time to write the creative brief, the data didn’t fill in the blanks a creative team needed to understand the irrational or emotional side of the equation. We had to make assumptions or simply guess. Mass crunching of customer purchase/ spend data, even when mixed with aggregated data overlays, doesn’t give insight into why a customer loves (or hates) your product or brand.

This helped create a large divide between the mass ad people who are only measured on finding the true consumer insight and the meticulous CRM people who fixated on aligning the target with the right offer (often at the expense of inspiring, emotionally engaging creative).

This doesn’t have to be the way anymore. In comes social analytics. If CRM analytics is the factual insight (maybe the “IQ”), social analytics is the emotional insight (the “EQ”). And this is where the power of a brand, if we choose to harness them together, can be increased exponentially.

Social analytics fill in the blanks There are five key types of data to be gleaned from digital marketing efforts: Customer data, as described above, is one type but there is also conversational, inquiry (or search), behavioural (interactions to conversion) and performance data.

All of these types of data help shape a story for a brand and thereby support true brand health.

Our favourite data to get to emotional insights is by far conversational data. Using a text analysis from social listening tools, we can understand the attitudes, motivators and detractors around brand experiences. We can also understand the key conversations driving brand-related conversations and identify emerging trends/product usages/what about a brand is loved so that we can develop better content After all, the content needs of brands have exploded from a couple TV spots in the 90s to many, many pieces of digital content today. It places pressure to ensure the many pieces still deliver brand perception or belief changes as well as deliver against behaviour changes. In other words, content has to support brand image and brand purchase. By using conversational data (and often inquiry data), we have the ability to design for belief and behaviour change and pre-determine content success by may 2016

paying attention to the ‘emotional cues’ revealed in conversational data.

How we use social data FUSE recently produced four snappy videos for a client that were customized for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat platforms. Rather than put too much onus on the creative team to dream up a meal occasion and recipe, we looked to conversational data to identify which meal occasions we could credibly own. We then looked at which types of ingredients/ food hacks were rising in popularity (based again on conversational data related to the brand) in order to make our content more relevant and ‘brand ownable.’ With our first video now in market, the early results indicate our videos are best performing ads in terms of view completion, user engagement and sharing/tagging.

With further analysis, we can identify purchase intent within social commentary (and indeed sales are up ahead of plan).

But making content more relevant is only one way to leverage the emotional insights found in data. We can use conversational data to ensure we are using the right language in order to reach your consumers. Within social/ digital spaces, conversation is casual and your brand may be completely disconnected from how your audiences talk about the category and the industry you are in. In one massive language study, we uncovered how millennial men talk about personal grooming—how they talk, what they talk about, who and what they listen to, what key needs are as expressed in social platforms, etc. The language we uncovered was as helpful for social media as it was for e-commerce websites, for retailer websites, for CRM content, for packaging, for search optimization and more.

Another example of language: Some time ago, we were pitching to an airline that hoped to break into regions dominated by a competitor.

By studying the regional differences in how brands spoke to their customer sets we found that the language used by the competition was significantly different than that used by our prospective airline client. If that airline wanted to break into this region, they would need to use the language the competition had trained consumers on, for the competition had created a whole awareness around that language. We won the business with these insights.

Social data affords a level of emotional insight that can complement the more functional, specific data found in CRM. The opportunities afforded by conversational and other forms of digital data are endless. But certainly this type of data affords a level of emotional insight that can complement the more functional, specific data found in CRM. It can truly elevate the creative content of CRM efforts to help deliver stronger measurable results.

Stephen Brown is president and partner, FUSE

Marketing Group. With extensive experience in all marketing channels, Stephen has the learning needed to create, strengthen and grow brands across a wide range of categories (including CIBC, Canadian Tire, Cashmere and TO 2015 Pan Am Games). Stephen’s leadership, vision and forward thinking have

proven to be key to pushing FUSE to new, innovative heights. Stephen was recently Board Chair of the Canadian Marketing Association.

