One of my favorite industry bloggers, Jennifer Matt, wrote an insightful article for WhatTheyThink titled “Print’s Representation at the MarTech Conference”. The MarTech conference is all about Marketing Technology. As Jennifer points out, marketing, and the role of marketers, is rapidly become more technical, with an almost overwhelming array of solutions and players.
Since many of these are highly focused and specific, integrating multiple components and vendor products is essential, yet contributes to the overall complexity in terms of both choosing the most appropriate platform and in ongoing management.
In the meantime, what is the role of print? Companies of all sizes still spend significant marketing budget on print, and there are compelling statistics on the value of print when compared to purely digital communications. But print is too often seen as less than relevant, relatively expensive, and not as “cool” as the digital channels.
Jennifer suggests that we look at print, and more specifically at personalized print, as an essential component of a comprehensive marketing platform. In other words, print should be an integral part of a marketing communications solution, where it will support and enhance whatever other channels and tools are used.
This seems like a no-brainer, but many of the very large companies offering marketing solutions simply don’t seem to get it. Here at Pageflex we are committed to print as a critical component of the marketing ecosystem. We’re excited about our recent acquisition of EarthIntegrate™ because the Pando platform leverages Pageflex technology to provide a sophisticated localized marketing automation platform that supports multiple channels – including print.
We look forward to sharing more information about Pando in the upcoming months!