The first, ProfitQuick Direct Mail ROI Planner, can be used to model the effect of using personalisation prior to running a campaign, or to analyse the results afterwards.

The second tool can be used to calculate the value of the white space on transactional documents when used for advertising and marketing.

Helene Blanchette, go-to-market strategy manager of the International Business Group at Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific, described the Direct Mail ROI Planner as “a true assessment of the risk, return on invetsment (ROI), and benefits of a campaign”.

She added that it enabled printers to move beyond a price-per-piece argument to a quantifiable return on a marketing investment model.

“It gives us more detail and a common language of measurement,” she said. “That makes it easier to prove the return on investment and to sell to the client.”

The DM ROI Planner is an online tool in which data is entered on a prospect acquisition, production and mailing costs, response rate, conversion rate and product price.

Using that data, it is possible to compare different campaigns and their ROI. By using the tool to measure results of actual campaigns, it is possible to get more accurate response and conversion rates for future calculations.

Xerox’s second tool, the white space calculator, uses simple information about the space available for marketing messages per document and the production cost to determine a value for the available space.

It can be used either as an internal tool to ensure that the costs are correctly assigned to marketing, or to calculate an appropriate price to charge white space to agencies and media buyers if a firm wants to turn their statements from a cost centre to a profit centre.

It is also possible to work backwards from a price for the space to check what margin can be made.

The tools, which were developed by Fuji Xerox Asia Pacific, were unveiled to the global market at the Infotrends European Transpromo Summit in Brussels earlier this month.

The DM ROI Planner is a free tool available for all marketers and for Xerox clients to rebrand and can be downloaded from www.fujixerox-transpromo.com/download.

Read the original article at www.printweek.com.

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