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AIIM Secures Growth Investment from Vegvisir Capital Avant Imaging & Integrated Media Inc., a provider of omni-channel marketing communications solutions, has secured a majority growth investment from Vegvisir Capital, a firm that invests in growing B2B technology companies. The investment will support the Company’s expansion plans which includes augmenting its product offering and service capabilities, accelerating go-to-market initiatives, adding talent, and M&A. Founded in 1990, AIIM has developed an outstanding “client first” reputation along with an extensive set of innovative digital marketing communication solutions including highly personalized direct marketing capabilities, data-driven relationship marketing programs, and print management services. The company’s platform serves over 150 enterprise customers including leading financial services, insurance, retail, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. AIIM helps its clients attract, acquire, and retain customers through a unified offering of digital and physical solutions. “This investment will enable the Company to accelerate our omni-channel platform vision and fuel its future growth. As both Frank and I approach our retirement, we have been thinking how we could deliver on this vision with the company we built for over 30 years. And just as importantly, how to ensure that our employees and customers are protected and expertly serviced into the future. After considering several different options over the past few years, we are convinced that we are putting our employees, our customers, partners, and our vision in great hands with the Vegvisir team,” said AIIM co-founder Mario Giorgio. Post-close the transaction, both Mario and Frank Giorgio will continue as active advisors to the Company. To ensure a smooth leadership transition, Vegvisir has partnered with Patrick Masset to be the leader of the organization moving forward and acting CEO. He brings robust industry knowledge and ❱ DMN.CA
proven go-to-market leadership experience to the Company. The Company will continue to operate out of its Aurora, Ontario headquarters. “AIIM’s exceptional service and quality reputation, broad offering and employee expertise provide the foundational elements for us to rapidly become a platform leader in customer acquisition communication management. With accelerated investments in our platform, we will further enable our valued customers to acquire new clients, while driving organic growth and improving the retention rate of existing customers in both a digital and printed communication environment. We will do so with relentless focus on customer experience, ease of use, automation, and sustainability. The team is excited about the future.” added Patrick Masset AIIM’s acting CEO. This will be the second platform company for Vegvisir and builds upon its prior investment in Royal Alliances Inc., the leading provider of SaaS-based postage discount identification, mail tracking, and payment software solutions to the US mailing industry. “AIIM has consistently invested in technology solutions to better serve its customers and has built an innovative, omnichannel marketing communication platform that serves a $40+ billion market,” said Kyle Reesing, Founder and Managing Partner at Vegvisir. “When we were introduced to Mario, Frank, and the team, we were impressed by the company’s robust solution offering, and outstanding customer service reputation. We look forward to working with the entire AIIM team moving forward.” Founded in 1990, AIIM has developed an outstanding “client first” reputation along with an extensive set of innovative digital solutions, highly personalize direct marketing offering, data-driven relationship marketing programs, and print management services. The platform helps create, automate, and deliver critical marketing communications. Vegvisir Capital invests in growing B2B software and services companies at an inflection point. Vegvisir looks for established core products in large markets that sit at the intersection of software, data, and payments. This business model focus enables deal structure flexibility, aids in the value creation process, and builds strong founder, executive and industry relationships. ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
Driven by Good: CAA South Central Ontario announces brand platform, new tagline It’s a brand platform and tagline that tells the story of who they are and what they stand for as an organization. CAA South Central Ontario (CAA SCO) announced a new tagline – Driven
by Good™. Accompanied by a new brand platform, this will create a sustained and consistent approach for marketing the CAA club brand moving forward. It will also help to express CAA values and a commitment to always doing the right thing as an organization.
The new brand platform was created in partnership with BIMM and reinforces why CAA was named the most trusted brand in Canada for the third year in a row in the annual Gustavson Brand Trust Index, released last week. “This new marketing approach will help CAA Members create a deeper, more emotional connection to our brand,” said Rhonda English, chief marketing officer, CAA Club Group of Companies. “For over 115 years, we have been helping people through advocacy and roadside assistance and for decades with travel and insurance. CAA has been approaching business in a positive and impactful way since its inception and it is time to align our marketing and communications accordingly.” Driven by Good™ was inspired by the people who work at CAA SCO and how they strive to do the right thing for Members and customers every day. It was inspired by a vision of a world where people who, when faced with a choice to do the easy thing, the reactionary thing, the thing that best serves them, pause, and make a choice to do good. As the platform and tagline were developed, CAA collected more than 250 stories of Associates going above and beyond to do the right thing in their day-to-day lives. Stories like the colleague who cleared all the vehicles of snow in her apartment parking lot after a nasty snowfall. Or the Associate, an amateur photographer, who set up his garage like a photo studio so he could take photos of his neighbour’s ill child and her father. Or the co-worker who scrambled to find a coat and warm clothing to help someone in distress. “All of these stories, big and small, show how CAA is made up of Associates who are truly driven by doing good in the world. We are proud that our Associates bring this same approach to their work, showing that as an organization we aren’t driven by profit, we are focused on keeping Members safe and adding value to their day-to-day lives,” continued English. “We are inspired by these kind and MAY 2022
// 5 courageous acts, which represent a world that we want to be a part of and contribute to.” The first campaign that is part of the new brand platform launches today, to begin to tell CAA’s story in this new way. It is focused on inviting our audience into the ‘World of Good’ that we all want to live in. It showcases the good choices that people make that we at CAA are inspired by every day. It also draws on stories and experiences from Associates across the organization focused on how we are Driven by Good™.
