[EPISODE]
[0:00:01] DC: Dave Baldaro, the Marketing Operations Manager and Chief Product Advocate at XMPie, which is a leading provider of software for cross-media variable data and one-to-one marketing. I wanted to get you on this recording because I had an amazing conversation with Betsy from Sandy Alexander, where she spoke about how, essentially, XMPie has been one of the tools that has really pushed their success with creating meaningful messaging and marketing for their customers. But we hid into it almost as, she was already going 60 miles an hour. I really wanted to just grab you before we let everyone listen to this conversation, because something I do often try to point out to the printers out there is that you don’t have to start at 60. You can start at zero and ramp up. I wanted to give you an opportunity to share how that works.
[0:01:12] DB: Deborah, thank you once again for having me back. A pleasure as always. Yeah, I think Sandy Alexander exemplifies a lot of good XMPie customers in that they’ve seen the value of XMPie. They’ve brought that value into the business, and they’ve looked at creative ways to implement a right value. I think you’ll hear when Betsy talks, Sandy Alexander of Alex, and probably for a while now, they’ve grown. It’s not like just starting at 60 miles an hour and then going forward; it’s building that business up and understanding the value. XMPie’s modularity allows us to do that.
Whether you’re small, large, but you’re wanting to scale your business up, that’s really where a lot of our customers find themselves, and that’s why they buy into XMPie, because the value will let you build. It removes the technical barriers, I think, from many conversations that printers and PSPs will have with their customers, which is, I want to provide you creative, high-value work, and I can use XMPie behind the scenes. I don’t need to tell you how I’m doing it. I can just deliver this to you, and I can deliver it in volume, and I can grow with your business. That really creates the sticky customers that I think that, that Sandy Alexander is really cultivating in their business.
[0:02:33] DC: I would agree with everything you just said there. I would add that what it seems to me from the conversation I had with Betsy, which, by the way, she’s just amazing to speak to. She’s just so cool.
[0:02:45] DB: I didn’t pay her, I’m sure.
[0:02:48] DC: I think that what I heard was once they were able to share with their customers what they were able to do and did it and could prove that there was value to it beyond what maybe was expected, their customers started saying, “What else can we do?” That’s where the full power of XMPie could come into play.
[0:03:18] DB: I think any customer that, a printer, or, PSP, or marketing socialite is talking to, they demand personalization. It’s not like, it would be nice if we could personalize. I need to be personalized. I need to drive automation. I need to drive brand consistency across everything that I do. Those come as expectations. I think where customers like that and Betsy’s on it, when they can deliver that in droves and they can deliver at scale, then it breaks down all those barriers where you’ve got to struggle to try and work out, okay, well, the brands are not on point, and the topography is not correct, or struggling with this, the XMPie solution sits behind the scenes and delivers at scale, which means they can focus on their business and they can focus on their client and their client’s needs and just do what’s needed to be done and get creative with it.
[0:04:06] DC: Yeah. It’s about presenting possibilities, whether or not somebody wants to take you up on it. I mean, Betsy doesn’t seem like they – she says no to many jobs. They work it out and they figure out the best way to do it for their customers. If personalization, or customization come into play, they have a very strong capacity to deliver that. Also, their customers are – I referred to Sandy Alexander as a trophy printer, because that’s how people in advertising think of it. The last thing you want to do is tell anybody in an advertising agency, no.
[0:04:49] DB: No.
[0:04:49] DC: Can’t do it. No. Then we’re just like, what are you talking about? There’s got to be a way to do it. It seems to me that XMPie over the years has helped Sandy Alexander say yes.
[0:05:03] DB: Yeah. I think it’s not just Sandy Alexander, but I think every customer that looks in and invests into XMPie. Because of our heritage with Adobe and the creative stance that we take in delivering this, means that you remove all that technical complexity out of doing what you need to get done for your clients by saying, “Wait, if you need a design, it’s Adobe and design. If you need it on brand, that’s easy.”
You remove all that at the equation, which lets you focus on producing at scale, or delivering what the customer needs. I think that’s one of the key drivers, I think that customers buy into XMPie is that creative element, and that connectivity to data and that ability to scale and produce.
[0:05:45] DC: I would say that it’s also letting the customer know what they need, because they don’t know what they need. That is mostly because they don’t understand the technology that might be behind it, or they don’t understand that they can use very minimal data to create massive personalization, or customizations. I think a lot of it is being able to introduce things to customers. I always say, whether or not they use it, they still want them to hear it from you. Otherwise, how are you helping anybody?
