The Tray Way: Cross-Channel Marketing - The Interactive PDF

Everyone needs to innovate when it comes to marketing and messaging, but companies that decide to “reinvent the wheel” often risk time, effort and money without necessarily having the ROI at the end. The key to innovative marketing strategies is to embrace it by utilizing what you already have, what your key demographics want and finding practical mechanisms that achieve the desired result. This is the basis for cross-channel marketing.

At Tray, we have always been willing to explore that next level of online marketing and technological advancement. However, as many in our field have learned, it takes the right client. A great example of this was our use of Interactive PDFs.

The Interactive PDF is a platform that brings life to material beyond just what exists on the screen. It can take a catalog or brochure that people have seen thousands of times and make it fresh again. The key is having a client with plenty of content to share (especially visually) and a demographic that skews a bit younger and/or is more inclined to embrace a new technological platform. Luckily we had one right down the road from us in the Major League Lacrosse’s Chesapeake Bayhawks.

The result of our collaboration was a visually appealing, technologically-savvy, digital version of their program. It contained all the same content as their printed programs, as well as other bells-and-whistles, such as video, to help draw fans in. Additionally, it provided one more channel to promote and advertise sponsors of the team and put their brands and logos in front of more potential customers.

The Interactive PDF was a perfect supplement to what the Bayhawks were trying to achieve, and when working in conjunction with the team’s website, printed materials, etc., it offered a new way to present already existing content in an exciting way. Additionally, use of the new platform painted the team and the league as more interactive and advanced, which helped improve its image.

Organizations across different industries can achieve this same success, whether it is through Interactive PDFs or some other platform. However, before you take the plunge, the first step is always to review your existing material with marketing experts and explore how your customers want to be marketed to.

The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.traypml.com

The Tray Way: Winners and Losers in the USPS Legislation

The Tray Way blog has been covering the ongoing issue of the USPS for several months, and last week, a new chapter was added to the debate with the passage of Senate Bill 1789 by a 62-37 vote (not along partisan lines). The bill states that the May 15th closings would be delayed, as would the 5-day delivery model that the USPS would be hoping to implement. Blogger Jim Tierney gave a tremendous overview of the bill in his latest blog post. Here are some highlights:

• Gives the Postmaster General access to money USPS has overpaid into one of its retirement funds to provide incentives to encourage 100,000 eligible employees to retire. This would help voluntarily “right-size” the workforce to take into account the steep decline in first class mail volume in recent years.
• Reduces the amount of money that USPS has to prefund for retiree health benefits by amortizing the costs over 40 years and calculating those costs more appropriately.
• Retains overnight delivery of first class mail, but limits it in some cases to shorter geographic distances.
• Prevents the Postal Service from going to five-day delivery for the next two years and requires it to exhaust all other cost-saving measures first.
• Requires USPS to set standards for retail service across the country, consider several alternative options before closing post offices, and provide for increased opportunity for public input.
• Allows the USPS to sell non-postal products and services in appropriate cases.
• Allows the USPS to ship beer, wine, and distilled spirits.
• Creates a Chief Innovation Officer to foster innovation at USPS.
• Reforms the Federal Employees Compensation Act, the federal workers’ compensation program.
• Expands  the alternatives the USPS must consider before closing a post office and it establishes a Strategic Advisory Commission, charged with developing a new strategic blueprint for the Postal Service.

While the bill has not been signed into law yet, it appears that 3,700 Post Offices and more than 220 mail-processing sites around the country will be saved for the time being. So who will benefit and who will be hurt by this?

The Winners:

• The Public - Their lives will not change. There may be a postage increase as an effect of this legislation, but their post office will remain and jobs will seemingly not be lost.
• Business and Industry - Companies utilizing the post office and its capabilities, will not see significant changes to their service.
• Legislators - They can be seen as job savers and supporting local business in an election year.

The Losers:

• The USPS - They had developed a plan to regain control of their finances in - what they considered - a responsible and cost-feasible manner. This bill, as written, will supersede their plan and mandate the status quo, which currently stands at a daily loss of $25 million and has a debt of more than $13 billion, as well as increased restrictions on what they are allowed to do BEFORE resorting to closures.

Those that want to keep the USPS as is say it is everything from a safety issue to a matter of fair access,
and now it will be up to the House of Representatives to determine if these factors loom large enough to mandate the organization endure the ongoing debt.




The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.traypml.com

The Tray Way: Attaining Brand Love (and what you can learn from Indiana Jones)

Brand Love. Marketers drool at the idea of attaining it because for all intents and purposes, it is the holy grail of the industry. But, how do you get it? This is the ongoing debate happening in brainstorm sessions and conference calls in agencies and creative departments across the world right now. No one has truly come up with the answer, but many have come up with some interesting ideas.

For example, the American Marketing Association created an impressive analysis of the idea of brand love from an academic perspective (To read the Executive Summary, click HERE). Models were compiled based on source data, which led to the creation of a theory on what differentiates brand “love” from brand “let/s just be friends”, as well as how this love can be fostered. According to their research, they found:

Brand love, as consumers experience it, is best represented as a higher-order prototype that includes, but goes beyond, brand attachment and self–brand connections. Using survey data, they then develop a valid and parsimonious structural equation model of brand love based on this prototype.

The study is an intriguing idea, and offering ideas from an analytical perspective on a creative process can be an intelligent way to organize a strategy to achieve potential success. But, any marketing person will tell you there is no perfect formula. So what can be done? That is tough to answer because, as we all know, the public has a funny way of determining what they love and don’t love at any given moment, which is why brand love should be a goal, not an expectation (similar to how a viral video isn’t created. A video is created and it potentially goes viral).

So, if there is no answer, how do you move towards an answer? Well, aside from hiring us, it is a matter of being flexible and attentive. We mentioned the holy grail earlier, which made us think about one of the film heroes that found the holy grail: Indiana Jones. In each of his movies, he achieved his goals through research, perseverance and a little luck. Add to that an understanding and the willingness to fail, combined with the ability to learn from your mistakes, and you at least have the building blocks creatively to attaining Brand Love.

Do you have any tips or best practices? Share them with us.

The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages. For information about the company and its successes, visit www.traypml.com