It’s clear that TransPromo can be relevant, but it’s just a tool, not a goal or a pot at the end of a rainbow. One of the concerns I hear from corporate customers is that with all of the hype about TransPromo, the thing that goes missing in the conversation is what tools are needed to get there.

2009 will be a year that forces a lot of hard decisions by marketing departments and billing departments. Postage rates are going up, the costs of paper and other components of outbound printed communication are going up, and it doesn’t look like people really want to spend a lot of time online looking for their bills.

Corporate billers will need to figure out which of the many tools in their kit will help them communicate most effectively. TransPromo? Sure! It’s one way. But great integrated customer communication strategies take more than TransPromo.

Pat!

Once the banks figured this out, it led to significant increases to the bottom line.

The enabler is the new information that can be harvested from customer interactions. The banks went first because they organized this info as part of their way of doing business. Only eventually did they learn to harvest it.

The next step is to get some metrics of long term customer value. Your description of the gaming industry is a perfect example. The real problem is that very few industries have a clear metric for life time customer value and customer acquisition costs.