Restaurant Brands International, Joanna Griffiths, Founder and CEO, Knix, Eric Morris, Director Retail, Google Canada. “Many retailers have changed their business models over the last two years to be much more responsive to their customers’ quickly changing needs, that, as we all know have been influenced by new insights accelerated by the pandemic. RCC STORE 22 will inspire with retail stories of companies and entrepreneurs who have taken advantage of the new landscape to reemerge stronger and better positioned for success well into ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ the future,” said Diane J. Brisebois, President and CEO, Retail Council of Canada. “This year’s Retail’s most influential leaders will meet conference topics and speakers will address tough questions and provide a range of in person for the first time in three years. perspectives and insights that retailers can Retail Council of Canada announced the immediately bring to their teams.” full agenda for this year’s RCC STORE 22 At RCC STORE 22, retailers can attend Conference. This year’s two-day conference provocative “big picture” keynote will profile speakers who are the “who’s who” presentations as well as concurrent sessions of retail in North America. RCC STORE 22 will focusing on store operations, marketing, also bring together more than 75 speakers supply chain, and digital and mobile and 2,000 retail delegates and business commerce. The content has been developed partners who will be encouraged to talk to ensure that each retailer – regardless of size candidly about current their challenges, or type (e.g., large, medium, independent, how to drive change, and about the future mass merchant, apparel, grocery) – can possibilities for retail. participate in sessions that are most relevant Some of the amazing speakers presenting to their business needs. There is also an at STORE. exciting exhibitor floor which will feature some of the most innovative business partners, from start-ups to leading established companies. These exhibitors will be available to demonstrate their cutting-edge technologies, strategies, and retail solutions. Record numbers of participants have already registered for RCC STORE 2022, which will be held Top row (left to right): Clint Mahlman, President & COO, London Drugs Limited; Dr. Hadiya Roderique, Diversity and Inclusion on May 31 and June Advocate, Journalist, Lawyer; Catherine Laporte, Vice President, Marketing, Lowe’s Canada; Bobby Sahni, Partner & Co-founder, Ethnicity Matters 1, 2022 at the Toronto Bottom row (left to right): Salma Dhanani, Senior Manager, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, Sephora Canada; Rocky Congress Centre. Ozaki, Founder, NoW of Work Inc. and the NoW-Academy; Gregoire Baret, Vice President, Consumer Experience, Aldo; Gillian Stein, Retail is Canada’s CEO, Henry’s (CNW Group/Retail Council of Canada) largest private-sector employer with over 2 This year’s powerful roster of speakers million Canadians working in our industry. includes: Susan O’Brien, Chief Brand & The sector annually generates over $78 billion Customer Officer, Canadian Tire Corporation, in total compensation. Rosie Pouzar, Chief Operating Officer, Sephora Canada, Ron Wilson, President, International, ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Best Buy Canada, Gillian Stein, CEO, Henry’s, Hot air balloon pilot launches disruptive Kate Ancketill, CEO and founder, GDR Creative Intelligence, Dr. Hadiya Roderique, Diversity ad-tech platform. and Inclusion Advocate, Journalist, Lawyer, Hot air balloon pilot and co-founder of The Dianne Buckner, Host, CBC’s Dragons’ Den, Bot Lab, Eliav Cohen, has launched Helium, Ira Kalish, Chief Global Economist, Deloitte, an AI-powered, ad-tech platform that allows Paco Underhill, Founder and former CEO, consumers to converse with brands real time Envirosell, Jacquelyn Kankam, Senior Director on third-party articles and sites. The first of of Sustainability & Social Impact, DECIEM, its kind, the proprietary platform means that Duncan Fulton, Chief Corporate Officer, MAY 2022
Eliav Cohen, co-founder of The Bot Lab.
readers no longer need to visit a brand’s site to follow-up on their interest in a product or service. Instead, they can get their questions answered right then and there, through simply clicking and conversing through a chat bot. Helium by The Bot Lab demo is a new ad-tech platform which the founder hopes will redefine the future of advertising. Helium allows readers to get their questions answered real time through clicking and conversing with a brand, all through an ai-powered chat bot. This allows brands to connect with their prospects instantly and allows publishers a new source of revenue. According to Mordor Intelligence, the chatbot market value is projected to grow to $102 billion USD by 2026, representing a 34 percent compounded annual growth rate compared to 2020. “The pandemic has accelerated the medium,” says co-founder and professional balloonist, Eliav Cohen, who discovered an unmet need in the chatbot space after utilizing bots to automate the booking process for his hot air balloon company, Seattle Ballooning. “Not only has it accelerated the medium, but the advertising space is ripe for reinvention. Clicking an Ad on a site cluttered with tiles and pop-ups no longer suffices. People want a clean experience where they can digest content and get their questions answered on demand.” Utilizing Amazon’s AI technology, the announcement provides a range of benefits for Helium customers: for publishers, it provides a new type of Advertising unit and revenue stream – one that allows them to keep readers on their site; for brands, it provides a new channel to connect directly with prospects at their highest intent moments - while perusing a topic related to their product or service. It also integrates seamlessly with any chatbot platform a DMN.CA ❰
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brand may currently be using; for users, it reimagines the consumer experience by eliminating the need for redirects, clunky form-fills and unwieldy research. The Bot Lab specializes in working with CMOs and marketing leaders, to drive new leads and revenue through delivering a friction-free advert-to-purchase journey. Appropriately named, Helium is The Bot Lab’s next foray into the conversational marketing arena and can integrate with any chatbot platform. Since its inception in 2018, the company has garnered a robust reputation for best-inclass AI services, working closely with leading conversational marketing player, Drift and others. Having built hundreds of bots for mid-market, enterprise and fortune 500 brands, The Bot Lab team is united by a belief that contextualized conversations represent the future of marketing and the user experience in the digital age. With the launch of Helium, The Bot Lab continues to shape the future of marketing. The Bot Lab is 100 percent self-funded. ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
Hivestack Launches Research Division Focuses on Programmatic Digital Outof-Home Advertising for Retail in the Metaverse Hivestack, the world’s leading independent programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) ad tech company, created a new research division that will focus on exploring instore, programmatic media activation in the metaverse. Legendary computer vision scientist P. Anandan has joined Hivestack as a special advisor as part of the initiative. According to a recent eMarketer report advertisers spent $31B USD in 2021 in the US on retail media, with a path to $100B in the coming years. The findings of the report showed that the majority of the ad spend went to advertising on Amazon and Walmart’s digital assets. A growing trend is that large, big box retailers are implementing custom ad tech stacks with identity solutions to ❱ DMN.CA
Legendary computer vision scientist P. Anandan has joined Hivestack as a special advisor as part of the initiative.
