Prepress
Is your customer experience service delivery as outstanding as it could be?
Friday 29. April 2022 - For many the omnichannel approach is preferred, no matter their industry, country, size, or customer relationship stage, according to McKinseys most recent global B2B Pulse. In fact, the survey of 3,500 decision makers found respondents wanted more channels, more convenience, and a more customised experience.
By Clive Stringer, Director, Continuous Feed and High End Software Sales, Ricoh Graphic Communications Group Ricoh Europe
With marketing budgets under pressure, and a greater need to demonstrate return on investment, brands are looking at a variety of effective ways to create an outstanding customer experience.
For many the omnichannel approach is preferred, no matter their industry, country, size, or customer relationship stage, according to McKinseys most recent global B2B Pulse. In fact, the survey of 3,500 decision makers found respondents wanted more channels, more convenience, and a more customised experience. This, said McKinsey, presents the opportunity to introduce greater orchestration, integration, and personalisation.
Print Service Providers (PSPs) can help their clients achieve this by developing an intelligent and responsive multichannel approach.
Digitally printed, highly customised mail can drive, or respond to, online interactions.
It is a highly effective approach as the British Royal Mail found with 87% of people influenced to buy online directly after receiving mail. Tailored campaigns were also 43% more likely to report revenue uplifts when mail is in the mix.
There are a number of effective mail products that brands can choose from including:
Door drops – Leaflets, flyers and brochures drive high levels of engagement with 83% opened, read or filed. GBs Joint Industry Committee for Mail (JICMail) reported 8.7% of all advertising mail (including direct mail, door drops and business mail) drove traffic to advertiser websites in Q3 2020 – up from 6.5% the previous year. And in Q2 2021 door drops volumes increased by 181%.
Programmatic mail – Programmatic mail, predicted by Statista to reach $28.8 billion in 2021 in Europe, up from $23.4 billion a year earlier, allows operations to follow up with customers after an online interaction. Using GDPR-compliant data, a piece of printed direct mail (employing variable images and text for relevance) is triggered by a specific customer interaction, such as basket abandonment.
Essential to the success of these, and other marketing options, is the accurate collection of individualised data combined with visually pleasing, responsive design, as well as relevant and interesting content. Together they ensure greater interaction and higher response rates.
Important, too, is the intelligent management of communication channels to deliver a joined up approach that engages at different times in a number of ways. For example, if an email is not opened a printed offer can be sent as a follow up.
Sounds easy doesnt it? However, historically the process of creating complex and large scale customer campaigns has not always been simple.
Until now that is. Ricoh has partnered with Quadient to develop a solution to help PSPs and enterprises achieve a streamlined approach. Quadient Inspire software enables the rapid creation of communication templates for physical and digital channels from a single design interface. Its drag and drop approach allows powerful personalised communication to be built to share content and messages across multiple channels.
The end to end processes can be managed by RICOH ProcessDirector. The automated workflow management solution provides tight integration with Quadient Inspire. Its highly configurable PDF workflow controls and manages print production by reducing manual touchpoints and automating processes. Its capability to track and trace at the document level provides a fully closed loop workflow.
The collaboration combines production and output capabilities with omnichannel and customer journey mapping capabilities. Greater reportability is also possible with updates on what has been opened and the level of interaction achieved. This can help with understanding what customers find engaging to finesse existing campaigns and intelligently design future promotions for increased success. It enables PSPs and enterprises to create and manage physical and digital omnichannel campaigns dynamically.