Laurie Dillon-Schalk is VP, strategy & insights,

FUSE Marketing Group. As an authority on strategy, consumer insights, advertising spend allocations, emerging technology, trends and innovation, Laurie brings phenomenal depth and breadth of digital knowledge to FUSE in strategy, data & analytics and media. With more than 15 years of expertise, Laurie has led teams responsible for multi-channel digital strategy, social brand management, content strategy & operations, brand journalism, activations, community management, data analytics and performance measurement.

Connected. Informed. Effective.

It pays to be a NAMMU member.

Talk to us: membership@nammu.ca 416-977-3703

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Mailing logistics

Strained negotiations continue between CUPW, Canada Post

Independent review of Canada Post announced

On April 4, 2016 Canada Post advised the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) that it had filed Notices of Dispute with the Minister of Labour in ongoing negotiations with CUPW-Urban and Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers (RSMC). These notices ask the Minister to appoint a conciliator in each negotiation.

This move is in keeping with the process for requesting conciliation assistance through the Minister of Labour established by the Canada Labour Code, but nonetheless it was unusual that Canada Post would make the request so early in the negotiation process.

In a release Canada Post explained the reasoning behind the request as follows: “We are taking this step because while the parties have been meeting since late 2015, we are not seeing progress on key issues. In both cases, we hope that a neutral party can stimulate constructive discussion and accelerate the negotiations process.

“We remain fully committed to negotiating new collective agreements that are fair for our employees while also reflecting the changing nature of our business and needs of our customers.”

Just over three weeks later, on April 28th Ontario Superior Court Justice Firestone ruled that the former Conservative government violated its members’ freedom of association under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sections 2d) and 2b) by legislating them back to work on June 26, 2011 and that the legislation was “unconstitutional and of no force and effect.”

“Let this be a warning to Deepak Chopra and his 22 vice presidents that the legislation trick won’t work this time,” said Mike Palecek, national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, in a release. “CUPW is currently in negotiations and Canada Post CEO Deepak Chopra, who shut Canada Post’s doors nationwide and locked out the postal workers in 2011, remains at the helm. The Crown corporation management has applied for conciliation and refuses to entertain any of the postal workers’ demands for improved services and an end to concessions.

“Canada Post is already trying to push things by starting the countdown to a lockout. This time, they won’t be able to count on the government to make it easy for them,” said Palecek.

The collective agreement between Canada Post and CUPW-RSMC expired December 31, 2015. The collective agreement with CUPW-Urban expired January 31, 2016. For now, the terms and conditions of both agreements continue to apply.

On May 5, 2016 Minister of Public Services Judy Foote made an announcement that the mailing industry had been anticipating for months—an independent review of Canada Post will be conducted to investigate viable options for the future of the Crown corporation.

The first phase of the review will be lead by a fourperson task force charged with preparing a discussion paper presenting viable options, costs and associated implications for Canada Post services. Françoise Bertrand of Quebec has been named chair of the task force. She is supported by task force members Marena McLaughlin of New Brunswick, Krystyna T. Hoeg of Ontario and Jim Hopson of Saskatchewan.

The task force’s discussion paper will form the basis for the second phase—an informed public dialogue led by a parliamentary committee. This process allows members of Parliament from all political parties to engage with Canadians and their colleagues on this important topic.

Both phases are expected to be complete in time for the committee to submit its recommendations to the government by the end of 2016.

“We applaud the government for doing this,” says Patrick Bartlett, executive director of the National Association of Major Mail Users (NAMMU). “This is an appropriate thing to do and it is the time to do this. I see it as an ambitious review and the work that the task force is intended to complete in the next four to five months is a phenomenal amount of work.”

Bartlett notes that the process outlined in Foote’s announcement is unlike the process undertaken in the past, where a panel is struck to review available literature and data and then engage with Canadians.

“What’s different about this is that the task force does its work, puts out the discussion paper and then a parliamentary committee carries this forward,” observes Bartlett, “which, to me, suggests that this is a more political process than it’s been in the past.”