monetize their online marketplace as well as their physical stores. Indeed, big-box retailers are taking the next steps in their digital offerings and developing metaverse equivalents of their physical venues. When these stores launch, consumers will be able to wear VR headsets and have their avatar counterparts walk down aisles garnering all the benefits of a virtual shopping outing. This will offer consumers a much more immersive experience than shopping on current two-dimensional user interfaces from their mobile devices. Metaverse stores will enable advertising opportunities for marketers to connect with consumers - in particular, their avatars, at the point of purchase - on virtual in-store walls, virtual digital endcaps, and even virtual in-store audio advertising. Preliminary research shows that consumer engagement in the metaverse will far exceed current online experiences and thus lead to deeper engagement with ensuing greater outcomes for advertisers. Andreas Soupliotis, Founder & CEO of Hivestack shared: “With the launch of our research division, we are prototyping how ad tech can be used to programmatically activate ad opportunities in virtual retail stores in the metaverse. In this environment, the consumer is technically inside their homes shopping via VR headsets, but their avatar is out-of-home. Much of Hivestack’s full-stack technology for digital out-of-home activation and monetization applies to retail metaverse advertising, but some important computer science gaps remain to be addressed. We launched this initiative to formulate the needed technology to make programmatic DOOH a success in the meta as well as the physical world.” The use of meta and crypto-related concepts to buy and sell DOOH ads is already happening. As an example, Hivestack’s exclusive partner in Japan, LIVE BOARD (a
wholly owned subsidiary of NTTDocomo and Dentsu Japan) have already started to experiment selling outdoor advertising space as NFTs, representing the first initiative in Japan to sell outdoor advertising rights as an NFT. P. Anandan, former Managing Director of Microsoft Research, Distinguished Scientist and Emeritus Researcher at Microsoft, and now consultant to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation commented on his new role of Special Advisor at Hivestack: “I am thrilled to be advising Hivestack on this new direction of avatar-based out-of-home advertising. There are some important technology, product and engineering challenges that need to be addressed in order for marketers to benefit from this new generation of advertising. In particular, how does one translate avatar identity from a one-to-one metaverse world to the actual, one-to-many physical world? Also, how do marketers measure the efficacy of these cross-universe media activations? And how should physical-world behaviors drive media activation in the metaverse? Finally, there are many unanswered questions regarding how media payments will be made to metaverse retailers, with crypto currencies possibly being used. In such cases, RTB bid requests and responses between DSPs and SSPS would be based on crypto currency CPMs. As you can see there are many hurdles to overcome, and I look forward to helping Hivestack grow a research team that will address these new frontiers in ad tech and provide marketers with the solutions they will need to succeed in the burgeoning field of ‘Meta Marketing’.” Kevin McDonald, CEO of Kinetic Canada commented “The retail metaverse is opening up a new reality for consumers that blends the sensations of physical, out-of-home shopping with ease of mobile shopping. Kinetic Canada is laser-focused on driving precise measurable outcomes for our clients. MAY 2022
// 7 As the lines blur between consumers and their avatars, the combination of real-world, retail DOOH and metaverse retail digital outof-home advertising is an important area of exploration to us and our clients. We know that the future of marketing is being built now and we thus look forward to working with Hivestack as we develop a new strategy for cross-universe (physical and virtual), outcome-based marketing.” Hivestack is the largest independent, global, full stack, marketing technology company, powering the buy and sell side of programmatic digital out of home (DOOH) advertising. Hivestack was founded in 2017 with headquarters in Montreal, Canada and operates in 25+ countries across the globe ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■
Next Generation Audience Journeys to Customize Customer Experience Journey Builder helps Marketers design audience sequences to continuously update audience membership throughout the entire lifecycle. mParticle, the leading customer data infrastructure company released Journeys, a next generation audience toolset to help teams optimize each step in the customer journey. Journeys uniquely combines multi-path journey analysis, testing, and orchestration into a single workflow, helping brands continuously optimize the customer journey, and deliver personalized experiences in the moments that matter. Digital marketing teams often struggle to deliver adaptive experiences due to customer data challenges created by technological, organizational, and process-oriented silos. Individual departments, like Retention Marketing teams, may manage scores of micro-journeys within their own set of tools like marketing automation platforms. Yet, there’s often little to no experiential connectivity between the journey sequences and key milestones in the customer lifecycle, like customer acquisition, loyalty, or retention teams. Because of this, brands tend to lack actionable insights and the ability to create leverage on journey performance throughout the customer lifecycle. Teams may have robust analytics for parts of the journey like email engagement or loyalty status, but can’t determine the impact of a single touchpoint on the overall customer journey. With Journeys, teams can collaborate on a range of new capabilities to create the most optimal journey for each customer. Included within today’s release is: ❯ Journey Analytics: Powered by Indicative, improve customer context through rich reporting capabilities focusing on multipath journey analysis ❯ Journey Builder: Design multi-stage journeys with a simple-to-use, visual MAY 2022
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interface. Using cross-channel behavioral event or user data, define key milestones and sequences within the customer journey. Journey Integrations: Continuously sync audiences in real-time to any of mParticle’s Audience API partners such as Meta, Twitter, Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Google and hundreds more who deliver the last-mile ads, messaging, and media experiences.
Brands who leverage these capabilities together develop a virtuous cycle between discovery, experimentation, delivery, and optimization. Starting with Journey Analytics, brands discover optimal paths to conversion that they’d want other customers to follow. Leveraging these insights, brands can employ Journey Builder, to build detailed journey paths designed to maximize user acquisition or retention. Using Journey Integrations, brands can reach customers across any channel: email, mobile, or social. In essence, brands get to compare entirely different engagement strategies, and their impact on subsequent journey milestones. Because of the bi-directional nature of the integrations, teams can close the loop on performance by incorporating cross-channel engagement metrics such as email opens and clicks, SMS responses, and attribution data back into mParticle. With a continuously updating user profile view, brands can easily optimize the journey’s sequence and maximize ROI across engagement channels. “In the wake of changes from Apple’s
iOS update last year, the entire marketing ecosystem has been impacted dramatically, and teams need to continue to drive growth in the face of increasing customer acquisition costs, and shifting economic conditions,” Michael Katz, CEO of mParticle says. “Journeys makes it simple for marketers to do more with less, maximizing the impact of each customer interaction.” Journeys has been in beta with select customers, and a series of additional investments planned throughout 2022. Existing mParticle customers can apply for access to Journey Builder directly on the mParticle website. mParticle makes it easy to holistically manage customer data along the entire product and customer lifecycle. Teams across companies like NBCUniversal, JetBlue, Venmo, and Airbnb use mParticle to deliver great customer experiences and accelerate growth by solving the foundational challenges that impede success at scale. mParticle announced a $150M fundraise in October 2021 led by Permira on the heels of strong growth and product innovation.
