The report from Forresters (Click here for report) shows the dramatic shift away from traditional marketing spend onto new interactive media; things like search, display, email, social and mobile marketing. In summary an increase from $20 billion to over $55 billion over the next few years. And where is this new spend coming from? Certainly not from an increase marketing budget – but instead by reducing the spend in other areas.

When surveyed 60% of marketers said that they would be reducing their budget away from traditional marketing. 40% would be cutting direct mail spend, 35% would be cutting newspapers spend and 28% would be cutting magazine spend.

This is a huge swing away from traditional printed media – and in some ways my doorstep will feel better for it.

However, would I be happy to have the amount of direct mail reduced only to see a dramatic increase in junk that is coming through to me via email, mobile and online medias? I do not think so.

It seems like marketers and organisations alike are desperately moving away from traditional medias because they are expensive and not cost effective – whereas online is cheaper and has potentially better results. However I come back to ‘me’, the customer – what would I prefer?

In contrast  within the Infoprint survey (Click here for the report) 50% of respondents stated that they would prefer to receive marketing information about new products or services via traditional mail rather than email. Three out of four respondents said that they would consider opting for traditional mail it they were informed it had less of a negative environmental impact than email.

This is interesting – given the choice many consumers would still prefer traditional mail opposed to email. I think that given the choice of highly relevant and personalised marketing – even more people would prefer traditional print than digital communications.

So if that is the case – are marketers running the wrong way with their marketing budgets. Shouldn’t they stop and take stock of WHAT they are actually sending out via traditional means and then revaluate how they can develop a more targeted conversation with that customer; opposed to flooding them with expensive and wasteful direct mail?

Sure, increase the spend on interactive medias – but don’t just do it at the expense of traditional mail because it’s expensive and unfriendly. A targeted, relevant and timely personalised piece through my door using recycled paper will beat a thousand emails and text messages!

What do you think – let me know – and take the poll. Would you prefer paper, or digital media if it were personalised? Take the poll here or click on the answer below.

XMPie’s PersonalEffect products have, for a while been integrated into ExactTarget’s on-demand e-mail marketing solution and offered as an add-on – but that involved customers having to deal directly with ExactTarget for setup, support and pricing. Now, XMPie E-Mail Service will be available as a cost-effective, all-in-one option within XMPie server solutions.

XMPie E-Mail Service allows users to maintain state-of-the-art e-mail design and execution through the same tools they use for personalized print, Web and mobile communications, but adds the convenience, ease-of-use and affordability of integrated e-mail delivery and tracking. It offers users peace-of-mind, ensuring e-mail messages are properly managed and delivered by handling unsubscribe and opt-out requests, in addition to CAN-SPAM Act compliance, and by expertly avoiding spam filters, black lists and other delivery barriers. It also tracks e-mail open rates, bounce backs and all other parameters that are essential in commercial grade e-mail service.

“XMPie has built a reputation on offering cutting-edge technology that streamlines the one-to-one process, making it easier for service providers, marketers and enterprises to harness the power of personalization, regardless of media,” said Jacob Aizikowitz, president, XMPie. “By expanding into services and adding e-mail delivery and support to our roster, we continue to eliminate the guesswork involved in building a cross-media specialty, instead allowing our users to focus on growing their businesses.”

The option to select the XMPie E-Mail Service will be available starting in Q4 2009 with all PersonalEffect Cross-Media 4.5 or higher and PersonalEffect e-Media products. It features several different service plans, so users can select the option that best reflects their expected use patterns and meets their cost-management criteria.

Management tools will be made available to users to effectively manage their subscription and plans on-line.

Looking at the early pricing it looks very competitively priced in the market – so should provide an ideal platform for both service providers and agencies to create and deploy highly integrated and relevant marketing campaigns using a single data source and shared creative to direct mail, personalised response URLs, and e-mail campaigns.

The big thing here is this is all being done from the same platform – so the customer experience is consistent. It’s so upsetting to see a highly creative on-line experience backed up a poorly formatted email or direct mail piece. XMPie brings all the elements together in one integrated place.

Read the full press-release at http://www.xmpie.com/?id=1578.

My understanding is that 3 different printed direct mailers went out; new for new customers, one lapsed customers and one for current customers – all that carried personalised content and personalised images – and all driving customers to their personalised websites. All nicely timed for the start of the new season.