If somebody else comes along, you want to say, “Thank you very much. But my trusted print provider has already told me about this. Thank you very much.” I think that the teams that she manages in sales and marketing now, which was also an interesting conversation that we had, means that everybody has to be aligned in the value and the worth. Now, unless you have anything else to say, I think we should let Betsy say it all.
[0:06:47] DB: Absolutely. Let’s go.
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:06:52] DC: It takes the right skills and the right innovation to design and manage meaningful print marketing solutions. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse, where we explore all facets of print and marketing that creates stellar communications and sales opportunities for business success. I’m your host, Deborah Corn, the Intergalactic Ambassador to the Printerverse. Thanks for tuning in. Listen long and prosper.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:07:19] DC: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Podcasts From the Printerverse. This is Deborah Corn, your Intergalactic Ambassador. Today, I’m joined by Betsy Davis, the Chief Marketing Officer and EVP of National Sales at Sandy Alexander. Betsy, I mean, how could you not sing that name?
Betsy’s career spans more than 25 years in the print industry with leadership roles at consolidated graphics and quantum before joining Sandy Alexander. She is widely recognized for her ability to connect print technology, data, and brand strategy, helping clients communicate the right message at the right time. Beyond her role at Sandy Alexander, Betsy was a member of the HP Indigo and Canon Advisory Councils and contributes to the industry as a board member for dscoop. Betsy, welcome to the podcast.
[0:08:15] BD: Thank you so much. I’m excited to be here again. Thank you.
[0:08:19] DC: You are most welcome. It is always a pleasure to see you and speak with you. Last time I interviewed you, you only had one title, and now you have two.
[0:08:30] BD: People love to do that to me. It’s like, “Just do one more thing, just one more thing, one more thing,” which I love. I will never get away from sales, but I’m loving the marketing role that I’ve had for a couple of years. It’s been a journey and a lot of fun.
[0:08:43] DC: Sandy Alexander has a reputation in the marketplace, especially in the advertising agency space as a trophy printer. We want to work with your company. Now, that clout in the creative space, especially, does not happen overnight, and it has to be maintained in relevant ways. I mean, one wrong job for the wrong agency, and that could be the end of it in a lot of ways. How does your role define and communicate Sandy’s value proposition internally and externally? What would you say that it is?
[0:09:24] BD: That’s a good question. Internally, I would say, I end up almost being just a cheerleader and a brand ambassador within our organization, almost on behalf of our clients, to be honest. To be the voice of the client into our organizations across the country is a really important part of my role for our teams to really understand what are our clients needing in their spaces to make sure that they’re effective and successful, communicating with their consumers. That’s everything from defining our tech roadmaps to developing wonderful client success teams that are supporting the different industries that we’re working with, and what does that need to look like, to what are our companies branded like whenever our clients come to visit? We want that to be a welcoming in a very Sandy Alexander-esque experience when people enter our doors. That’s a few things that I do in the role that I’m in.
I would say, communicating it out to our customers, maybe we’d get to do it in such a variety of ways, and it’s so much fun. We have really had a focus this past year on getting in front of our customers, which thankfully, they’re welcoming, again, of having more in-person breaking bread, having lunch and learns, those types of things. We’ve been doing a lot of quarterly business reviews with new customers, long-term customers. It’s just a really good opportunity to just level set of what we’re doing from an innovation perspective, where we’re investing in equipment, what we’re doing to make sure that we’re leveled up with them and what they’re trying to accomplish in the market. Also, a great opportunity for us to hear from them about what we need to be thinking about as an organization and striving to innovate and do better for them.
Then there’s my day-to-day role of me being in sales and me, again, being the voice of Sandy, and really communicating that, yes, we have that long legacy of being this luxury, boutique, white glove organization that it’s all about the customer experience. We say it all the time. It’s all about the people. It’s all about the customer experience. It’s all about us representing their brands. There’s also that component of now we’ve got to talk tech, which we’re going to talk about today. We have to be able to talk data. It goes way beyond color. At this point, I say, sometimes I talk data more than I do ink on paper anymore. Yeah, it’s multifaceted, but there’s lots of hats to play, but I’m hopefully representing the brand well.
[0:12:02] DC: In that many hats that you wear and there’s also the fact that your customers come in so many different verticals, and you have to have maybe even a tech stack for each of them, or a roadmap, how do the sales teams handle that? Do they cross over, or are they in verticals? The messaging is so important now, especially as you may be introducing the opportunity to use technology to people who don’t understand how it could really help their campaigns and things of that nature.