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FUNDRAISING
Unprecedented Strain meets new Opportunities for Canadian Charities BY SHANNON CRAIG
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however, charities across the country were in a tough spot. Between 2006 to 2019, giving participation rates declined from 24.6 percent in 2006 to 19 percent in 2019 — that’s a 5.6 point drop in less than 15 years. As changes in giving behaviour take effect over time, one concerning trend outlined in the last few editions of The Giving Report highlights how older
light on the giving preferences among younger Canadians which charities can leverage to adapt fundraising strategies to engage a broader demographic of givers. First, the report highlights room for optimism, especially when it comes to younger Canadians. Although the widening giving gap is cause for concern, younger Canadians have demonstrated interest in new ways of giving,
Canadians are now giving at twice the rate of younger Canadians. When older donors are no longer able to give, and if younger Canadians do not increase their giving, charities will be faced with a significant gap in funding known as the giving gap. When we dive into the data, we see Canadians aged 50 and up were the only group to increase their giving, which grew from $4.2 billion in 2006 to $7 billion in 2019. During the same time period, Canadians between 40 and 54 years of age, 25 to 39, and 18-24 decreased the amount they donated by -3.1 percent, -1.6 percent and -2.1 percent each year respectively. While the giving trends are alarming, the report also gives reason for optimism as it sheds
including donating cryptocurrency. Just over six percent of Generation Z and four and a half percent of Millennials have donated cryptocurrency in the last 12 months compared to 0.3 percent of Generation X and less than 0.1 percent of Baby Boomers in the same time frame. Millennials have also demonstrated a strong affinity towards donations of securities. Thirteen percent of Millennials have donated securities in the past year, making them twice as likely to give securities than Baby Boomers. When it comes to monthly donations, 31.8 percent of Generation Z and 30.6 percent of Millennials preferred to give to a charity every month rather than making a larger one-time
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t’s no surprise that charities have had a rough ride since the start of the pandemic. It started with the cancellation of critical in-person fundraising events, leaving charities scrambling to make up for lost revenue. Some charities were forced to quickly pivot programs and services online, while others who offer critical frontline services incurred unexpected costs such as Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) or plexiglass to stop the spread of COVID-19. Now, more than two years into the global health crisis, charities are still contending with the ripple effect of the pandemic as many organizations continue to face higher than normal demand, while donations have declined or flattened as inflation and economic uncertainty mounts. To understand both the challenges and opportunities currently facing charities, CanadaHelps recently published The Giving Report 2022, an annual publication which highlights giving trends and data to gain insights into our current situation. Highlighted in this year’s report are results of an Ipsos poll commissioned by CanadaHelps which shared worrying results. Conducted in January 2021, the poll found that 11 percent of Canadians currently rely on charities to meet basic needs such as food and housing. Of even greater concern, the 11 percent of Canadians relying on charities for basic needs could rise as high as 26 percent if pandemic and inflationary financial pressures continue in 2022. It’s a staggering reality, but that means one in four Canadians may be forced to turn to charities this year for critical support. While many charities face heightened demand in contrast to pre-pandemic times, the same Ipsos poll also reported that one in four Canadians expect to give less in 2022 than they did in 2021. Even before the pandemic,
gift; in contrast, 27.6 percent of Generation X and 20.3 percent of Baby Boomers who would opt to give monthly. These trends show how important it is that charities diversify their revenue streams and enable donors to give in the way that is optimal to them, especially when trying to attract younger donors. The second positive trend is related to ways younger Canadians differ from older generations in terms of how they wish to engage with the charities or causes they care about. For example, 58 percent of Generation Z have shared that they want to learn as much as they can about an issue so they can become an informed supporter. In contrast, less than half of Millennials (48 percent), Generation X (45 percent), and Baby Boomers (49 percent) made the same claim. Knowing this, it’s important for charities to develop high-quality materials and resources that engage and immerse donors in the cause to help them understand the challenges, opportunities, and ways they can help initiate change. It’s also more important than ever for charities to segment their donors to target their communications, especially given differences among generations. Leveraging a donor management system to target younger donors is one way of doing just that. Although it’s been a challenging two years, it’s more important than ever for all of us in the charitable sector to commit to learning about these trends which will take place with or without us, and double down on implementing best practices to advance the transformative work charities lead each and every day. SHANNON CRAIG is the Chief Marketing & Product Officer at CanadaHelps, a public foundation advancing philanthropy through technology. For more information, or to download The Giving Report 2022, visit www.CanadaHelps.org. MAY 2022
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CASE STUDY
Direct Mail Power: A Canadian Legendary Company Thrives BY MICHAEL BROOKE
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n 2021, Parker Printing and Pad celebrated its 75th anniversary. For many decades, the company was satisfied being a small and reliable printer. According to the founder Fred Parker Sr.’s granddaughter, Janis Parker, Fred’s motto was “bigger isn’t always better - it’s just bigger.” Janis grew up in printing but actually went to teacher’s college. “At the time when I graduated, there was an excess of teachers and all I could get were supply jobs” she recalls. Janis wound up working in the printing industry and worked her way up from production to sales where she excelled. Twenty years ago, Janis bought into the company and eventually became its president. But it wasn’t until 2014, when Janis decided to pivot into a different direction. As a result of her decision, Parker is now one of largest direct mail houses in the Greater Toronto Area. In the past, Parker had done a tremendous amount of work for car companies and advertising agencies and was incredibly successful. But Janis sensed that the company was on borrowed time with just being a regular printer. Parker’s biggest clients are financial companies and their associated products like credit cards. “Thankfully, the government makes it mandatory that a lot of the correspondence banks have with their customers is in print form” says president Janis Parker. “What we do is more regulatory than creative, however we do in fact print personalized mail.” The sheer volume of mail can be quite staggering. Most recently, Parker was involved with the relaunch of a credit card and the number reached three-and-half million pieces. This MAY 2022
is approximately 1 in every 10 Canadians. The company also does work for non-profits including the Heart and Stroke Foundation and World Vision. Janis admits that relevant direct mail is a lot less creepy than your cell phone listening to you and sending you ads. “Direct mail gives people the right to pick up the marketing message at their own leisure.” Like many printers, the company faced a reckoning with the advent of digital marketing. They were seriously looking at moving into packaging but a curious turn of events propelled the company into a completely different (and very profitable) direction.
equipment and the job was completed without a hitch. “From here, we just continued into the world of high security direct mail.” At the same time Janis was taking Parker into the world of digital, her father Frank retired but always retained an interest in the staff and customers. He regularly visited and was, and remains, the company’s greatest asset. Janis made the move to set up a new plant in Markham and to expand the business into direct mail. “These moves allowed me as owner to put my own stamp on the company.” This journey was not without its challenges “The move to direct mail was fraught with anxiety and we were very concerned about the
“Like many printers, the company faced a reckoning with the advent of digital marketing.” About eight years ago Parker was approached by a bank customer to print and mail out a regulatory mailing. “Our customer called me up and said ‘I only trust you to get it out in time.’” Janis replied that her company didn’t do this kind of thing and he responded “well, how can you do this?” Janis co-ordinated with another vendor to do the data and they were able to rent some of the printing
cost of making a mistake. The cost of postage can be ten times more than the actual printing — and you’re on the hook if you have to redo and resend the job” says Janis. But the company was able to navigate these challenges and put in the appropriate systems and people to ensure things ran smoothly and error-free. Parker also had to invest heavily into digital and Janis estimates it was