The cool bit for me is that on the site http://www.skybet.com/dream/ there’s a great tool for delivering online personalised UK football fixtures. The generic landing page, collects details about you and your club, along with a shirt number and then presents you back your own personalised RURL which not only contains the club fixtures of your chosen club but also a personalised image of your shirt. This is done quickly and with great effect.

What is also very nice is that they haven’t stopped there – Alphagraphics and Sky have also implemented a viral element to the campaign which is integrated into the primary campaign. If you click on refer-a-friend you are asked for a friends details and their email address. Again a personalised email is created, incorporating a personalised image and sent to the recipient.

It would’ve been outstanding if the refer-a-friend element of the campaign was directly linked to the original landing page – so that it knew that I was referring a friend; and therefore not asking me to re-enter my own details. However it still works beautifully.

I am hoping that we can get some ROI figures from the campaign; which may be hard from an organisation like SKy – but talking to the folks at Alphagraphics North East the campaign has been a success; driving uptake of people to the site, and delivering results to sky. I believe that I heard, “a 50% increase on respondents” in there somewhere!

All in all a great high-profile campaign using XMPie to create dynamic Direct Mail as well highly personalised and creative web sites with on demand content and images – and with a viral element as well. What is great to see is that all the pieces are connected, in the same style and working together to drive customers. Good going Alphagraphics!

I received one of the most powerful pieces of personalised communications today. It wasn’t trying to sell me something and it wasn’t some ground breaking piece that used 6 different mediums and multiple touch-points. It was a single email, personalised simply and it would’ve normally paled into insignificance. However this piece was different …

The ‘WhatTheyThink’ Newsletter arrives in my inbox daily – and some days I look at it and some days I have to admit that it goes straight into the bin. Which is a shame, as the WhatTheyThink content is normally pretty good. Maybe too much of a good thing huh. Anyway, the words, “Goodbye from WhatTheyThink” struck a cord.

I have to admit that I thought that they were going bankrupt at first – but that was not the case…

WhatTheyThink were dumping me! They were actually going to stop sending me things! They were being conscious about cluttering up my inbox – which is the contextual equivalent of the infamous line, “It’s not you, it’s me!”.

Eric Vessels was personally dumping me. Wow!

I’m sure if it was male pride, a hurt ego or a re-vitalised interested in WhatTheyThink, but you know what?

I clicked on that link, and updated my profile bloody sharpish. I’m not having no Eric Vessels, COO of WhatTheyThink dumping me!

It got me thinking though – it’s a brave and wise tactic. Let’s look in our database and extract out all the customers whom haven’t responded to one of our communications, and let’s go out and tell them that we are stopping. It’s a win-win situation. You either win because your reduced the size of your database by removing those that have no immediate interest in you or you win because you have just reaffirmed that the people in your database are actually interested and want to hear from you.

So, if your marketing campaign is failing, and your database is full of hangers-on; then go out and tell them that you are leaving them – and see what reply you get!

David Baldaro,
It is my pleasure to inform you that on February 17, 2009 your information was reviewed and accepted for inclusion in the 2009 edition of our Registry.

Presidential Who’s Who, each year, recognizes and selects key executives, professionals and organizations in all disciplines and industries for outstanding business and professional achievements.

This recognition is shared by those who have reached a distinguished level of success in their chosen profession.

Please take a moment to complete the invitation by clicking on the link below. We ask that you complete it carefully, as it will be reviewed by our editorial department.

http://www.2009presidentialwhoswho.net/index.php

As a reminder, Presidential Who’s Who is pleased to inform you that there are no fees or dues to be included in the publication.

On behalf of the CEO and our esteemed staff, we wish you continued success.

Sincerely,

MarkAnthony McGuiness
Chief Operations Officer

Presidential Who’s Who
134 Rockaway Avenue FL2
Valley Stream, NY 11580
Please complete the online link by March 31st

Nice – what an honour; an invitation to join an exclusive listing which will know doubt cost me something in the future and which will more than likely result in a torrent of further junk emails coming through to my in-box.

What’s really stupid about this email? Well 2 things. Firstly as great and as talented as I might be; I am not a US citizen so why would would I be even alittle  interestedin this? And secondly, I need to complete the link by the 31st of March – which would’ve been like yesterday then. So I am that good that I can bend time in order to complete the online survey which asks for stacks of personal information? I doubt it!

Please marketers; don’t do the job unless you have at least two active brain cells!