Print and online combined brings more response

Via QR code or personal Internet address on a mailing, the recipient is taken to a landing page with an order form where all contact details are predefined.The company Ceramics country headquartered in Huttwil BE, offers its customers designer products for bathroom and wellness worlds. This year, the company has joined forces with the Neidhart + Schön Group have come up with something special. Not only is a main catalog simply sent out by mail, but also letters and mailing cards where the end consumer can scan a QR code with their smartphone or enter a personal Internet address (PURL) in the browser. This takes them to a landing page with an online order form where all the contact details are already predefined, so the potential customer only has to submit the order. The company manager automatically receives an email with the order information and can see at any time on the dashboard (control screen) how many end consumers are interested or have ordered. A PDF with address labels and delivery bills for shipping is automatically created and sent by e-mail.Linking the printed and digital worldsThe example shows what a well-crafted cross-media solution can look like. "It's about experiencing communication and product marketing in the seamless connection between the printed and digital worlds," explains Joëlle Loos-Neidhart, Head of Marketing + Communication at the Neidhart and Schön Group. "At the customer interface, Keramikland combines the printed main catalog with a marketing campaign by linking the physical dispatch of a customer mailing with online and mobile response options. The quality of the customer approach is increased through consistent personalization. In addition, the makers of Keramikland open up an important control instrument with an online platform for real-time measurement of the response." According to Loos, the experience of the campaign shows that the initial customer approach is of elementary importance. If the offer is understood by the target person, a response occurs. If the target person's attention is not reached, nothing happens. In the Keramikland campaign, therefore, a two-stage approach was taken.Multi-level personalization thanks to digital printingDigital printing plays an important role in the implementation of such cross-media campaigns. Multi-level personalization can only be implemented in digital printing because it is a printing process that does not require a static printing form and can therefore put individual content on the paper page by page during printing. For such personalization to succeed, a clean database is needed. "The better the database is maintained, the fewer errors there are and the better the overall quality of the personalization," says Joëlle Loos. "The variety and the number of personalized elements are almost arbitrary with a good database. Personalization should be more or less automated. Of course, it also depends on the experience of the project manager, the software used, and how the process is set up starting with the database."Wide range of applicationsWith ns.connect, Neidhart + Schön offers its own product for QR code and print-to-web solutions. "There are many possible uses for cross-media campaigns: among other things, they can be used for event invitations including attendee management, print-on-demand applications, making appointments, and automating ordering processes," says Loos. The process is always structured similarly, he says: first a push element (mailing, letter, e-mail, newsletter), then the connecting link to the landing page online (PURL) or mobile (QR code), followed by the response offer and follow-up via e-mail or printed. "Each customer need must first be understood in terms of its objective, then the process design takes place," says Loos. "Only then is programming and implementation done. Cross-media campaigns enable a transaction to be carried out conveniently, they increase convenience in handling for the target person and thus offer high customer value."