As we wind into holiday season, we often press to squeeze the last fruits of the year by working long hours right before the break.  So it is again at Conclusive this year, as we are working at the last minute to finalize a White Paper on Trigger Marketing with the Aberdeen Group.

The Aberdeen research examines the components and performance of different types of event based marketing triggers, including life stage triggers, transaction and interaction behavioral triggers, as well as different stage of deployment, from event identification to response execution.  Preliminary results indicate that Best-in-Class organization benefit greatly from their investment in trigger marketing; with over 80% of the firms enjoying increased customer profitability, over 85% greater cross-sell and upsell, and approximately 95% with greater performance in precision marketing. 

In past research, Gartner has predicted a future of mass automated interactions – the Aberdeen Group confirms that it is well on its way.  Conclusive is convinced that the coming age of trigger marketing interactions are inevitable as well, and has been bonding the elements of such a solution for several years. 

The company’s foundation is in fact, based on automated marketing technology – Conclusive’s own listcleanup.com was delivering NCOA, list rentals and enhancements over the web while the concepts of marketing automation were still a twinkle in most of our eyes.  

In recent years, after the acquisition of Synapse Technology and Conclusive Strategies in 2006, and progressing with the adoption of the MicroStrategy business intelligence platform in 2007, we’ve accelerated our automated triggered marketing platform to emerge as a Best-in-Class solution.  We accept input from many different data providers, ranging from top tier consumer list and marketing data providers such as Acxiom and Experian, along with as well as other commercial off-the-shelf and/or proprietary sources, align rules for interpreting appropriate marketing communications for each data event, and invoke Conclusive’s long-established data delivery platform for delivery via direct mail, email, text messaging, or routing priority customer/prospect records to call centers.  Particularly our event driven marketing solutions in banking and with agency partner GSMarketing for Toyota have received acclaim as leading edge, forward-thinking trigger-based  solutions.
 

The core benefits of this integrated marketing platform are pinpoint timing and brutally efficient marketing.  The tentative title of Aberdeen’s report, in fact, states a major feature simply and to the point: “Timing is Everything”.  
 

Now as we finally hit the brakes and skid into the holidays, that same adage seems to also apply to our personal lives.  Thanksgiving is special every year, but this year, amid the hectic pace that surrounded our presidential election, amid the rock and roll of the stock market and amid the tension of global economic uncertainty, well, Thanksgiving just seems a little more so special and a little more “just in time” to save us from burnout. 

The Thanksgiving break seems to offer the perfect anecdote for the chaotic year – a solution, per se, that gives us a time out, a chance to enjoy a full bodied meal and reflect on the very many blessings that we enjoy as citizens of these great States, even despite the setbacks and challenges we might encounter along the way.  Our family will set aside a few hours this afternoon serving meals at an Austin homeless shelter, and then cook up that perfect Thanksgiving meal with friends tomorrow night. Looking ahead, I can sense that it will be the perfect solution, at just the right time. 

Here’s hoping that you enjoy the perfect Just in Time Thanksgiving as well.

In addition to collecting back taxes, the IRS also applies interest and penalties against those who do not follow the rules. The United States Postal Service^® (USPS^®) needs to take a page from the IRS book and apply more strict consequences for those who choose to cheat the Move Update rules.

Claiming postal discounts for using an NCOA^LINK® service, but never applying the changes to your list is illegal.

It is not that the USPS^® lacks authority to consistently apply strong consequences, but historically it has not taken full advantage of this authority. In fact, the Move Update form states  “I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits information requested on this form may be subject to criminal and/or civil penalties, including fines and imprisonment.”

Yes, there have been periodic reports of Move Update audits finding companies not in compliance, but the scarcity of these reports and the relatively light consequences does little to deter would-be cheaters. However, let the word spread that some executives are going to jail and the USPS^® now hands out penalties and interest charges amounting to five times the illegally claimed postal discounts and the mailing industry will take notice.

Specifically, NCOA^LINK® crooks are costing all of us higher postal rates. They place multiple financial burdens on the USPS^® by claiming discounts not earned and then depositing a higher percentage of Undeliverable As Addressed (UAA) mail into the system. This costs the USPS^® (and ultimately us) twice.

With the coming Intelligent Mail Barcode, the USPS^® will be in a very good position to more easily see which mailers have the highest UAA mail. With this information, increasing the number of audit teams and publicizing ‘busts’ will quickly pay for any increase in required manpower.

Let’s stop subsidizing the cheaters!