One of the missing pieces in print marketing automation has been the ability for printers to integrate with their customers through platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zapier.
If customers want to automate their marketing campaigns directly out of one of these platforms, they are limited to email, text, and social media. If they want to add direct mail campaigns to the mix, they must work through the print bidding platform Lob. For printers, this means losing control of that customer relationship, since Lob places jobs with the lowest bidder on its platform, whether that disrupts the printer-client relationship or not.
Late summer/early fall, that changes. A major player in the marketing automation space is launching its own integration with these marketing automation platforms. This will allow printers and clients to work together directly. Clients will be able to go into a platform like Salesforce or HubSpot and “turn on” the integration with their printer the same way they would turn on any other API. This will allow them to automate their direct mail campaigns directly out of those platforms the same way they do digital channels. The printer maintains 100% control of that client relationship.
Yes, You Heard That Right
It doesn’t take much to imagine the impact this will likely have on the printing industry. The potential is so great, in fact, that the company is speaking to WhatTheyThink on condition of anonymity until the integration is ready for commercial rollout.
Here’s what we are able to say:
- This will be a white label solution. Printers will pay for the subscription, roll it out to their customers under their own branding, and the client will go into their marketing automation platform and select the printer as their output partner. They will then be able to fully integrate direct mail into their multichannel campaigns like any other channel.
- The solution will integrate with 20+ marketing automation platforms. This will include Salesforce, HubSpot, Fiserv, Oracle, Braze, and Zapier, among others.
- The integration has been in pilot with two commercial print customers for the past six months. Feedback, as you can imagine, has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
- The integration is scheduled for late summer launch—August/September 2023.
“For years, printers have been at the mercy of becoming commoditized by aggregators and bidding sites like Lob,” notes the CEO of the “secret” company. “Our platform will give every printer, whether a mega printer or small shop, a way to easily connect with all of the major marketing automation platforms and offer this back to their clients as a value-add. It’s the biggest thing in print in 20 years.”
Have questions? Email them to [email protected], and we will compile and answer them as part of follow-up coverage as soon as we are allowed to do so!
