(May 12, 2008) "No one's losing their job yet for not doing one-to-one marketing - but they will soon." That was the view expressed by John Mahoney, president, The Mahoney Company, Santa Clara, Calif., in a recent Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners webinar, "The Moment Has Arrived: Custom, Cross-Channel Communications Comes of Age."
 
About 75 industry professionals attended the session, which was an exclusive for members of the Xerox Premier Partners, a global network of leading print providers dedicated to developing new business opportunities with digital technologies.
 
Much of Mahoney's address focused on a successful, multi-channel go-to-market campaign his company is running for Intel, a non-digital-printing division of Hewlett-Packard and JDA Software. In about six months, the program has generated a 9.26 percent response rate, 174 leads and a sales pipeline of nearly $30 million on a campaign investment of less than $100,000.
 
In developing the program, Mahoney said, "We never discussed with them how many people would be engaged or how many pieces would be going out. All they wanted to know was the ROI."
 
Mahoney also offered strong evidence that the moment for custom, cross-channel communications has indeed arrived. He cited his own company's recent success re-branding as a marketing services company after a 60 percent decline in business from 2001 to 2005. And he argued that the top objections marketers give to one-to-one marketing - including cost barriers, lack of quality data, and execution and management difficulties - either don't hold up to scrutiny or are easy to rise above. "We're well-positioned to overcome these challenges and objections to help them (marketing organizations) out," he said.
 
Mahoney's presentation was the second in the 2008 Premier Partners Webinar Series. Upcoming presentations in the Premier Partners-exclusive program will cover topics such as opportunities in the Xerox 1:1 Lab, vertical market selling and print buying trends.
 
Founded in 2000, the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners program has more than 700 members in 48 countries on six continents. Graphic communications companies are invited to join based on their commitment to meeting their customers' needs through innovative use of digital technologies, including Xerox digital printing systems and services. Print buyers can access this global resource via the Premier Partners Web site, www.xerox.com/xpp, which enables criteria-based searches of the entire, worldwide network of Xerox Premier Partners.