Bartlett understands the necessity of consulting with individual Canadians in order to understand their wants and needs related to the postal service, but believes it is important to note that it’s Canadian businesses that bear the brunt of funding Canada Post.

“The committee has an interesting task—to balance the wants and needs of Canadians with the ability of businesses to pay,” says Bartlett. “Mail has gone through a bit of a resurgence over the past little while but if the price goes up, if the level of service is not what Canadians are demanding, then we could start a downward spiral where the price goes up and mail volumes drop. Then they raise the prices to make up for the lost revenue and volumes drop again.

“We’re at a very interesting tipping point in the evolution of the postal industry in Canada. We ask the committee to be very diligent and careful in its proceedings to ensure that the interests of Canadians and Canadian businesses and how they use the mail is well understood. [NAMMU] will be very active in terms of presenting the views of the industry and the importance of the mail stream to Canada.”

By Sarah O’Connor

To subscribe go to

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To send press announcements, please direct them to Sarah O’Connor, Editor, at sarah@dmn.ca

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By Sarah O’Connor

May 2016

// 17

Mailing logistics

Update on NAMMU’s work with Canada Post

By Patrick Bartlett

F

ollowing the last Canada Post work stoppage in 2011, along with the abundance of new offerings, many advertisers moved budgets to digital.

The industry experienced significant volume declines.

Around the same time, the National Association of Major Mail Users (NAMMU) Board come to the conclusion that it needed to set a new course for the industry’s relationship with Canada Post. Up until that point in time, there was more of a focus on issues which at times became confrontational.

The Board recognized that both Canada Post and the industry were striving toward the same goals.

There will always be issues where we disagree, such as excessive rate increases, but for the most part we are jointly committed to improving the competitive position of the mail channel.

NAMMU members have engaged with Canada Post and begun a series of consultations and discussions to improve mail products and remove the friction points in the mail stream. Consultations have been held on innovation, machinable mail, publication and lettermail simplification. The industry worked with Canada Post to update the approach to product guides, making the language and structure more relevant to mailers. Other consultations included invoicing and billing, NCOA and the partner program. NAMMU works frequently with Canada Post on day-to-day issues such as induction, items going into the wrong mail stream, delivery and damage. A new series of consultations will include the future of bar coding, improving machinable mail specifications and guidelines, may 2016

improving electronic shipping tools and reducing damage in the mail stream.

Canada Post has worked closely with and been responsive to NAMMU to improve the value proposition of mail by streamlining the product, identifying the unique characteristics of mail and repositioning the product.

Canada Post sponsored extensive neuroscience research, the largest of its kind, to determine what channel was best at driving action. The researchers focused on the two key indicators of media effectiveness—ease of understanding and persuasiveness— and examined the corresponding brain imaging metrics. Through these tests, direct mail proved the most effective advertising media. These findings suggest that while the digital space provides essential platforms for customer interaction, physical media is better suited to close the marketingsales loop, or the gap between interaction and action.

This research has lead to a new brand and positioning for Canada Post’s direct marketing products.

The suite of products is referred to as Smart Mail along with new product names for the traditional addressed and unaddressed products— Personalized and Neighbourhood Mail, respectively.

Across the direct mail value chain we have seen new products, more flexibility and improved processes coming from these consultations.

Hard work paying off In the last year the NAMMU members have spoken optimistically about mail and the growth they are experiencing in mail. In a conversation with one member he reported year over year growth in excess of 30%.

Most members report that growth is coming from multiple sources including a return of advertisers to

mail, new advertisers to mail and current mailers increasing their investment with more frequent mailings. Over time advertisers saw a decline in the effectiveness of the digital channel and found that Likes on Facebook didn’t correlate to revenue results.

Looking forward The coming months are important for the industry to continue to move forward to improve the competitiveness of the physical mail stream and nurture the growth of the past year.

Canada Post is in negotiations with its largest union, CUPW. Traditionally these negotiations are difficult sometimes resulting in work stoppages. The risk of labour disruption will cause some marketers to avoid the mail stream, reversing the positive momentum the industry has recently enjoyed. It is important negotiations conclude as quickly as possible without a work stoppage.