[0:12:40] BD: Another great question. From a rep perspective, I’ll take that question first. They all lean towards something. They lean toward an industry that they love, or that they launch their career working with retailers. And so, they’ve built their careers on that and have stayed in that lane, or it’s healthcare, or it’s pharmaceutical, or it’s travel and leisure, there’s an automotive. To your point, there’s multitude of industries that we are blessed to work with, and the reps find their space.
I will say, that some of our reps also find their space and the different capabilities that we offer. Meaning, they’ve always leaned into our in-store brand experience executions. Others are more direct male-focused. Others are annual report, really gritty commercial print type of work. What we’re really trying to encourage as an organization is to really sell our entire enterprise, because the customers that we’re working with need most of it. We’re trying to be very focused on making sure that our customers understand our entire breadth of services and bringing that to the forefront. I would say that the reps pretty much lean into a couple of industries that they really thrive at.
From a technology perspective, what we’ve learned is that some of our platforms work really well, regardless of the industry that they’re serving, an online storefront, which many of us in the print industry bring to the table. We just order 360. That’s the online storefront experience, where field sales, agents and agents and brokers in the healthcare space, or dealerships and the automotive and manufacturing worlds need to be able to access print material on demand and replenish their inventories. So, we’re doing that through that platform. That one’s pretty industry agnostic, I would say.
What we’ve also learned is that our industries come to us with a problem and we try to align technology to solve it. Our dining industry is a fantastic example of that. We have an entire platform really focused on the dining industry called Dinetec. We’ve recently moved that roadmap forward focusing on the franchise side of that business, servicing both the menu and the in-store, in-restaurant graphics.
Another platform that we have developed, because a customer came to us with the need has been leaning more towards the healthcare space, and it is our product called MailPath, that is intended to work within salesforce.com and within Marketing Cloud. An amazing tool to trigger direct mail, as easy as they’re triggering email and SMS and digital communication. Everybody wanted to figure out a solution that they could take advantage of the technology they were already using for their digital communications. Sprinkle in direct mail, which is a channel that they know work, they just always had to do it in a very clunky way. We developed an application to be able to support that. It could work for retail and automotive and anybody doing triggered communications. But for whatever reason, healthcare seems to be the industry that’s really grabbed a hold of it.
Then there’s VDP, there’s variable data print, and using tools like XMPie and others that we have on the backend that’s not customer facing, it’s all behind the scenes with our data and our tech teams, but it’s what’s really driving the power of personalization with all of our direct mail and personalized print that we do for a variety of industries. That was a mouthful. There’s a lot going on.
[0:16:01] DC: Obviously. You’re Sandy Alexander. I don’t even know what to say. I’m trying not to fangirl all over this podcast, but you know how I feel about Sandy Alexander. I drank the Kool-Aid many years ago.
[0:16:13] BD: We appreciate it.
[0:16:14] DC: You have been around enough advertising agency people to understand how they pitch clients, they bring everybody with them. If you have a question about a media plan, oh, the director of media buying is sitting in that meeting. They do not go without a team that can answer all those questions. Is that how you pitch the agencies when you go to work with them and the brands? Do you pitch them the way they pitch?
[0:16:41] BD: 1000%. It is a definite team approach. We try to have subject matter experts in some of those areas that I just got finished mentioning, that we don’t have to go into a meeting and say, “I’ll be back and answer that in a week.”
[0:16:55] DC: Exactly.
[0:16:56] BD: We try to come guns blazing with the talented team that we have behind us. It could be somebody that really understands data. It could be a systems architect that is really understanding how do we integrate your operating platforms with our triggered APIs that are triggering these communications. It could be somebody that really understands the dining business and understands what it means to manage all of the data that lives behind a menu that none of us think about when we’re sitting down –
[0:17:25] DC: Exactly.
[0:17:26] BD: – to have dinner. That we’ve also, I mentioned before about the customer experience and how important that is to us. One of the things that we’ve also learned is that first engagement with us when you become a new customer, how important that is. There’s lots of moving parts and lots of people that you have to learn and engage with. It could be tapping through your four different areas of our business. Now we have client success team members that are focused solely on new client onboarding, and project management. We also have PMP’s on staff that help manage those schedules and all the moving pieces on the client side and then with our side, also a very agency approach.