in excess of a million dollars. When it comes to printing and processing confidential material from credit card companies, Parker had to go well beyond what most printers do for their clients. “We have to ensure very strict levels of security. We need things like outside auditors to ensure that our roof can’t be penetrated or that hackers sitting in our parking lot can’t break into our systems.” Security is critical at every step of the way. As Janis explains, “if a credit card is being introduced to the market with a unique feature, then it is imperative that no competitor knows about this. Not a sheet of paper can leave my plant — and we try to keep everything in house — from printing to folding to insertion.” Janis credits the fact that most of their direct mail jobs are being handled under one roof as a key reason the company is handling so much direct mail. She also states that direct mail helped to keep the company moving forward as it faced the decline of print and the move to digital. Janis says that initially some staff were a little bit hesitant to move into these waters, but now at least half the jobs the presses are running are for customers in the financial industry. “We have really swung big time into direct mail.” MICHAEL BROOKE is a Toronto-based freelance writer and is also Principal of Time for My Story, a memoir writing and publishing service. DMN.CA ❰
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INTERVIEW
Email: The Surprising New Future of Digital Marketing An Interview with Chad White, Head of Research, Oracle Marketing Consulting BY STEPHEN SHAW
I STEPHEN SHAW is the Chief Strategy Officer of Kenna, a marketing solutions provider specializing in delivering a more unified customer experience. Stephen can be reached via e-mail at sshaw@kenna.ca
t remains the Rodney Dangerfield of marketing channels. Taken for granted as a low-cost tool. Often underfunded. Given minimal resources. And certainly, treated with little respect, especially relative to other, more glamorous channels, like TV advertising, or even social media. Yet, amongst all digital channels, email marketing still rules. Most marketers today cite email marketing as their preferred channel — ahead of organic search, paid search, content marketing and social media. And more than half of marketers are planning to increase email usage over the next year. Email marketing has stood the test of time. And no wonder. It is affordable. It is customizable. It is measurable. It is extremely effective, done right. It is the best way to engage customers, whose optin permission has been secured. And the ROI is unbeatable: for every $1 spent, it returns $36. So why so little respect? It may have something to do with its antecedents. Email’s use as a commercial messaging platform only became common in the mid-1990s as people got their own personal email address. But it really took off in 1996 when free web-based email services like Hotmail led to hyper-growth of the addressable audience. Soon after inboxes were flooded with unsolicited offers. As complaints about “spam” reached a shrill pitch,
MAY 2022
regulators and ISPs took action. Unwanted emails were blocked out by “junk mail” filters — bad actors were blacklisted — the idea of “permission marketing” came into vogue — and eventually governments responded by ushering in consumer protection legislation like CAN-SPAM in the U.S. and CASL in Canada which made opt-in consent mandatory. That early “batch and blast” era left email marketing with a tarnished reputation. Recognizing the risk of being exiled to the “spam folder”, mainstream marketers responded by improving email practices. Today email is used extensively to facilitate transactions; promote special offers and new products; inform customers of news and events; and drive brand engagement. Advancements in technology have made it easier for marketers to create more interactive “inbox” experiences. And with access to more extensive customer data, they are able to offer more personalized and contextually relevant content. In fact, email marketing may soon emerge from under the shadow of other digital channels to take the lead in steering the customer journey. But first marketers have to stop thinking of email as an independent channel. They need to design more integrated workflows based on subscriber behaviour. And they need to overcome new constraints, such as CONTINUED ON page 14 DMN.CA ❰
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INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM page 11
Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection which makes it harder to know whether messages are actually being opened. Still, email marketing has faced many other dire predictions in the past and survived. Which is why Chad White is more bullish about it future than ever. A recognized expert on email marketing trends and practices, he has served as lead researcher for many of the world’s largest email service providers. His book, Email Marketing Rules is now in its 3rd edition. And several years ago he was named the Email Experience Council’s Thought Leader of the Year. So Chad White has a strong historical perspective on the evolution of email marketing and a deep appreciation for its versatility and resilience as a marketing tool. Stephen Shaw: What makes you so passionate about email marketing? White: I’m a journalist at heart. And like a lot of journalists, I’m attracted to change. Email marketing has changed dramatically during the 15-plus years I’ve been in this field. I love the pace of change and the constant need for reinvention. Not just the changes in consumer behaviour, but the technological changes. And changes as well on the mailbox provider side and on the ESP side. So, there is no shortage of change. Shaw: Email has certainly been a reliable workhorse for marketers. Yet today, people largely communicate through text messaging. What accounts for email marketing’s enduring popularity amongst marketers?
White: Texting is certainly how people prefer to communicate with friends and family. But email is the way that people prefer to interact with brands. Anytime we have a new social media platform, like TikTok or Snapchat, the first thing marketers try to do is crash the party. But what’s really powerful about email marketing is that it’s a place where brands are actually wanted. It’s a powerful channel with tons of capabilities, evolving toolsets, great at personalization, great at segmentation, great at automation. Amazing capabilities that are constantly growing. Shaw: Smart email marketers treat it more as a relationship tool, don’t they? White: Yeah, absolutely. The best way to think about it is as a conversation. You’re in this relationship: it starts with permission, and then it becomes an ongoing dialog. This has been one of the things that frustrates me about Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection. Apple has put a barrier between us and our subscribers. In my mind, opens are a conversational nod: it shows that people are paying attention. Now with MPP we can’t see those conversational nods anymore. But, yeah, email marketing is this back-and-forth dialog. And AI and machine learning are going to really enable us to take that conversation to the next level. Shaw: Looking back, what do you see as the major inflection points in the growth and evolution of the industry? White: The arrival of smartphones, smart watches, and voice assistance for reading emails. The arrival of CASL, GDPR, CCPA,
so lots of laws. Engagementbased spam filtering was not a thing 15 years ago. Advanced analytics, AI, machine learning, predictive analytics, omnichannel orchestration, not a thing. Dark mode, modular email architecture, list unsubscribe, DMARC, JSON for controlling envelope content, AMP for email, CSS-based interactivity. All of those are major, major changes. Shaw: What have been the biggest changes? White: I would say smartphones, for sure. Because now email is mobile — it’s with you all the time. So, the immediacy with smartphones and email is super powerful. The next one, better laws. I am not a fan of CAN-SPAM. I know that here in America we like as little regulation as possible. I think CAN-SPAM has done just tremendous harm to email marketers because it has set exactly the wrong expectations for how to succeed. Because we are really not an industry governed by laws — we’re really governed by consumers and by the mailbox providers. And with CAN-SPAM, if you were just to follow the letter of that law, you would be blocked all over the place — you would have a dismal email marketing program. Regulations like GDPR are way more in line with what consumers expect from us. And I know initially there was a ton of adverse reaction to GDPR. Now the industry has largely accepted that it is actually a good thing — respecting consumers, being in line with their expectations, that’s a big plus for us. The third one I would say that’s really huge is engagement-based filtering. It used to be that if
you just sent email and people didn’t complain, you were good to go and your emails landed in the inbox. So, we bulked up our lists with tons of people who wouldn’t complain, but didn’t really engage, and we used that to drive down our spam complaint rates so that we can continue to get to the inbox. And now the mailbox providers require us to send stuff that doesn’t irritate our subscribers. Which is exactly what we should be doing. And so that’s been really, really powerful and has caused this shift from quantity to quality. Email marketing success is largely driven by a relatively small group of subscribers. So engagement-based spam filtering has been a major sea change that’s also slightly under threat from MPP, unfortunately. We’ll have to see how that all plays out. Shaw: The rise of content marketing would certainly be another inflection point, is that fair to say? White: I think that’s absolutely fair to say. Email marketing and content marketing make a great tandem. Someone on the newsletter team at the New York Times once said that their emails are the personalized home pages for their subscribers. And I think that’s a really beautiful way to think about it — being able to get the right content in front of the right people to really engage them. Shaw: What makes an effective email program? What are the most important things to get right? White: One of the frameworks in my book is the Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs which has four levels. It starts by creating
