The Alternative Mailing_Marketing Revamp Plan_2015-2016

Nathaniel Jones �1BUS 335 June 2015

OverviewBusiness

Established in 1984, The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solutions is one of about 130 remaining independent mailing machine and postage meter dealers left in the US. Situated in the RTP (Research Triangle Park) area of Raleigh, NC, The Alternative pro-vides efficient and comprehensive paper communication and mail flow solutions for in-tra-organization, business to business, and business to consumer needs. It has been fortunate enough to survive the transition to a digital information transmission world and still maintains excellent rapport with top clients such as Duke University, The Carolina Hurricanes, American Kennel Club, and SAS Institute.

Mission Statement

Adapted from the company’s website, The Alternative, “takes a holistic approach towards meeting Mailing & Shipping needs. In three-steps they strive to consistently provide quality equipment, service, and support the [the customer] deserves.” Specifi-cally, their three step approach involves:

Evaluation

The Alternative team begins every business relationship with a complete analysis of an organization’s Mailing & Shipping operations. It may be found that their needs may be as simple as a postal machine or as complex as requiring a complete redesign-ing of the mail and package flow. Whatever the needs, they help uncover ways to max-imize the organization’s time and profits.

Service

The Alternative prides itself in being one of the few firms of its kind that both “ser-vices machines and entire accounts around the machines.” Their goal is to make sure mail gets out on time. When called with a problem, they seek to quickly help the client solve it right away. Whether the issue requires back-up equipment or training, they’ll provide whatever it takes to keep the client’s mail and paper communication on sched-ule.

Support

Individual Project 1 — Store Bio Prof. Trista Wang


Once a new system is in place, The Alternative’s experienced team provides an all-inclusive package of consultation, personal training, and support, making it their mis-sion to “always be there.” According to the owners, Andy and Nancy Jones, “the finest attribute of The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solutions is the way we take care of our customers. If you don’t believe us, just ask them.”

Target Market

Working an area of about 8 counties, within a 150 mile radius of RTP, The Alter-native seeks to obtain businesses that are moving lots of paper and mail as customers. Joking aside, they’ll welcome anyone who wants to buy a system. More acutely, the business usually targets the local education, medical, and legal segments.

Objectives

Built on the desire to understand the paper-based communication aspects of businesses of all types, and then streamline those processes, The Alternative aims to help businesses prepare and move paper communication more efficiently. They have always strived to be more than just another postage meter company. Instead, they want to also establish accountability for all the money spent in the mailroom within a busi-ness. Speaking to this point, Mr. Jones mentioned that:

“of all the expenses within a practice or firm that purchase orders are pro-cessed for, the one exception is usually postage. Purchase orders are not cut for postage spent, and instead, checks are just written to the PostMaster with the USPS. We’ve built our business on accounting for those additional and necessary expenses of running a business.”

Marketing Strategy

In the early days as a young start-up in the ‘80s, Andy and Nancy Jones focused their efforts on converting their previous customers at Pitney Bowes (both had previous-ly worked as top sales reps at the local branch) over to the Hasler (now Neopost) prod-uct. Being located in the capital of NC, the immediate proximity of the state’s Supreme Court, a Federal Court, and the state and local government offices, as well as many law firms, law schools, and municipal offices — all of whom require paper communication by law for certain aspects of their operation — The Alternative has acquired the majority of their current customer base over the years via direct cold-calling, word-of-mouth refer-rals, bid submission, and some direct mail marketing.

In face-to-face conversation, sales reps would use techniques like asking an al-ready interested postage meter buyers into making a check out to the USPS. People



are accustomed to writing checks for postage, so when a mailing machine is brought in exchange for another check to the post office, the customer felt comfortable.

Marketing Mix

Product

Utilizing the most fitting machinery from several families of manufacturer product lines, The Alternative offers consultation, installation, and automation for processing and simplifying everything having to do with handling paper for typically less than 1 months salary for an employee who would usually do those tasks.