When it comes to selling, there’s the people putting the presentations together and the people coming to do tech demos and subject matter experts on direct mail and store executions and sustainability. You name it, we try to bring that to the table.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:18:20] DC: Girls Who Print provides women in print and graphic communications with information resources, events, and mentorship to help them navigate their careers and the industry. As the largest independent network of women in print and a nonprofit organization, our global mission to provide resources, skill-building, education, and support for women to lead, inspire, and empower has never been stronger or more accessible. Through our member platform and program, as well as regional groups forming around the world, your access to Girls Who Print is just a click away. Gentlemen, you are most welcome to join us as allies. Get involved and get empowered today. Link in the show notes.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:19:06] DC: Not for you, because obviously, you’re already doing this, but for printers who are part of print shops that might not be doing this, what I will tell you from the customer perspective is that when you walk in with a team of people who can answer any question you have, the first thing I think of is they care about me. They care about making this a one time – we can make decisions at this meeting. We might want to talk amongst ourselves. We might have a few follow up questions, but to your most excellent point, we’ll send you that information next week in a packet. Meanwhile, I’m already printing with somebody else. Who has time for that?
I figured that you did it, but I just wanted to make sure, especially with the breadth of your services, or I wouldn’t even call them services. I would just call them opportunities. With the breadth of opportunities, I don’t want someone who doesn’t, cannot speak tech to my IT person. You don’t want me talking to the IT person. You want me to go, “Betsy, can you take that question, please?”
[0:20:12] BD: Yes. I would say this, like, listen, we know in this industry, there are a lot of smaller businesses that are excellent at what they do, and they may not have a 100 people behind them, but I would just encourage those companies to at least have people behind you and make that dedicated stance on having some really focused individuals on the team that can really bring to the table that expertise to your customers, because it really does make an impact.
[0:20:40] DC: At minimal, someone who can talk data to somebody, because I think that, what is the –
[0:20:45] BD: Talk data and fact.
[0:20:46] DC: And security. Data security.
[0:20:47] BD: I mean, I work for smaller organizations and we always have had somebody that can talk. Data and tech is really important at this point, for sure.
[0:20:55] DC: If you look at the most successful campaigns that you have produced, how did the marriage of creativity and technology contribute?
[0:21:04] BD: Hmm. We have taken a different approach this year, which has been really fun. I said at the beginning of the year, if we want different, we have to do different.
[0:21:14] DC: Ooh, I love it.
[0:21:16] BD: I know. So, we have been. We’ve now launched our own podcast, following in your wonderful footsteps, but we also have been doing some thought leadership virtual events that we’ve called Glimpse, kind of a pun into glimpse into the future and trying to talk about innovation and things that we’re seeing as trends in the industry. We’ve had a couple of those. Obviously, there’s tech involved with that. I mean, we’re actually in a television studio, basically, that they’ve created for us when we’re doing that.
But we try to drink our own Kool-Aid as well and utilize print to be able to engage with the people that we’re inviting to those events, but also utilizing the exact same technology that we’re using for our customers when we’re executing their highly personalized communications. Then you can’t talk about anything. I say this all the time. You can’t have a conversation without saying AI, and using AI to support what we’re trying to do from a marketing perspective.
For one of those, the theme was hyper-personalization. We leaned into the concept of a mix tape, which we’ll tell everybody how old we are, Deborah, when we remember growing up, it really meant something when you got a mix tape from –
[0:22:28] DC: Oh, my God. I love mix tapes.
[0:22:29] BD: Yes. A friend, or a boyfriend, or you know, whatever it is.
[0:22:31] DC: Yes.
[0:22:32] BD: You thought of it, but you spent all this time creating this mix tape for your person. We leaned into that. We had, to your point, all of the industries that we work with were invited to this event. We used AI to create custom playlists for Deborah’s mix tape. On the printed invitation that we sent to you, there was a barcode that you could scan that would actually take you to the Spotify playlist. Then AI helped us create the list of songs. For the automotive industry, it was Little Red Corvette, and Don’t Drive Over 55. For the fitness industry, it was Olivia, Newton, John, Let’s Get Physical. Those are examples of some of the stuff that were on the playlist. We had a lot of fun using AI, using XMPie to help us with the personalization, to do the VDP, and then doing what we do every day, which is use direct mail. People really dug it. It was a great conversation and a lot of fun putting the campaign together.
[0:23:31] DC: As they should. I mean, it literally, that piece alone says, Sandy Alexander is part of the world we live in right now.
[0:23:39] BD: Yeah.