I love the pace of change and the constant need for reinvention. ❱ DMN.CA
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INTERVIEW
Shaw: Well, that’s really strategy, isn’t it? White: Yeah. But sometimes we jump past that. Shaw: Of course we do. Most marketers jump right to tactics. White: Yeah. Because email can do all kinds of things, right? It can generate direct sales, it can generate great engagement, it can help with retention for subscription-based companies. There’s not just one way to use it. Shaw: With so many ways to use it, do you see organizations struggling to make their programs more cohesive? White: I think it gets more challenging when you start talking about omnichannel. That’s where you see
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marketers bumping heads. We’ve reached the stage of email marketing where some of these whiz-bang, powerful tactics can get overused. So, for instance, overusing segmentation — being too targeted. And I feel there’s definitely risks with personalization in the same way, right? What we lose there is discovery. And so I think there’s a potential risk of overdoing those things. You still need broadcast emails. And absolutely batch-andblast emails have been overused historically. But one-size-fits-all messaging is still really valuable because you can follow up with segmentation, you can follow up with automation. Shaw: Where do most marketers have trouble with email marketing? White: Well, I think one of the big areas is metrics. I think as an industry, we focus way too much on campaigncentric metrics — sending a campaign, seeing how that campaign did, and then moving on to the next campaign. The honest truth is that you need to pay attention to all the metrics. Campaign metrics are important, but we’ve given it too much weight to the exclusion of other things. The way I like to think about metrics is in a few different buckets. So, there’s channel campaign metrics, like opens and clicks. Those are important for seeing how one campaign did versus another campaign. There are channel health campaigns, so that’s things like bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, complaint rates. But business executives don’t care about really any of those, right? They care about top-line numbers. “How much revenue is it bringing in? How is it helping us retain our subscription clients?”. And I think the smart companies are
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respectful email experiences — that’s everything to do with permission. The next level up is functional email experiences, and so that’s design, QA, making sure your email is accessible to everybody. And then it’s valuable experiences which are about the content and the value that you deliver. And lastly, it’s remarkable experiences — content worth sharing with someone. So, you do have to get the basics right. If you’ve got poor permission practices, if the unsubscribe process is unfriendly, if you’re not optimized for dark mode, if you’re not accessible, you create friction before your content has a chance to be seen. In terms of what’s most important, I think it varies. First of all, start with your goals for your company. What are you trying to achieve? And then how can email be a part of achieving that success? And then, what kinds of campaigns can we do that align with those goals?
also focusing on customer lifetime value which is a metric that I truly love. I feel like it should be everybody’s North Star. Shaw: Is the main challenge that it’s actually difficult to prove incremental lift? White: Absolutely. If you’re using last touch or first touch, you’re just wildly out of sync with how consumers shop today. In the early 2000s, consumers used to engage with an average of two touchpoints. And I think today it’s almost six. When people shop, they’re influenced by lots of different events, and it’s not just
the first one and it’s not the last one. The politics of attribution models is really thorny because marketing is still largely organized around channels. And so there’s competitive groups. We battle each other for budget. What you need is a more collaborative way of working together. People don’t experience a marketing channel — they experience a brand. But in terms of just email marketing, it’s tricky. Because I think traditionally email marketing has been undercredited. One of the things that we’re seeing more and more of our clients do is running what are called “withhold studies” — creating a DMN.CA ❰
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INTERVIEW universal holdout group. And that gives you probably the cleanest look at what that lift is from your email marketing program. Shaw: How are organizations today structuring their communications around customers? Who provides the oversight, the governance? Who drives the strategy across channels? White: I still think it’s largely the CMO controlling all of that. A byproduct of the pandemic is that there’s been such rapid change in consumer behaviors that a premium is now put on speed and agility. And so that has caused different disciplines to coordinate messages. In email marketing, we’ve seen adoption of modular email architecture. It reduces email production time by anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent — so a much faster way to build emails. And it also just so happens that a modular approach is fantastic for A/B testing, fantastic for personalization. Shaw: You hear the term “personalization” and “scale” a lot these days. How does that apply to email marketing? White: When I started 15 years ago, personalization was a first name mail merge, putting the subscriber’s name either in the subject line or in the body content, and addressing them by name. And that was it — that was largely what personalization was. Nowadays, if you put someone’s name in a subject line, you’re almost as likely to turn them off as you are to get them excited because it’s become such an empty gesture. It’s a thing that a lot of phishers and spammers do, right? It doesn’t really mean anything. What consumers today want to see is, “Are you using the data that you’ve collected about me to serve me, to make my life better?” Today we’re using machine learning and AI to sort through tons of SKUs, tons of pieces of content, analyzing affinities and recognizing patterns, and putting the right content in front of people. And so when we talk about personalization at scale, we’re talking about AI and ML. That’s the future. Shaw: Is the obstacle to better ❱ DMN.CA
personalization the fact that organizations are still struggling with data? White: You’re absolutely right. If you’re a multichannel retailer, you do need something like a CDP [Customer Data Platform] to build that “golden record”, to get everything in one place. And that’s obviously a really hot area right now. That’s a focus for Oracle, frankly. And that’s exciting, that’s super exciting. Because, again, customers live in an omnichannel world and brands, as always, are playing catch-up. Shaw: Who would you look to as models of email marketing today? What companies stand out in your mind and why? White: Someone like Uncommon Goods I really like because they have a unique voice and they have products you can’t get anywhere else. Or a ModCloth, unique products, unique voice. REI, where they have a very particular brand voice, as well as brand values that are really clear. Someone like Quiksilver, also very clear brand values. Certainly, a company like a Netflix or an Amazon. They’re about data rather than brand personality in any way. With Amazon it’s a very transactional relationship. But they do that so well, they’re obviously incredibly successful. Shaw: Being seen as having distinct values does make it easier to have conversations with customers who share the same worldview. White: Yeah. One of the things I love is the intersection of email and loyalty. And the exciting thing that’s happening right now is that you’re starting to see loyalty programs become engagementbased communities. So, for instance, Nike has a very good loyalty program that’s all about sports and fitness. Sleep Number is another good one — they’re one of our Oracle Crowd Twist clients. That’s a really interesting one because their program is all about getting a great night’s sleep. It’s not about selling another mattress. It’s about this community of people who want to get an awesome night’s sleep. And so they have lots of polls and lots of content about the right kinds
of pillows and “Do you crack open your window at night?,” and “What kind of blankets do you use?,” and “Do you sleep with your pet?”. All of this stuff about “How do I get a better night’s sleep?” And the goal isn’t to sell another mattress to someone who already has a Sleep Number bed, it’s to have these people become evangelists for the brand and bring in that next new customer. Shaw: There’s a nice symbiotic relationship between email and social media. White: Absolutely. Social was one of those channels that was supposed to kill email, right? Facebook Messenger was supposed to kill email. Google Wave was supposed to kill email. At one point I saw someone saying RSS was going to kill email, which is just ridiculous. And I think this is really a result of the fact that nobody owns email marketing. It’s what I call “granted media”, where it has distributed ownership. Nobody defends email because nobody owns it. So it does get kicked around an awful lot. But we go through these ebbs and flows. For instance, coming out of the first year of the pandemic, email marketing was the main channel that brands used to commiserate with their customers about COVID and explain their policies. It was just incredibly central to a really good conversation with customers. That glow lasted until Apple came out with MPP, and then all of a sudden we were back to, “Oh no, MPP is going to kill email”.