Through leading brand suppliers, such as, NeopostUSA/Hasler, Opex/Omation, Hamilton Sorter, Data-Pac, Duplo, Formax, and Mailcrafters, The Alternative offers and sells any number of variations or combinations of the following in custom tailored and delivered packages:

- consultation/advising for speed of delivery by working closely with the USPS (knowledge of Postal Services, rate structure, delivery times, schedules, permits re-quired, volumes for discount programs, etc.)and equipment to best suit clients in what-ever industry encountered- database management- print docs- specialty envelope printing - folding- enclose various types of marketing materials and enclosures- maintaining a certain weight for postage- sealing- and stamping



Price

At the smallest end, $40/month is the rental cost for a basic system with no real bells and whistles or added services. These are ideal for businesses that spend $300 or less a month on postage. On the opposite, high end of the spectrum with every pos-sible perk included including, custom integrated software, tracking, multiple machines to form an assembly line, the training of the buyer’s employees, and sometimes even the furniture to hold it all, systems go for amounts of $2-300,000 divided out at about 5K/month over a usual lease term of 60 months. These types of systems have also been known to replace 3-4 employees. On average, the typical system sold goes for 5K total, sometimes spread out over much smaller payments.

Place

Rarely is it when customers shop and make purchases at The Alternative’s headquarters in Raleigh, NC, or even on their very basic website currently live. Be-cause of the type of niche market they are in, The Alternative does best to find leads and applications for its services, as the money spent on moving paper is hardly ever at the forefront of meeting discussion at businesses that could use the services. In that sense, The Alternative brings their solutions to people if asked how to do internal paper better, often in the form of in-person demos.

They have two primary competitors in the area: a Pitney Bowes dealership branch and Anza Mail Systems, Inc..

Promotion

Over the years of its operation, The Alternative has relied heavily on sales reps making cold calls, word-of mouth referrals, or customers leaving one company and go-ing to another company and wanting the same service as before. On a few occasions, they have tried a few direct mail marketing campaigns, but not to the degree the man-agement would like. Above all, their supreme level or service and CRM has fostered a very loyal customer base which as kept them afloat.

Business Evaluation

Currently, the owners report finding themselves in a lackluster place. Employee energy and morale is low, and the team lacks a shared vision. With a well-crafted e-marketing plan, they hope to reignite some zest in the business, generate new leads, and pull themselves out of a mostly stagnant level of operation.

Moreover, they report struggling with organizing a marketing plan so where something is going out every day to let people know who the business is and what they do in order to reinforce their brand. In the past, they haven’t been able to find the talent



to do those types of projects, not to mention the many wastes of poor sales reps over the years.

They are very strong in the local university market, legal market, government of-fices, and medical sector. Their situation put best, one owner said, “before the internet boom and changeover to everything going digital, we offered the best solutions for what were the communication hubs of businesses. Think about what everyone did before email and cell phones.” With that said, there is still much potential for their unique products and services out there, as physical “snail” mail has not or will not go away any time soon.



E-Marketing Plan BlueprintSituation Analysis

Having been in successful operation for over 30 years, The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solutions has clearly weathered and adapted to many environmental changes and market shifts that happen with time. However, if a successful e-marketing plan is to be enacted and fulfilled to meet the company’s goals for maintaining its position and un-covering new growth, several new and preexisting conditions need to be considered. These conditions will be outlined in terms of a Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats analysis.

Strengths:

Built from the start on looking at and building the most efficiently running mail-rooms from the ground up — as opposed to the popular top-down approach used by their competitors — while providing the most comprehensive customer service and management possible, The Alternative Mailing stands out from most in this niche of the mailing industry. In fact, they are consistently rated #1 and recognized for their superior customer service provision by several of their primary suppliers who use multiple ven-dors around the country to represent and sell their products. Because their suppliers understand The Alternative’s bottom-up, quality over quantity and customer above all approach to designing mailrooms, they have on many occasions requested that The Al-ternative’s service and tech staff, as well as a few of The Alternative’s most loyal of cus-tomers, act as beta testers for many new system integration software products. This speaks to the business’ strong position and trust they have developed with many clients, as they will stop at nothing at empathically understanding the products they sell, how useful they are from the mailroom operator’s perspective, and what makes sense for the people that move mail every day.

As both a natural and calculated result of their ability to convey a sense of trust and support to their buyers, they have established and maintained the loyalist of cus-tomer relationships and developed excellent rapport with their vendors and suppliers. More importantly, that loyalty has translated to commendable longevity in their average customer life cycle. To [longstanding] locals, they possess strong presence and have always “…committed to having a live person answer the phone when [someone] calls and maintain a 4 hour or less response time to system issues and bugs.” Overall, The



Alternative’s quality-over-quantity methodology and customer’s perspective first point of view has resulted in the acquiring and holding of a lot of big-ticket accounts in the RTP area.

The Alternative’s has never had trouble finding and training service technicians. In fact, they have an extremely loyal, seasoned team of service techs and in-house ad-ministrative employees that have become the butter to The Alternative’s uniquely ser-vice-geared bread.