[0:23:40] DC: That’s it. I always try to say, when people are like, “Print is a dying industry.” I’m like, no. It’s an evolving industry. It’s definitely a shrinking industry, but that’s okay. The processes are antiquated. That’s why people think, a lot of people think that printing is a process, that guy from the movies. Yeah. It’s super important that print is, it’s not a call to action of why you’re using digital media of printers. No, we’re beyond that now. Now, print is a supporting player in this movie. You want an Oscar for that supporting role. Even if you only have three minutes of screen time, you’re going to eat that screen for your three minutes.
We’ve spoken about personalization. You call it VDP. I mean, it’s around the customization, personalization. Now, it’s not a new concept, but I often think it’s misunderstood as a gimmick, even by the advertising agencies and not as a strategic sales marketing, education and communication opportunity. How do you define personalization and what is the climate for data discussions with customers these days?
[0:24:57] BD: The climate is hot. I feel like that’s a major conversation that we’re having with a lot of customers.
[0:25:03] DC: I’m sorry, hot as in they’re interested in it, or hot as, oh, God, there’s a lot of data privacy coming?
[0:25:09] BD: No. Hot, because they’re interested in it. It’s a hot topic, and they’re trying to be smarter about it. Many of our customers have so much data. What do we do with it? How do we capitalize on this? We actually talked about it in that Glimpse event that I was talking about, without having the creep factor come into play. Not acting like we know too much about you, but acting like we know you well enough that you know that we know you as a consumer.
Now, we’re working with data agencies as well to really help us micromodel and really dig into the data. One of our partners calls it super variables, where they’re taking variables of data and combining those two to create yet another level of variability about Deborah, about Betsy. So, they can get even get more targeted. But if you think about it, when you get an email, it’s popping up as soon as you’ve gone online and as soon as you’ve talked about something, you’re getting it. We want direct mail to still feel as relevant as that. How do we accomplish that? That’s what we’re able to do through some of these technology executions. I think the customers are overwhelmed with how to tackle it. That’s where folks like us come into play to help guide them through that process and develop that business logic and the if-then statements that drive. It’s going to a female, so we’re using this imagery.
They are a lifetime value of this amount, so we’re driving this type of offer to them. We know their spending habits are the casino industry. The resorts in Vegas do an amazing job of this. They know where we’re spending. They know that I’m not a gambler. I’m going to the spa and I’m going to a nice restaurant and I’m going to a show. My offers that they’re sending to me are focused on that, versus my brother who is at the blackjack table, not the slots and is going to the night show and his offers are completely different.
That’s when you want it to be relevant to the individual, to the recipient, but also, be timely. Now, that’s why this automation is so important and these triggers that we’re able to do based on engagements within their POS systems, or their CRM systems are immediately triggering us to send relevant and personalized direct mail communications. When they’re doing that, that’s when people are seeing the response rates go into the double digits, when they’re combining it with their digital campaigns.
[0:27:31] DC: Do your customers share their results with you?
[0:27:35] BD: They do not. Customers, listen to me, start sharing results with us.
[0:27:39] DC: I was giggling to myself. I was like, “Ah.”
[0:27:42] BD: Yes. Everybody I talk to wishes our customers did that more with us. I understand.
[0:27:48] DC: But you know how you know it’s successful, Betsy? They come back for more.
[0:27:51] BD: They come back for more. Yeah.
[0:27:53] DC: But they’ll never share that.
[0:27:54] BD: We do.
[0:27:55] DC: Well, I’m just saying, the customers don’t really share it. I would say, you know the stats, because you do it for your own company. You know what you’re triggering with responses from using your own, I call it getting high on your own supply, which is obviously, what you do.
[0:28:13] BD: I will say, some customers are good about it and we’ve been able to do some case studies. One of those, I mentioned our MailPath technology. One of our healthcare customers used it for gaps in care communication, and they came back to us and said that they saw a lift of, like they were getting a 13% response rate, which was very different from the 2%, 1% that they were seeing when it was digital.
[0:28:35] DC: Yeah. I mean, that’s incredible. I used to be at the advertising agency side and we don’t know the results either. We just know if they come back and they want another direct mail campaign up. I guess, a lot of people called, or went on the website, or bought something.
