Cary Sherburne: Hi, I'm Cary Sherburne and Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I'm pleased to be here with my colleague and fellow WhatTheyThink contributor Barb Pellow. It's great to see you.
Barb Pellow: Well thanks Cary.
Cary Sherburne: Do we want to talk about how many years we've known each other no? Too many, but anyway, you know, we've been talking for quite some time now about transpromotional printing. In fact, you've been kind of a thought leader in that area. Maybe you can tell us what you think the latest kind of trends are in that area of using transactional documents for marketing purposes.
Barb Pellow: I think the big thing in today's market is really working to engage the consumer and for the first time what we're seeing are the transaction documents actually being blended with things like SMS text messaging and quick response codes so that you engage that customer in immediate call to action. Our view is that, that's very, very important as we look at going forward with a always on, always engaged consumer base.
Cary Sherburne: Okay and so when you talk about, you know, for example QR codes so when I get my bill I might see a QR code on there and I can just -- not with this phone but snap it -- snap the QR code it takes me --
Barb Pellow: Yeah and what we're finding is that when I snap that QR code there are a number of things people are doing today. One of them is I can click on a QR code to get maybe more information about a service offering. It can actually even link to a YouTube video. On the text side, what we're seeing is that people will do engaging offers and say text to win some kind of a free offer. The value to that statement provider is all of a sudden he starts building up that mobile database which becomes pure gold.
Cary Sherburne: And so are you -- do you think that -- and then also, you know, the other thing we have in the transactional business is the move to online, so this works also with online as well as printed.
Barb Pellow: Exactly. I can use in fact that QR code, that text message -- text messaging to encourage that customer to move into an engaging online relationship with me.
Cary Sherburne: But also just presenting the document online?
Barp Pellow: Right.
Cary Sherburne: Yeah. So that's great. It's a really exciting area and I know that you've been involved in several conferences and trying to bring the marketers, the printers, the agencies together because it takes that whole universe --
Barb Pellow: Exactly.
Cary Sherburne: It takes a village as someone said.
Barb Pellow: There you go.
Cary Sherburne: Alright, thanks Barb.
Barb Pellow: You bet.