very mixed feelings about MPP. I understand why it was done, but I do feel we got tarred by what the digital advertising industry was doing. Email marketing is largely a permission-based channel. People want it. There is nothing nefarious going on. But Apple is staking their brand on privacy. To get back to your original question, the thing that is problematic about what Apple did is that opens were the primary way that brands determined whether or not someone was engaged with an email. And so if you weren’t opening, you would stop getting emails, or you would go into a program where you’d receive way fewer emails. And that’s a very good thing. I talked earlier about engagement-based spam filtering pioneered by Gmail. And opens were a fantastic signal to identify these active email marketing audiences — to know who to email and who not to. Knowing when to stop emailing people is part of my Hierarchy of Subscriber Needs. Apple has taken away part of our ability to see that. So, by necessity, we have to look at other metrics. And email clicks is an easy one to fall back on. But there tend to be eight times more opens than clicks. So, clicks are just not a frequent enough signal to be able to rely on that alone. You need other
Shaw: There was a lot of handwringing around MPP. Will it force marketers to be more selective about who to mail based on more than just the open rate? White: I think there are definitely some positive things about MPP, and I think one of them is that it’s going to force marketers to look more broadly at the experience of their subscribers and their customers. I think that’s all a plus. I have MAY 2022
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INTERVIEW signals. And so, yes, marketers are going to have to look at customer activity more broadly and use that as a proxy for subscriber activity because they’ve got no other choice. Shaw: What’s ahead that’s going to keep email marketing interesting for you? White: Probably the most exciting thing long term is AI and machine learning: the right message to the right person at the right time. And increasingly, in an omnichannel world, the right channel as well. Also, AI-powered copywriting tools — trying to say things in the right way that are going to
appeal to your subscribers. I think long term there’s tons of promise there. Send time optimization, that’s really valuable. AI and ML are going to do wonders there. Audience segmentation — to be able to select audiences based behavioral patterns. So, I think you’re going to see a lot more AI/ ML in the future. Shaw: What about making email more of a self-contained interactive experience? White: I’m not really sure which
direction we’re going to go. We’ve had CSS-based interactivity for a while. We now have AMP for email. But I’m a little hot and cold on AMP. And not because of AMP itself, or because of Gmail or anything. I think the pandemic has just taken a lot of the wind out of AMP’s sails. Everyone is trying to get simple and lean and fast, and that’s the opposite of AMP. With AMP you create an entirely new email to send along with your HTML campaign. AMP does amazing things — I love this
idea of doing more in the inbox. Because fewer clicks is good for everybody. It makes for a more seamless, frictionless experience. But I honestly don’t know which way that’s going to go. It might be that we revert back to email being a gateway to an app, to a landing page. We’ll see how that shakes out. Shaw: Right. Well, one thing we know for sure, email is not going away any time soon. White: Absolutely not.
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PERSPECTIVES
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Back to the Future: Direct Mail in Today’s Media Mix In 2005, the Norwegian printer Sappi produced a special report on the role and effectiveness of print and direct mail in the marketing mix. Reading this report again, and reading what some of the world’s most successful and recognized marketing and advertising leaders said about direct mail, resonated as a roadmap to some of what we may have lost as we chase the digital channels today. There is more than a place for direct mail — there’s an imperative for us to revisit what we may have lost by excluding this channel and format from our work. Here’s some of what Sappi said in their report. - Steve Lloyd, Editor in Chief BY SAPPI
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ow can something that does not move be so moving? How can something that makes no sound say so much? That’s the power of print, paper and ink creating life. Or, recreating it. But with no rules, no restrictions. In its finished form, print has the ability to touch each and every emotion we have. It can make us laugh, make us cry, make us think in ways we’ve never thought before. And because of that, our relationship with print is one of the most meaningful we will have in our lives. Consumers today live in a world MAY 2022
of simultaneous media use. They watch television while surfing the Internet. They listen to the radio while reading the newspaper. A recent study in The Netherlands — and confirmed in the UK — showed that more than 80 percent of commercials are not being seen by television viewers. People zap to other channels, talk to each other, call friends, read, or walk away from the TV to fetch something from the kitchen. Consumer attention is scarce and the media are fighting to get their share. Advertisers look for ways of getting consumers’ attention by focusing on the format of the advertisement, the style or the content. Humour is typically used to cut through the clutter. It is estimated that the fragmented approach to reach customers may account for up to 10 percent of the performance of each brand. The media has become more fragmented over the past 15 years, the number of TV channels has increased rapidly with access to more channels getting easier and the number of specialist magazine titles has also increased rapidly. Marketers are unable to reach mass audiences without incorporating more channels or titles into their plans. The fragmentation has also led to higher TV and press advertising costs.