[0:28:50] BD: Yeah. I just got finished with the conversation. I’ll add to this really quickly. I literally, just before I joined you today, was on another conversation about the importance of tech on our side being able to really demonstrate attribution to direct mail. There’s a lot of strides happening in that. There’ll be more conversation around that as we head into the end of 2025-2026, because it’s important. The sea levels need to be able to see the data, and we have to be able to provide that. There’s a lot of strides happening on the tech side to be able to show that direct mail is working and attribution. Everybody should just be on the lookout for more to come to support their efforts there.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[0:29:31] DC: Print Media Centr provides printspiration and resources to our vast network of global print and marketing professionals. Whether you are an industry supplier, print service provider, print customer or consultant, we have you covered, by providing resources and strategies that enable business marketing and creative success, reporting from global events, these podcasts, Project Peacock TV, and an array of community-lifting initiatives. We also work with OEMs, suppliers, industry organizations, and event producers, helping you connect and engage with our vast audience, and achieve success with your sales, marketing, and conference endeavors. Visit Print Media Centr and connect with the Printerverse. Links in the show notes. Print long and prosper.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:30:25] DC: I agree with everything you say, Betsy. But the only personalization I see in my mailbox is really, from my credit cards, my loyalty programs and things of that nature. My name might be in it, but because I don’t have anything else to compare it to, I don’t know if it’s variable data, which is another thing. Do you think that at some point, it will trickle down to the local level? Right now, I think it’s a national and regional level.
[0:30:54] BD: Yeah, I think so. We just recently had a conversation on Color Bar about the pet industry.
[0:31:00] DC: What’s Color Bar?
[0:31:01] BD: Color Bar is the Sandy Alexander podcast. Sorry.
[0:31:03] DC: Oh, excellent.
[0:31:04] BD: Yeah. We were talking about the pet industry and what an amazing opportunity they have to get really personal, because people are obsessed with their pets, right? If I were to get something that had Piper’s name on it, and it was her birthday month and it’s like, they’ll get Piper a treat for her birthday, I would die for it. Like, well, yeah, I would love that. We see some of those companies doing that very thing. Employees and stuff will bring samples in and we’ll get to see it and experience it, which is great.
To your point around localization, what we’re also seeing is retailers trying to send that mailing, but it’s their local pet adoption company. It’s their neighborhood retailer. This is your closest XYZ pet store. This is your closest veterinary to this. They’re seeing some of that localization happening and trying to make it feel relevant. We’re even seeing it in the retail space, where a partner of ours just got finished doing a project with IT’SUGAR. I know I can say this, because they’ve got it on – they did some case studies on one of our conversations and they’ve got it all over their Instagram. But IT’SUGAR, the candy store, they did these phenomenal in-store build outs specific to the city, or the region that they were in.
[0:32:31] DC: Oh, cool.
[0:32:32] BD: It was all covered in jelly beans. You got to go on Instagram and look at their set, plus stage creative. They did one in Hawaii, and it was an underwater theme and the IT’SUGAR store. In Chicago, it was the bean and all of that. In New York City, it was the Empire State Building. Another city, I can’t remember, they did a whole Alice in Wonderland theme. Anyway, so now this localization is happening. We also saw it with Aritzia, not a client of ours, but they partnered with local artists and had the same concept in their stores, but they use the local artists to execute it. You can see that people are even trying to get personal, local, even in store that doesn’t really have anything to do with us, but they’re trying to make people feel like they’re part of that community.
[0:33:20] DC: Seen and heard. Yeah.
[0:33:22] BD: Seen and heart and part of the community.
[0:33:22] DC: Validated.
[0:33:23] BD: Part of your life. That they understand your community. Yeah.
[0:33:27] DC: I love it. It’s a great point. Glocal, too. You could be global. You could be local. It’s absolutely a fantastic point. I’m laughing a little, because I always use the example of the veterinarian when it comes to personalization. You can go even further than that, Betsy, because I actually have two cats. Don’t even ask. I got two, because I didn’t want to separate them. They were brothers and yeah, okay.
That to the side, my vet requires that I have photos of my pets with them. Why isn’t my pet on my cart? I mean, you can go crazy. Or, why am I getting a note from the vet about an appointment? There’s a dog on the front. There’s no reason for it. The people who have iguanas, get iguanas. You can get stock art. You don’t even have to have a photo shoot. I use that as the simplest example to say, and what if they could have, for example, some vets sometimes invest in pet food? They sell special pet foods there. Why can’t my pet be on the package?
I mean, you might need to get a wiener involved. Okay, so I upload a photo of my pet and that’s – I get it through the mail, or whatever it might be. I agree with you. I think it’s the simplest example. Now, we have spoken about technology a lot on this podcast and you have shared how technology enables Sandy Alexander’s mission in so many ways. If you imagine Sandy Alexander without the platform you’ve built around personalization and automation, where do you think the company would be today? How would that absence change the value you’re able to deliver to your customers?