NAMMU is looking forward to participating in the postal review task force and parliamentary committee postal review process, ensuring the views, challenges and concerns of business mailers are well understood.

The industry encompasses and affects all sectors of the economy. NAMMU includes small and medium-sized businesses as well as large enterprises and multi-national corporations.

It is estimated to produce between $74 and $88 billion of economic activity annually and employs more than 800,000 Canadians across the country. The mailing industry served

by NAMMU represents more than 80% of Canada Post’s revenue.

Patrick Bartlett is the executive director of

NAMMU.

Australia Post begins delivering small parcels by drone Australia Post has begun to trial new technology to deliver small parcels

by Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) or drone. This closed-field trial is an important next step in testing the new technology which will potentially deliver small parcels safely and securely to customers’ homes.

Australia Post Managing Director and Group CEO Ahmed Fahour said this is just one of many innovations the organization is exploring, with Australia’s e-commerce and online shopping sector experiencing double-digit growth over the past five years.

“We’re excited to be the first major parcels and logistics company in Australia to test RPA technology for commercial delivery applications,” said Fahour. “We will put this innovative technology through its paces over the coming weeks and months to understand what it can deliver, how far it can travel and, ultimately, how our customers could receive a parcel.

“RPA technology will continue to evolve over the coming years and while we’re not sure what role it will play in our future, we do think there are opportunities for timecritical deliveries or where there are significant distances between the road and front door.

“At the heart of our approach to innovation is our passion to help Australian businesses take advantage of the e-commerce boom, while delivering choice and convenience for consumers.”

Australia Post is working closely with local start-up ARI Labs, developers of the proprietary technology, to demonstrate the reliability and applications of the technology. A customer trial is expected to follow later this year.

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Mailing logistics

Operational upgrades to enhance your mailing productivity

By Craig Piotto

M

ail is vital to the smooth operation of any business. Sending mail in a timely fashion is important because it directly affects cash flow and new business generation as well as the quality of an organization’s relationships with customers, suppliers and employees.

The speed and accuracy with which invoices, contracts, statements, reminders, marketing material and other business-critical mail is processed can have a major effect on every business activity.

This is especially true today because most business activities rely on a ❱ DMN.ca

combination of digital and paper-based information. In order to maximize efficiency, mail processing must keep up and integrate with digital workflows—if it takes minutes to arrange a loan or take out insurance online, customers won’t be prepared to wait days for the necessary paperwork to arrive.

The first step in maximizing efficiency in your mail process is to identify where the issues are and take steps to improve productivity.

Organizations that rely on manual processes for opening and distributing business communications or for processing outgoing mail risk creating bottlenecks that could impair their competitiveness, reputation and

profitability.

Solutions that make use of powerful software to streamline an entire process take mailing efficiency to a higher level and enable users to personalize and control communications in ways that would not be possible if done by hand. From automatically varying envelope insertions for each addressee to selecting a distribution method (mail, email or fax) to suit customers’ preferences, modern mailing solutions are a necessary complement to effective communication strategies.

Efficient design In order to maximize the productivity

benefits of any investment in mailing technology, it is essential to have a thorough knowledge of existing mail processes within your business. Who sends mail, when, in what volumes and from where? Are there peaks and lows at certain times of the day?

How do you cope with periods of peak demand? Do mail volumes fluctuate in line with invoicing schedules, marketing programs or seasonal demand? How much time is spent filling envelopes? How important is personalization or confidentiality?

How much mail is received and how is it distributed? Do other employees help out to avoid bottlenecks and what effect does this have on their May 2016

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Mailing logistics productivity?

Answering these and other questions will help identify areas where efficiency can be improved by changing a process or installing new equipment.

Automating manual processes: Look out for manual processes (e.g. opening mail, stuffing envelopes or collating content) that can be automated to save time or free employees up for more productive tasks.

