Since the company Plan-X was established in 1995 in Lahr, Germany’s Black Forest, Plan-X has led the way with the latest marketing solutions by continuing to adapt and expand its service offering to meet the changing requirements of its customers. As the most recent addition to Plan-X’s marketing services, Cross Media has enabled the company to enhance its range of services and introduce new marketing tools that combine the new and old media of print and online digital communications. As a result, Plan X has increased its competitive edge, won new business and improved campaign success rates for existing clients.

Malte C. Bayer, owner of Plan-X, comments, “The future of one-to-one marketing is online, but printed communication still plays an important role in the marketing mix. DirectSmile’s Cross Media has provided us with the perfect tool to link the world of print and online. We had already recognised the potential for increased success with personalised print campaigns, but what convinced us to go for Cross Media was the opportunity to easily personalise online images and online content as well. Being able to personalise a campaign across all media channels creates a fantastic interaction for the recipient between mailings and personal websites. Cross Media also enables us to measure the responses and create even more highly-targeted subsequent campaigns.”

Plan-X prints parts of its mailings digitally and, as Cross Media includes a variable data printing (VDP) solution based on Adobe InDesign, Plan-X also knew that the solution would be easily integrated into its existing workflow. Campaign success for Plan-X customer, Saigerhöh Hotel As early as autumn 2009, Plan-X launched its fi rst cross-media campaign powered by DirectSmile Cross Media software. The agency developed a campaign for well-known 4-star hotel, Saigerhöh, consisting of an image-personalised mailing with a personalised URL (PURL) for each recipient. The campaign was intended to motivate former customers to make a future visit to the hotel and approximately 8,000 previous guests were targeted.

At the same time, Saigerhöh hotel also wanted DirectSmile marketing & print solutions Personalised Website Personalised Mail Piece to use the campaign to collect more information about its customers’ preferences and find out which of its additional hotel services were most desirable. Recipients of the campaign materials were asked to respond to questions in the mailing via their own PURL, and, as a thank you, they then received a voucher for dinner at the hotel.
Being the first time that this particular Plan-X client had implemented a cross-media campaign, the expectations were quite high. “The result of this campaign demonstrated the power of a personalised, integrated approach, with a 10.1% response rate,” says Malte C. Bayer. “A response rate exceeding 10% is a tremendous success and we believe that the image, copy and website personalisation greatly contributed to this. Receiving a direct mail piece and website that is personalised to the individual gives the campaign a uniqueness and longevity in the recipient’s mind that you would not get with standard campaigns.”

The responses collected gave Saigerhöh hotel valuable information about how to improve its range of services and optimise its marketing strategy and the vouchers encouraged hundreds of guests to visit the hotel for the first time in years. Malte C. Bayer comments, “This fantastic result provided our client with convincing proof that by using Cross Media to create a personalised, integrated marketing campaign, we could increase their return on their investment significantly.” Malte C. Bayer summarises his experiences with the new system, “As part of the variable data printing process, DirectSmile software provides a good, practical solution that’s easy to use. In comparison to other software we have used before, we were impressed by its stability and reliability – particularly with more challenging documents and higher print runs. We are also extremely pleased with the way it enables us to manage client data, ensuring the databases are accurate for effective communication with customers and potential customers. After only a few months of using DirectSmile Cross Media, we can already say that it has helped us to win new clients, improve campaign success rates and therefore, our turnover with existing clients, and we are confident it will continue to do so in the future. It simply works!”