[0:35:15] BD: We wouldn’t be sitting here talking today, or at least I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you representing Sandy Alexander, for sure. It is a part of our daily lives. I would say that between our tech platforms and data and variability, I would guess, I’m just pulling this out of the air, but I would guess that it’s probably driving 60% to 70% of our business in some way, shape, or form. Yeah, we would not be here. We also wouldn’t have the wonderful clients that we have, because we wouldn’t be able to service them the way that they expect, and there it is. Yeah.
Now, it’s just part of our bloodline. It’s just part of our DNA, and we’ll continue to be in big ways. I’ve said the term XMPie a couple of times throughout the podcast. That’s just a perfect example of a platform that has been part of our DNA for a really long time, and it’s allowed us to service a lot of the industries that we’ve talked about as well. I think about the automotive industry. You were just talking about people doing it well, and people not doing it. The automotive industry has been ahead of it for a really long time. Everything from, you get a new car and you get a new owner welcome kit, and it’s your color of car and it’s your VIN number, and it’s – You get it, and you mix it all. Everybody loves a new car, so you get all lit up about it.
Two, your off-leased programs, so they know 90 days, 60 days, 30 days, they know what you’re driving, they know what you might want to buy next, they know what financing you need. The automotive industry does a really great job. XMPie is driving all of that. We’re getting the data, but the XMPie tool is helping us create those intricate direct mail pieces.
Another great example is, I talked about the travel industry a moment ago with the resorts that we work with in Vegas, but the nether core industry, or the cruise lines, and they do a beautiful job of it as well. We were just recognized actually this year from XMPie for a super complex execution that we’ve done for one of the cruise lines that we work with. They do a vacation guide for any guests that come on their ships, and every single page, and the page count could be different based on the guests, which is also interesting, but it’s everything from where their state room is on the ship, to every excursion that they’re on, to the day that they come, it’s their luggage tags, it’s this moment. Their guests absolutely love it. They get it 30 days before they depart.
They’ve talked about the fact that the guests just walk around the ship with it, and it’s like their little diary that they go to their entire trip. It took us at least 12 months to build that through integration with them and understanding all the business logic and rules, and elevating that for them. Speaking of subject matter experts, we have a really talented team that do nothing but work with aside that platform every single day. That’s just one example of a tool that we’ve had in our back pocket for years that continues to elevate as our customers are asking us to, and that we just continued to use and continue to train our people to know how to work with them.
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[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:39:09] DC: The thing that I love about XMPie is that it allows you to take what you’re already doing for customers and then say, what else can we do? What else can we do? When you think of the cruise lines, my God, the cruise people, they’re like, the cruise people, they’re in it to win it, the cruise people. They really are.
[0:39:29] BD: They’re dedicated soldiers, for sure.
[0:39:31] DC: They love their cruises. It’s not like you need to talk these people into going on a cruise. They love cruises. But maybe they’re not taking all the features, or all the extras on it. Imagine all the photos that they take during their cruise, coming in a book about all the cruises that are available next year from their favorite cruise line, showing them having so much fun on these cruises and how it maybe, could have been more relaxing that day it rained if only you had a spa pass, or something like that, you know? What are they not doing? Where are the holes and how can you – You don’t need to sell them on the cruise, but there’s so much else you can do based upon the data of what they’ve done on a cruise. Now, I’ve never been on a cruise. I don’t know if they’re scanning you when you walk into the show. But I’m sure they know what you’re doing.
[0:40:27] BD: Mm-hmm. They absolutely do. I mean, again, the travel industry, you use American Express as an example of they know everything about us. The travel industry does, too. I mean, we’re swiping the entire time. We’re in their four walls, or within the ship. Yeah, they absolutely do. To your point, using the things that they know about us to upsell, to cross sell, I mean, it’s exactly what the retail industry does, right? We get online and you start to shop for something and then all of a sudden, you see this recommendation at the bottom, oh, other shoppers bought this. Of course, I, of course, go, “Oh, that sounds fantastic. Let me buy one more piece of clothing that I don’t need.”
[0:41:07] DC: At least you have to look, because if everyone else is doing it, well, at least I want to see.
[0:41:11] BD: That same concept that we’re also accustomed to in a digital environment when we’re shopping on Amazon, or wherever it might be, it’s that same logic that people need to recognize we can do in a print world in a very similar fashion. To be able to really, pun intended, push the envelope, think outside of the box and get really creative, you know, one of the things that we’ve talked about with some of our retail clients is they all have been doing, every person gets the same catalog. Regardless of who you are, regardless of where you shop, regardless of where you live, and to think about the opportunities of, I’m in Oklahoma sitting by the lake. Why wouldn’t a sports store send me things that are more focused on lake life, versus somebody in Colorado that you would want to send them things that are focused on life and skiing.
