In early November we exhibited and spoke at MediaPro 2011. MediaPro, for those that aren’t aware, is an event targeted at Marketing Professionals. Along with our UK value-added reseller, Docuplus, we had a sizeable presence on the show floor where we were happy to explain more about our Transpromo Express offering. In addition, many people wanted to know more about both PRO Production Manager and our QR Express solutions.

Our speech on the final day of the event focused on the benefits of using routine customer communications, such as invoices, statements and bills, to deliver customized and personalized messages to clients. With direct mail going directly into the garbage up to 97% of the time, putting messages on transactional documents is a smarter way to ensure your message is read, since 95%¹ of these routine communications are opened and digested. Our Transpromo Express solution can help marketers take advantage of these open rates without having to change your composition or upstream applications.

At the end of October we visited EMC’s Momentum 2011 event. Held in Berlin, Germany, the exhibition included both a partner and a client conference held over four days.

This provided CrawfordTech with a great opportunity to meet the people who shape the strategy of the EMC IIG Group across EMEA and, to some extent, worldwide. Why is this important to us?

CrawfordTech has been developing plugins and workflow tools to help EMC's clients to archive transactional output in a more cost effective and efficient manner for several years now, and as such we are an important cog in their machine. Our future developments will provide many more exciting opportunities as we join EMC on their journey to the Cloud.

Our EMEA Business Development Manager, James Weaver, also met with some of CrawfordTech’s clients at the event that have made the switch from EMC’s Archive Services for Reports (ASR) to our PRO Archiver solution. It was especially good to meet with Mark Cobley from Centrica, who were one of the first UK-based customers to upgrade to our follow-on solution from ASR.

In November, we attended and moderated the Xplor UK & Ireland event at The British Library in London. Entitled ‘Enough helicopters already... putting the microscope on cross-media customer communications’ (‘Cross-Media’ is British for what we call multi-channel communications in North America) the event focused on a keynote speech from Marc Michaels, Director of Direct Marketing and Evaluation, Central Office of Information (COI), that uncovered how multi-channel campaigns can really affect consumer behavior. 

Of course, Crawford Technologies are a strong player in this area, helping customers to modify legacy print streams to include personalized messages and then aiding the distribution of this output to email, web and print. This was followed by an expert panel that included Angus Morrison, Founder of Royal Mail's Mail Media Centre, and Andrew Thornhill, Event Director, IPEX, along with our own Stewart Rogers.

While there were many ideas discussed at the Xplor UK & Ireland event, the key messages were that print is still hugely relevant and that printing organizations need to do a better job of promoting their own successes. It was also agreed that cross-media has become extremely important, and that the industry needs to partner with the right individuals in the customer communications management ‘food chain’ to gain the greatest benefits for their customers.

In December, we sponsored and participated in the European Marketing Dynamics Summit. Formerly the Transpromo Europe Summit, this highly focused event was attended by a select audience of professionals from across the customer communications delivery chain. We also sponsored and participated in this event in Brussels.

With topics such as creating better targeted communications, social media, PURLs, QR codes and augmented reality as well as digital mailbox services, trends in hybrid mail and multichannel marketing strategies, the event certainly raised a number of questions and provided some great insight into the marketplace. Thankfully, with products such as Transpromo Express, Operations Express, QR Express, PRO Production Manager and our Zumbox connectors, Crawford Technologies are well placed to provide the right answers to these questions

¹Hewlett Packard; The Transpromo Revolution (2008)