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DIRECT MAIL IS A PRIVATE MEDIUM IT CAN BUILD A BRAND — ON ITS OWN OR WITH OTHER MEDIA DIRECT MAIL CAN ACT AS YOUR SALES FORCE DIRECT MAIL CAN INCREASE LOYALTY DIRECT MAIL CREATES A POSITIVE IMPRESSION FOR A BRAND OR COMPANY DMN.CA ❰
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PERSPECTIVES “I don’t think advertising works anymore. TV advertising’s so average, it’s a waste of money. We need other ways of reaching consumers,” said Philip Kotler. In this fragmented media place, advertisers need to be clear about the role each medium can play and its effectiveness. A quarter of direct marketers in Europe judge that the effectiveness of TV advertising will decrease in the next three years, while half of them expect the effectiveness of direct mail will increase. The same study reveals the “sweet spot” of the tools of the direct marketer. Electronic channels are good at generating sales leads and collecting consumer data, while TV is best to create sustainable brand awareness and image. However, it is direct mail that scores highest for building brand loyalty, generating sales leads, communicating sales leads and gathering consumer data, according to research from Forester. With numerous media options and limited consumer attention, efficiency and productivity of
advertising investment become key. One way of obtaining efficiencies is by creating more synergy between the different media. Successful marketing integrates different media options. Various cases illustrate the impact of the combined effect of, let’s say, television and magazine advertising. These confirm that one medium will positively influence the effect of the other medium and generate an overall higher impact. The impact of one medium on another was strikingly demonstrated by a groundbreaking test. TV commercials and a direct mail pack were sent to airline customers. A control group did not receive the mailing. The brochure in the mail pack incorporated a frame from the TV commercial and a free flight bag as an incentive for booking. The results couldn’t demonstrate clearer the benefits of an integrated multimedia campaign. Almost three-quarters of the customers who had received the mailing recalled the mailing. Of the customers who had received the
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mailing, 67 percent recalled the TV commercial, while only 9 percent of the customers who had not received the mailing recalled the TV commercial. Brand preference increased significantly in the group which received the mailing with 27 percent voting the airline as their first choice in the USA, while it was the first choice of only one percent in the control group. A consortium of radio network companies in Britain conducted a study on the crossmedia synergy. It indicated that 73 percent of radio listeners could remember key visual elements of the television commercials when hearing radio commercials. In addition, 57 percent relived the television advertisements while listening to the radio advertisement. A second medium delivers cues for remembering the other medium and, in doing so, strengthens the overall impact. Today’s integration goes beyond that. Brands are supported by integrated campaigns that address customers and prospects via all customer touchpoints using the full scope of media to address them. At Ogilvy & Mather — a leading advertising agency —this is called 360° branding. It is a holistic look at communications taking from each discipline what is necessary to build a brand. Ads do work; targeted ads though are more cost-effective, yet most advertising and marketing efforts are completely untargeted. They are hurricanes, whipping through a marketplace horizontally, touching everyone in the same way, regardless of who they are and what they want. There is a huge amount of waste here, so much that it’s easy to assert that advertising isn’t working. Seth Godin, The Purple Cow. Reaching the most valuable customers Direct mail is a valuable contact point for consumers. With increased data about consumers, marketers know that not every consumer represents the same value. High value customers justify a more intense and personalised approach than customers renting a car once a year. While the brand perception should be identical, the objectives per target group will be
differentiated, and therefore also the investment level, the media, the messaging and the offers. Integrating objectives, media, creative and planning will avoid so called “silo thinking” and will deliver a stronger, single-minded brand in a more cost-effective way. Media are complementary instead of replacing one another. It is often suggested that off-line direct mail will be replaced by on-line direct mail, yet it is the off-line direct mail that drives the web traffic. And a majority of the UK advertisers use direct mail for this purpose. The personalisation possibilities of direct mail are perceived as a strong benefit. Advertisers and consumers prefer a tangible object, something that can be held or touched. People prefer paper to something that exists only electronically — how many of us read entire documents on the computer screen? Marketing is entering a new phase that transcends the mere coordination of messages across digital and physical channels. In this era of integrated marketing, advertisers will knit messages and media to involve consumers in a continuous brand experience. Forrester Research and Fedma Today, direct mail is an extension of the brand experience as expressed in the shop, through advertising or via the packaging. The image expressed through direct mail is consistent and coherent with other means of communication. It adds up to this overall brand feeling. Creative people value the individuality and the lack of constraints that direct mail offers. Writing to clients, prospects, new parents and newly-retired people requires a lot of empathy and understanding of specific situations. Direct mail combined with the latest digital printing technology offers the best possible way to personalise the message and to add whatever you want to a letter. SAPPI IS the leading producer of coated fine paper and supplier to the global advertising and promotions industry. This excerpt is take from their Life With Print special report from 2006, which we view as a remarkable example of some of what continues to power mail as marketing. Sappi has Canadian plants and locations. MAY 2022
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Why Retailers Must Navigate Muddy Waters of ESG Requirements BY RASHIDA SALAHUDDIN
T
he need for more corporate responsibility has evolved for today’s corporations and the next generation of business leaders in the form of environmental, social and governance (ESG). Investors, activists, and regulators are now requiring proactive, communitystructured commitment and accountability that is designed to step above shareholder returns. Today’s global capital markets aren’t interested in more marketing from companies in every industry. Instead, they are demanding sustainability and eco-friendly business practices as well as a reasonable return. Global retailers and their executives are now hearing this call, and the industry is being more proactive in this movement. Why are ESG standards needed? Although ESG metrics are still trying to find their proper place in today’s standardized financial reporting, that hasn’t stopped retailers and other industry institutions from making promises and illustrating the proactive nature of their ESG standards. What’s needed at this critical step is the ability for companies across all industries to truly quantify their company’s present position relative to investor objectives of integration, values, and impact in the areas of governance over environmental and social contexts. American stakeholders AND shareholders aren’t interested in window dressing and empty promises ❱ DMN.CA
only for the benefit of a feel-good investor report. They want to know that companies are holding themselves accountable to the promises and commitments they’re making in these key areas. Proxy Advisors making unfair pressures Many retail companies, specifically, have felt their fair share of pressure into adopting more ESG-forward practices. Whether through a reduction of plastic carrier bag usage or gender pay gap reporting, shareholders have certainly brought pressure on a large number of retail companies over their supply chain strategies, environmental and sustainability impacts, and certainly genderdiverse practices. This focus has led to a significant overhaul of many business processes alongside the appointment of a new addition to the C-Suite — the Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO). Other companies inside and out of retail continuously look at leaders in this movement and have started to replicate their operational changes. However, making promises about ESG commitments and holding true to them are apparently two different stories for some. Many companies are being pushed into making ESG improvements and commitments, especially through institutional investors and oversight organizations such as Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). This has led some to wonder if these proxy advisors have become too focused on ESG issues, have
conflicted, and have broadly too much power over the operation of America’s largest companies and retailers. ISS hypocrisy over ESG requirements As an example, ISS talks a big game on the issue of Diversity and Inclusion. ISS demanded publicly traded companies disclose the ethnicity of each and every member of their board of directors. More recently, ISS has been accused of refusing to recommend voting for board slates that they allege do not contain enough ‘diverse’ representation. However, it appears that ISS lacks representation from even a single person of colour. Moreover, it does not appear that ISS’s two corporate owners — Genstar Capital and Deutsche Boerse- — have even a single person of colour on their executive teams. This is troubling given the fact that they have claimed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is a priority and have asked publicly traded companies and retailers to make commitments towards those ends. Standards are not only needed, they must be adhered to at all levels. Retailers have a chance to serve as models Despite the hypocrisy demonstrated by organizations such as ISS, retailers have the opportunity to truly bring about change — not just in their marketing but in the way they go about doing business. In fact, as business models have had to adapt to this new landscape and changed customer behaviors,
there has been evidence of the incorporation of ESG elements across the retail industry. These moves recognize it is not solely about making money and preserving the bottom line, but that retailers have been working toward having a positive societal impact. There is no doubt that these newly implemented strategies have the potential to drive increased valuations, which pushes up the appetite of investors, but that they also attract more qualified people into retail companies who are extremely committed to the corporate cause. As more retailers focus on staying committed to their ESG promises, everyone will win in the end, including customers, stakeholders, investors, the environment, and certainly employees. These companies will truly serve as models of operation in the future. But we must move beyond just promises and commitments, a new set of ESG standards must be developed to level the playing field of reporting. RASHIDA SALAHUDDIN is the President & CEO of The Corporate Citizenship Project. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Ms. Salahuddin has spent most of her career in Public Affairs working for a diverse array of companies including in Financial Services, Entertainment, and Energy. She is spearheading the Corporate Citizenship Project to address the challenges and ethical issues she has seen first-hand in the field of corporate governance. She is believer that corporate America should be transparent and should practice what they preach. For more information, visit https://corporatecitizenshipproject.com/ MAY 2022
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