PALO ALTO, Calif (October 9, 2008) - The shift to Individualized Relationship Marketing (IRM) is one of the key preliminary findings from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council's new thought leadership initiative, "Precision Promotion: Timely, Targeted and Trackable" sponsored by the InfoPrint Solutions Company, a joint venture between IBM and Ricoh. Using more personalized, relevant and precise customer communication is a key strategy marketers intend to leverage to achieve greater revenue and profitability from existing customers.

The research is part of a multi-faceted program aimed at exploring strategies and techniques for customer revenue optimization, including integrating transactional print and electronic communications with personalized promotional marketing offers. To date, more than 600 sales and marketing professionals have completed the survey that focuses on the challenges, solutions and new strategies for realizing greater bottom line growth through deeper, more targeted communications with customers.

"Top-line growth mandates, inflationary pressures and a more constrained economic environment are challenging marketers to explore every possible area of customer revenue optimization and marketing efficiency," said Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the CMO Council. "By combining new technological delivery mechanisms with good old-fashioned marketing savvy, companies can better sustain current business relationships while exploring new routes to revenue."

Among the key findings:

- Maximum revenue is still out of reach: Over 76 percent of marketers surveyed felt that they were not realizing the full revenue potential of their current customers. Over 10 percent claimed to not know at all

- Strategy is getting personal: Messaging that is more personalized, relevant and precise is the top strategy marketers will deploy for achieving greater revenue and profitability according to 60 percent of the respondents. Marketers will also look to find new ways to up- or cross-sell current accounts (45 percent) address under-penetrated markets or new customer segments (41 percent) and will use more efficient channels or alternative media to engage (32 percent)

- Bribery won't lead to loyalty: As marketers look for new routes to customer loyalty, providing new inducements and incentives to do business will probably not factor into the strategic roadmap (9 percent of respondents).

- Good news for database marketing solution providers: Marketers will be introducing better segmentation, profiling and targeting strategies (60 percent of respondents), adding or improving database marketing systems (49 percent) and acquiring new analytics capabilities (30 percent) to better target and engage.

- Better news for direct marketing solution providers: Marketers also indicate continued investment in personalizing multi-channel communications (30 percent) and individualizing print, email, text messaging, call center or web interactions (26 percent).

"The opportunity to directly engage with consumers and present them with meaningful promotions, messages and information could not hit businesses at a more critical time," said Sandra Zoratti, Vice President of Global Marketing Solutions for InfoPrint. "Solutions like TransPromo and multi-channel personalized communications have the ability to cut through the clutter of today's irrelevant direct mail with targeted content that sends the right customer the right message at the right time."

At Bertlesmann Direct North America, operators of direct-to-consumer media company Columbia House, personalization and direct communications and promotions to customers is key to success. "I feel that wherever we've been able to personalize a message we've always done better than just a mass approach, always," said Patrick Adams, SVP of Interactive Customer Marketing. "Whether that be a reply card that gets inserted into a bi monthly mailing or it's an email that says 'Hi Patrick' verses 'Hi Customer' or 'Hi Member' or nothing. Even with something as little as that, we always see an increase in response and in engagement."

Jeff Meyer, SVP of North America Event Marketing & Sales for Feld Entertainment which produces Ringling Brothers and Disney on Ice said, "I think if we don't go that route we're all going to be in trouble. It's only going to help us as time goes on. The more personal and relevant we can be with our messaging to our consumers the better off we're all going to be. I think that's going to make a profound impact on our business."

Sponsored by InfoPrint Solutions Company, the Precision Promotion research initative includes a series of online member engagements, qualitative interviews, audits and dialogues that look at ways to realize greater business value from existing customer relationships, distribution channels, derivative products, as well as new and adjacent markets or product offerings. The comprehensive report, expanding on the initial key findings, will be released in early December, with detailed discussions and best practices presented at the year-end CMO Summit Elite Retreat (www.cmosummit.org) on December 10 and 11, 2008 in Monterey, California.