At the 7th Dscoop (Digital Solutions Cooperative), the HP user group annual conference in March, MindFireInc introduced a new marketing platform for multimedia campaigns for customers. Sitting atop the Marketing Engine, the Marketing Studio is a drag-and-drop application for visually creating multi-touch, multi-channel marketing workflows. It enables print and marketing service providers to orchestrate offline and online media such as direct mail, email, and social media, along with microsites and landing pages. The Marketing Studio also can leverage event-driven triggers to automate drip-and-nurture sequences using any combination of media.

“Print service providers require the right technology to make multichannel marketing easier, more powerful, and flexible,” said Dave Rosendahl, MindFireInc co-founder. “Our clients are excited by the workflow freedom they now have to build and sell effective marketing campaigns,” he added. “Along with our educational training courses, like the FastLaunch Program and our new Sales Training & Promotion modules, print service providers are equipped with everything they need to succeed with today’s corporate marketer.”

MindFireInc’s Marketing Language (MAML) is an open-architecture solution describing the entire marketing campaign in a proprietary mark-up language, which is submitted to the Marketing Engine for execution. This approach brings added flexibility to the platform and allows seamless integration between the Marketing Engine and third-party applications. In addition, for service providers looking for an end-to-end and integrated solution, MindFireInc’s Marketing Engine provides flexible integration with print workflow management, Web-to-print, CRM (customer relationship management), and other solutions via application programming interfaces for creating, managing, and reporting campaign activity; and Extension Modules that can customize Marketing Engine behavior.

Getting What You Pay For

At drupa this month, Xerox’s XMPie business unit increases its presence in the multichannel marketing game with robust, new solutions for individualized communications management, video personalization, Web-to-print, and marketing on demand, together with the firm’s leading solutions for variable data printing (see sidebar), personalized digital media, and integrated one-to-one communications. Other software may not be as expensive, “but it’s not as capable either,” warned industry consultant Hal Hinderliter.

XMPie experts are giving live demonstrations throughout the stand on software ranging from the uDirect Print line of products for desktop variable data printing, to the PersonalEffect family of server-based solutions for personalized print, digital media, and integrated cross-media communications. Customers and partners also are on site to share their experiences and best practices. Other new developments on display include XMPie’s revolutionary ICM solution for planning, building, reviewing, and measuring multichannel marketing campaigns; its Mapping Service for personalized street and city maps; and uDirect Video for video personalization based on Adobe After Effects.

Last summer, Kodak Capture Pro Software added compatibility with Contex wide-format scanners to integrate large and small document workflows. “Channel partners selling scanners along with EDM/ECM services and solutions can now provide a common interface and common support for diverse sources of document-based information,” said Phil Magenheim, president of Contex Americas. The firm’s large-format scanners are used to reproduce large format drawings, charts, maps, or other over-sized documents directly into EDM (Electrical Discharge Machining) and ECM (Electro Chemical Machining) workflows. Capture Pro Software provides users with a single interface to efficiently capture and manage images and critical index data from small- and large-format scanners within an office setting.

Projects that include both wide-format and standard sized documents can pose challenges for enterprise workflows managed by service bureaus and medium- to large-sized businesses. E-BizDocs, an electronic document management service provider based in Albany, NY, sources information from a variety of documents including larger surveyors’ records, to letter-sized building code regulation papers. The compatibility between Contex and Kodak eliminates steps in the process to improve overall user productivity. “Prior to this solution, the scanning of large-format documents was detached and separate from our workflow. The integration between Kodak and Contex makes it easy to combine documents into a single file, and route them to specific locations,” said Howard Gross, president of E-BizDocs. “Since implementing the technologies, we have vastly improved our workflow efficiency.”