Nuts & Bolts - Tech Talk : Multichannel Platform, Social Media Optimization, Transactional Mail, Mobile and Live Chat

June 2010 By Melissa Ward

multipage

Multichannel Platform
Harte-Hanks of San Antonio, Texas has teamed up with Napa, Calif.-based VeraCentra to bring marketers a solution that provides automation and message consistency for both global and local campaigns.

Using VeraCentra's VeraCentra Collaborate solution and Harte-Hanks' existing multichannel solutions, the new platform is branded as AMP (Automated Marketing Platform). AMP gives marketers a central warehouse of collateral, data and direct marketing tools, as well as centralized control over marketing messages. On the local level, franchises are able to customize and personalize their content and offers while consistently maintaining the brand's marketing message.
www.harte-hanks.com

Social Media Optimization
San Francisco, Calif.-based Kenshoo, a search engine marketing technology firm, has expanded upon its current online SEM advertising optimization platform to produce KENSHOO, a tool that is integrated with Facebook's Ads API.

KENSHOO will allow marketers to better manage their advertisements on the popular social media site and better understand their value. Facebook API enables marketers to target the site's more than 400 million users, and the KENSHOO tool helps determine the right prospects for marketers to optimize their marketing spend around.

The integrated solution includes a desktop application, as well as proprietary conversion path tracking.
www.kenshoo.com

Transactional Mail
Sixty-nine percent of consumers are more likely to first open a piece of mail with color text and graphics compared to a plain envelope, according to independent market research commissioned by Pitney Bowes, headquartered in Stamford, Conn.

In response, Pitney Bowes announced its latest customer communications solution, Connect+ Customer Communications Series, a mailing system solution with Web- and application-based software and a color touch-screen display with access to mailing, printing and reporting applications. The touch-screen display also provides marketers easy access to their accounts online, the ability to download graphics, order supplies, track parcels, use Pitney Bowes' presort services and visit USPS websites.

Among the many features of the solution, marketers can print messages with text, photos or logos in color or black across the tops and backs of envelopes, using HP's high-res inkjet technology (developed as a strategic collaboration with HP).
www.pb.com/connectplus