Integrated solutions: Consider whether separate tasks can be integrated so that mail flows from one stage to another in an uninterrupted process. Could you combine letter opening, content extraction and document scanning/distribution in a single production line or link folding, inserting, envelope printing and using a meter? Most modern mailing equipment can be linked together to create integrated solutions that take up less space and are more productive than separate units.

Applying software: Software offers further scope for integration. Can you speed up the processing of incoming post by scanning letters and distributing them electronically?

Or increase the impact of marketing campaigns by implementing output management software to personalize

customer communications?

Centralization: Is there an opportunity to improve productivity by centralizing mailing operations and output management, for example, by replacing several smaller and slower machines in multiple locations with a larger machine in a central position?

Mailroom design: A separate consideration that also has a bearing on productivity is mailroom design.

Mail processes are repetitive and have considerable scope for human error, so it is important to provide specialist furniture and space planning to ensure staff can operate effectively during peak periods. The positioning and design of tables, benches, sorting units and mailing equipment is critical for process efficiency and staff productivity. Installing the right furniture is not just a question of optimizing workflows. Modern, ergonomic fittings and seating can improve operator comfort and morale and have a beneficial effect on overall performance levels.

Mail preparation Mail preparation is a critical part of the mailing process. The number of stages involved—document design, printing, addressing, insertion and pre-sorting — means that it can be time-consuming and complex,

especially for businesses that rely on manual processes. Failure to make the most of technology to automate mail preparation will not just impair productivity, but also competitiveness. In particular, it makes it impossible to deliver the levels of personalization demanded by customers, from customized mailings to a choice of communication channel. For businesses that do embrace mailing technology, today’s solutions offer enormous scope to enhance the effectiveness of postal communications and the productivity of mailing processes.

Addressing software: Ensuring that addresses in databases are accurate, complete and properly formatted helps eliminate the waste and expense of undeliverable or duplicated mailings and is essential in order to qualify for Canada Post discounts. For businesses that print return addresses on envelopes, accurate addressing will cut the amount of time needed to deal with undeliverable returns.

Folder inserters: These versatile machines automatically fold and insert documents into envelopes.

Experience shows that an office worker can stuff approximately 100 envelopes per hour by hand, compared to 1,350 on an entry-level machine. As you move up the range and insertion tasks become more

may 2016

complex, the productivity benefits of automation are even greater: the most sophisticated models can insert up to 12,000 envelopes an hour and have multiple feed stations allowing a variety of documents, leaflets, reply paid envelopes, even booklets and CDs to be inserted. Associated software solutions let you personalize the types of insert sent to each customer Envelope printers: The ability to print envelopes on demand removes the need to manage, order, and hold pre-printed envelopes: just load blank envelopes and start printing—it’s that easy. Dedicated high speed envelope printers that print addresses and marketing messages in colour directly onto envelopes are a productive alternative to the use of labels and preprinted envelopes in large mailings.

Print speeds as fast as 39,000 envelopes per hour and an inaccurate addressing detection feature let you get more done, more accurately in a limited period.

Outgoing mail: Faster processing of outgoing mail has the potential to drive new business, enhance cash flow and improve customer satisfaction.

The ability to process stacks of outgoing mail more quickly also helps create a cleaner working environment that could improve morale and efficiency.

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Mailing logistics

Integrating mail processes into your digital workflow will help maximize efficiencies and give your business a competitive edge in today’s marketplace.

Postage meters: The ultimate labour-saving device for Canada Post customers, a postage meter is the most important investment you can make to improve mailing productivity. A meter reduces the time it takes to get mail out of the door and on its way to your customers.

Postage meters automate several key steps in a logical, linear sequence that is considerably faster and more accurate than disjointed manual processes, including weighing and sealing envelopes. With fully integrated Canada Post pricing, postage meters automatically calculate the right postage from the weight and size of the item and the postal service selected.

Higher-end models maximize throughput with conveyor belts and in-line weighing scales that create a single integrated workflow with the ability to process mixed batches on the fly. If necessary, postage meters can be linked to other equipment, such as folder-inserters, in a fully integrated mailing production line.

