Customized & Secure Print-on-Demand Coupons
The Client: Promotional Marketing Firm
Our client, specializing in digital incentives & promotions, assists its customers by providing a personalized experience that connects consumers’ upstream digital engagement (example: a visit to the product website) with downstream transactions (example: the purchase of the product in-store). Our client’s patented technology enables its customers to measure and improve the Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV), which is arguably the most important metric marketers have for guiding marketing and product development.
The Challenge: Eliminate Mass Production & Storage, but Keep Security Intact
The company faced significant cost & management challenges in delivering secure, single-use coupons on a timely basis. To prevent fraudulent reproduction, single-use coupons are generally pre-printed on photo-sensitive paper—which exposes the words “VOID” or “UNAUTHORIZED” when duplicated on a photocopier—and distributed upon request to consumers via USPS mail. But this traditional print and mail solution involves not only pre-printing and storing the coupons in large enough quantities to make them cost effective, but also holding requests for a time and mailing the coupons in larger batches to reduce the costs of pick-and-packing the letters and coupons. Our client recognized that it needed a different approach, one that was cost effective, secure, and allowed more frequent mailing on-demand.
The Solution: MailXstream Secure
MailXstream partnered with our client’s internal development team to create a personalized coupon that maximized the benefits of the MailXstream print-to-mail process. Working with both our client and several paper manufacturers, we created a scalable, full-color online mail solution that includes built-in quality control and unique consumer identifiers on a photo-sensitive paper that prevents fraudulent reproduction.
The Benefits: More Customization, Faster Delivery, Reduced Costs
By developing a composition process internally, the company can now exercise greater control over the contents and format of the consumer coupon. When married with the MailXstream process, the end result is an on-demand solution that cuts costs by as much as 50% over the previous pick-and-pack process. Today, the company is routinely mailing 2,000 to 3,000 coupons on a weekly basis and in the words of our client’s project coordinator, “Our time-to-market has been drastically reduced, we have the ability to respond to our clients’ needs almost immediately, and the cost savings has made our product and approach more attractive to potential clients.”