— Submitted by Laurie Riedman, Xerox public relations consultant
Last week I spent some time with digital marketers and executives from XMPie, a Xerox company, at the Digital Marketing Days Conference in NYC. Besides getting a pulse on what the latest buzz is in the digital marketing world – I went to see Xerox CMO Christa Carone deliver the keynote.
Christa’s keynote reminded me of some marketing truths that frankly get lost each time I get enamored with the latest and greatest technology. Here are a few of her gems:
- Real brand value comes from the customer experience — not the technology Christa cautioned the audience not to get too caught up in the latest technologies, and reminded the group of the customer’s experience with the brand that is paramount.
- When companies want to cut through the information clutter – getting closer (more personal) with the customer counts. She highlighted just how hard it is to cut through the information clutter out there. For example according to some statistics she shared — consumers see about 3,000 media messages a day, but can only pay attention to 52 and really can only remember four.
- 1:1 is more than an email mail/merge campaign. When we make the message “personal”– it works! During her keynote – Christa shared examples of great creative and effective cross media 1:1 campaigns including a viral email campaign Xerox produced to highlight IOS – Information Overload Syndrome – to draw attention to Xerox as a partner in document management and workflow solutions. The campaign resulted in 50% referral rate. You can see more at http://www.IOSnews.com. Also highlighted was a direct mail and email campaign Australian Pet Super Store – Best Friends conducted using personalized information (content tailored to the type of pet and the pet’s name) that resulted in double digit sales return for the site.
Many of the campaigns and examples shared used XMPie’s technology.
Although the campaigns could not be possible without the technology – Christa reminded us not to “take our eye off the ultimate prize, which is creating value through exceptional brand experiences. The key is relevant communications: the right messages via the right media at the right time.”
