Not many consumers are willing to communicate and share directly with companies and brands. Hélène Blanchette, Head of the Fuji Xerox 1:1 Experience Service, has come up with a terrific approach that can ease the challenges companies face when trying to identify and target their audience, by developing strategic, quantifiable direct marketing campaigns.

Helene has gained worldwide recognition and won numerous marketing innovation awards as founder of the Xerox 1:1 Lab. Her strategic concept has been implemented in several countries around the world and is now a full service offering from Fuji Xerox, with its unique approach that brings 1:1 marketing to new heights by deploying a range of media platforms to engage customers effectively.

Over the course of time, more and more media channels have emerged creating confusion, so effective message penetration has started to become difficult due to increasingly isolated data silos. Her team at Fuji Xerox’s 1:1 Experience Service goes far beyond the provision of direct marketing solutions and works with corporate customers and service providers on innovative cross-media communication strategies and delivery. 

Go to market strategy means that we are creators of technology, whether it is software, hardware for printing, or innovative services. Fact is that you innovate with products and therefore you have to consider which product to launch in which market, find out how much is it absorbed and used on the market and what’s the outcome in general. The go to market strategy is trying to understand the process of technology adoption on the market, as well as the emerging gaps between the way people use the equipment or software technology, to create programs and services that unfold its full capacity”, Helene explained.

Years ago in Canada, when Helene was working with a research team to understand the market evolution, she realized the huge gap between marketeers, agencies and service providers, who generally stuck to their traditional way of doing marketing and didn’t seem able to understand how to create innovative campaigns.

“So I started what we called the 1:1 Lab in one of our research centers in Canada with the intention to help agencies and corporations build up their team of experts. Besides, I supported them to re-engineer and re-think their marketing approaches in a very scientific way, that proved that 1:1 marketing with intelligence is absolutely much more efficient and provides ROI”, Helene said.

She has spent the past six years in Singapore continuing to introduce Fuji Xerox’s full service offering to companies across Asia, while helping to educate them in making use of their evolving technology that can easily manage cross-media in a very integrated way.

Hélène Blanchette“Depending on the countries, we are adopting different business models”, Helene said. Whether they work with designers, analysts or programmers, they always keep an eye on offering a real integrated service and even changed their name from “Lab” to “Services” to emphasize that they provide now full 1:1 cross-media marketing campaigns. “It doesn’t matter where the brain resides”, she said, pointing out that all achievements have been accomplished by a globally fluid interchangeable team, elaborating further “when you centralize everything and take it as an ownership it’s only the clients that you have that will be impacted, but if you teach fishing instead of giving a fish, more people will benefit from it”.

Therefore in Singapore, Fuji Xerox decided to use a program that Helene called the 1:1 Ignite Agency Program, which means that they can select an agency and have them go through a six month certification process of delivery while teaching them how to do 1:1 marketing in all its aspects and methodologies, before forming a hybrid team with this Fuji Xerox certified agency - working together as one team to deliver to the client.

Fuji Xerox is using this approach in multiple countries right now such as Singapore, Thailand, Korea and Australia. It’s allowing them to offer their service in Asia Pacific, regardless of where the client is based or what campaign the company has in mind. The team can work together and complement each another, or work independently, depending on the campaign.

Helene’s 1:1 Experience Service adapts strategies according to markets’ needs and can be summarized in a few steps:

  • In the beginning of each campaign, the team will work with companies to extract accurate usable data to allow the relevant and intelligent shaping of content, achieved by giving each individual its own customized communication piece.
  • Thanks to digital technology it is then possible to speak to each person in a database on an individual level - presenting them with specific selling propositions supported by specific imagery, copy and dynamics - all irrespective of channel, be that the Web, email, print or otherwise - guaranteeing relevance.
  • Campaign management analytics will monitor and track the progress of each interaction in real-time and enable companies to respond immediately to their customers. The service includes interim and final reports, as well as a complete analysis of the results, allowing marketers to determine true ROI.

According to Fuji Xerox, the application of advanced technology to a communication strategy represents a powerful new tool to those enterprises that embrace it and the company has proven its effectiveness with the establishment of over 20 unique 1:1 Labs around the world.

“The 1:1 Experience Service has successfully enabled corporations to communicate more relevantly and effectively to each of their customers and we are proud to say that our lab tests showed significant increases in customer reach, response rates, sales, profit, and retention”, Helene states.

“We have been the market leaders for 60 years and we have to continue leading and stay ahead of the competition, which means having a strategy of understanding the market and providing all the services and programs that the market is able to constantly absorb. Bringing new technology to the market and helping to change and evolve the world is our go to market strategy.”

Expect more on Fuji Xerox 1:1 Experience Service in the upcoming issue of Asian e-Marketing, when we will present an integrated cross-media campaign and case study in detail. 

By Daniela La Marca