Modern machines feature all the time-saving features of digital technology including touch-screen displays; one-touch access to saved settings for regular jobs; network connectivity for remote management and detailed accounting and usage reports. The latest “smart” machines also access online applications including rate change downloads and access to accounting software.

Clearly, the more mail a business sends out, the greater the efficiency savings, but even businesses with low mail volumes can save time and effort with a postage meter. Having one removes the need to stand in line at the post office to buy stamps, as meters can be re-credited with postage online 24/7. Network connectivity also allows remote maintenance, online supplies ordering and automatic tariff updates as postal rate changes are introduced.

❱ DMN.ca

Mail accounting software: Postal expenditure is another area that can be made more efficient through the use of technology. The ability to consolidate data from postage meters in multiple locations makes it quick and easy for managers to monitor usage across an entire organization. Using software monitoring and reporting instead of paper forms simplifies administration and management.

Incoming mail Letter openers and scanners that create digital images of incoming mail have several benefits including allowing mail to be distributed to employees more quickly and helping organizations improve cash flow by processing sales orders and payments more quickly. It also enhances customer service by ensuring that staff quickly receive inquiries and complaints and boosts business efficiency by enabling general correspondence to be dealt with more quickly.

Letter openers: Letter openers can open mixed mail 60 times faster than by hand. The most productive machines can open 10 envelopes a second or up to 40,000 per hour without damaging the contents. Even small, portable models can open mixed mail at speeds of 300 envelopes per minute. Entry-level models cut the envelope on one side and an operator still must remove the contents. But mid- to high-end machines can cut an envelope on three sides and automatically extract any inserts. The addition of an optional conveyor belt that delivers letters to staff for sorting and electro-mechanical sensors that check an envelope is empty take automation to a higher level.

For maximum efficiency, letter openers can be integrated into a complete system with a conveyor belt that runs past one or more operators allowing them to date stamp letters

and place them in sorting trays from a sitting position. Opening and delivery speeds are controlled by optical sensors triggered by sorting staff.

Tracking packages: Mail doesn’t just enter a business through the mailroom; nor does it only arrive at regular delivery times. Packages are also delivered by courier—often to reception areas.

Organizations that receive large numbers of such deliveries face a real challenge in keeping track of their whereabouts and arranging delivery to recipients who may be off-site. Software that tracks a package from the point at which it is received to delivery to the addressee removes much of the uncertainty and guesswork from this process. Once a package is dropped off, it is scanned and an email notification is sent to the recipient.

Replacing slow, expensive manual mail processes with automated solutions and tools can have a direct impact on your business’ cash flow and new business generation, as well as the quality of your relationships with customers, suppliers and employees. Integrating mail processes into your digital workflow will help maximize efficiencies and give your business a competitive edge in today’s marketplace.

Craig Piotto is senior product manager – mail solutions for Neopost Canada. With over 10 years in the mailing industry, Craig has been a key player in the advancement of mailing technology for Neopost Canada. Craig works very closely with Canada Post to design and implement programs and services that deliver mailing efficiency for businesses of all sizes.

May 2016

// 21

Resource Directory Advertising Agencies

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to advertise Contact Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca

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// 22

Resource Directory FUNDRAISING

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• Contact Information at 1-866-433-4739 or info@greyhouse.ca

to advertise Contact Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca

Contact: Kim.Young@nadminc.com • Jannet.Lewis@nadminc.com • Jacqueline.Collymore@nadminc.com

// 23

Resource Directory LIST SERVICES

Mailing Services

Email Marketing Service TARGET, ENGAGE & BUILD YOUR CUSTOMER BASE From simple to complex, we’ll handle your email campaign from start to finish – delivering professional quality and results every time. Scott’s Email Marketing Service will help you: TARGET INFLUENTIAL AUDIENCES

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Mail Processing Solutions »

Inserting systems, feeders and folders

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bellhowell.ca © 2014 Bell and Howell Canada Ltd. All rights reserved.

to advertise in

Direct Marketing Resource Directory Contact Mark Henry, mark@dmn.ca