[0:42:07] DC: Or even an insurance company. You live by a lake. Does she have a dock? Maybe she has a boat. Maybe she needs boat insurance. I mean, there’s –
[0:42:15] BD: That’s right.
[0:42:16] DC: I agree with you a thousand percent on everything you’re saying.
[0:42:19] BD: The opportunities are endless. I’m ready for people to really grab it with both hands and go for it. Yeah.
[0:42:27] DC: I think this is the only way it’s going. There’s junk mail and there’s marketing mail. There is useless information out the world and there’s relevant information out in the world. That matters more and more every day, as the Gen Z’ers enter the workplace, and even more, moving up the ladder, because they just want authenticity and they want it to matter to them and they want to understand how it fits – they want to know more things than a typical consumer does.
[0:42:58] BD: You’ve made a great point, and I think we even have some white papers available about it. But that Gen Z and now Gen Alpha, we ran out of letters. So now we’re Gen Alpha’ing it. I mean, statistics show and all the studies show that they love direct mail. They’re behind their screens all the time. When they finally get something that’s tactile and also personalized to them, it does something for them.
[0:43:24] DC: Yeah. They love coupons, too.
[0:43:25] BD: They just get super excited about it. They get a coupon, they get a special offer to their favorite – to American Eagle, to Altar’d State, wherever the –
[0:43:34] DC: All the shopping, or whatever those things are called.
[0:43:37] BD: This is what’s also interesting. What we’re seeing from our retailers is that that generation is also wanting to get back in store. They’re wanting mall experiences.
[0:43:45] DC: Yes. I read that the other day.
[0:43:47] BD: They’re wanting to socialize with their friends and be in the wild, as I say. Yeah, to have something physical that you bring in, so you’ve got a coupon and you get to go spend. Anyway, it’s for anybody that’s wondering, the new generations are responding really, really well to that tactile direct mail moment.
[0:44:03] DC: I agree with you, and I also –
[0:44:04] BD: It also needs to be personalized. They’re so used to it.
[0:44:08] DC: That’s the thing. They wanted to have meaning for them.
[0:44:10] BD: That direct mail needs to be the same thing to resonate. Yup.
[0:44:12] DC: It really needs to have meaning to them, because that’s how they function in the world. Okay, Betsy, last question. I like to call this one, pick one. That is the only rule. You got to pick one.
[0:44:25] BD: Okay. Okay.
[0:44:27] DC: Are salespeople better marketers, or marketers better salespeople?
[0:44:32] BD: Do I get to pick another one? Oh, man. Because I played both roles, I feel like I’m stuck in the middle here.
[0:44:43] DC: That’s why I asked you specifically.
[0:44:46] BD: I know.
[0:44:48] DC: This is my own little game I play.
[0:44:49] BD: You know what? Here’s what I would say. If you’re a good salesperson, you’ve got marketing blood in you, for sure, especially in our industry, because we’re talking to marketers all day, every day. If you don’t have marketing in your blood, you’re probably not going to do well selling print. Because you have to be able to put yourself in their shoes. You have to be able to get creative. You have to be able to say, have some fun with it. Selling sometimes, I’ve said this before, I think, even at some of the events that you and I have attended together that sometimes I hate admitting that I’m a salesperson, because I don’t even like salespeople. But the fun part is being able to bring solutions. The fun part is getting creative with how we engage with our customers and help them. Yeah, I guess, I answered it, that you need to be a better marketer to be a better salesperson. Yeah.
[0:45:45] DC: I think that that is the best answer I have ever heard, and I agree with you a thousand percent. You can teach a salesperson marketing. But I’m a marketing person and I’m not – Mm-mm. I’m okay if someone comes to me, but if I have to pick up a phone and call somebody, it’s not happening. I’m one of those ramble voicemail people. I end up apologizing to everybody. I’m really sorry, I’m calling you. I will get some sales tips from you.
Betsy, it is always a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. Links for the things that Betsy and I have discussed will be in the show notes, including the podcast and anything else you want to share about Sandy Alexander. Until next time, everybody, print long and prosper.
[END OF EPISODE]
[0:46:36] DC: Thanks for listening to Podcasts From the Printerverse. Please subscribe, click some stars, and leave us a review. Connect with us through printmediacentr.com, we’d love to hear your feedback on our shows and topics that are of interest for future broadcasts. Until next time, thanks for joining us. Print long and prosper.
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