Weaknesses:

As an independent operation, The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solutions finds itself in an interesting and almost unfair position between two primary local competitors: a Neopost dealer and a Pitney Bowes dealer. Independently, The Alternative represents several different manufacturers of mailroom furniture, machinery, software, and other related tools and utilities, one of which is the France-based, Neopost. Competing with the more widely known Pitney Bowes brand and local Pitney dealership, The Alternative is supported by, and mainly pushes the France-originated Neopost line of products. However, because their territory is shared by the other exclusively Neopost dealer in the area, Anza Mailing Systems, Inc., they have not been opposed to picking up the Pitney Bowes product lines. In their position of independence, they could but would rise losing their supply of Neopost products. The major wrench here is the duplicative territory as-signments and resulting turf-war competition between Anza and The Alternative — a conflict of interests that Neopost has not attempted to resolve. Because The Alternative also represents and sells other manufactures on top of the Neopost line, Neopost does not feel the overlap is any conflict of interest or infraction.

On top of area competition and the annoying turf war, the management have ex-pressed a business-lifelong struggle with finding and training the right people — particu-larly on the salesforce side. Additionally, they’re facing an immediate need to become more active on the digital front in order to compete with Pitney’s digital revamp and di-versification, and emerging lines of web-based products and services.

Opportunities:

The major market segments that still need to move large quantities of mail on a weekly basis are the education/academia, governmental, medical, legal, pharmaceuti-cal, banking, and manufacturing sectors. Fortunately, The Alternative already has se-cured as satisfied customers the three pillars of the Research Triangle with Duke Uni-versity, N.C. State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Addi-tionally, they have lots of local State and Federal offices located in the capital of Raleigh.

Many forms of legal and judicial communication are still required by law to be carried forth via “snail” mail, and therefore present opportunities. Many more doctors, law offices, pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, and banks in the area could also po-tentially utilize The Alternative’s signature way of moving mail.



With an “anyone needing mail moved” openness, any Accounts Payables de-partment that still sends those famous window-envelopes stands as a potential cus-tomer opportunity, too. While two area big operation mail houses that receive and de-liver outsourced mail orders are already existing customers, there’s not reason why The Alternative couldn’t go after more.

Lastly, marketing firms that have been hired for direct mail campaigns may pro-vide leads for either in-house or out-sourced mailing campaigns.

Threats:

The advent and growth of the Internet has taken a tremendous toll on the physi-cal mail industry. Simply put: not as much mail is moving, thus the term “snail” mail in comparison to digital means such as email. While stamps.com and similar sites are stealing away small operations that can’t justify owning an in-house meter when they can just print stamps directly to a high-functioning printer, Pitney Bowes still controls 60-70% of market share.

Organizational restructuring and culture has also adjusted to the point where it is difficult for sales reps solicit and make cold calls, as it is harder to walk in and find the right person to talk to or give proposal to; doors are locked and people want pre-made appointments set up in their calendar sent via email.

Going along with those internal changes, one Alternative manager said that “it’s harder for sales reps to bring in the meter and make “puppy-dog” sales with demo-to-live meters. Like where we run a few pieces of their job, then turn it off before it’s done to make them sign the paper. Everything is much tighter and more controlled.”

LEGAL NOTES (BOTH AN OPPORTUNITY AND THREAT)It’s important to note that The Alternative, as purveyors of mailing ma-

chines — and specifically postage meters — has always had the additional re-sponsibilities of constantly being knowledgeable about, aware of any changes to, and abide by all postal regulations set forth by the United States Postal Service. A postage meter is essentially a money-printing device (money for the upper right-hand corners of mail pieces), therefore, strict rules are purposely in place to account for every cent that passes through them.

With roughly 80% of all USPS revenue coming from postage meters is-sued, or rented to businesses out in field, their symbiosis with the USPS is both a strength and weakness, depending on the conversation. As one of their many strengths, The Alternative has done exceptionally well over their tenure to remain plugged in and on top of the many changes enacted by the USPS which have caused dramatic shifts in the mailing industry. A gainful consequence of this “part of the job” knowhow is that their reps are seen as experts in the field by their cus-tomers and clients, and the opportunity here would be to expand and market that knowhow and idea of The Alternative being an expert in the mailing field.



On the contrary, a true threat to The Alternative’s business is that, be-cause of such tight, Federal postal guidelines, all postage meters are given unique serial numbers and are subject to yearly postal inspections. Previously, these inspections were a significant source of annual revenue for The Alternative, however this is no longer the case (see “Technological Note” below for further elaboration). Still, The Alternative must consistently log every new machine in-stalled and make their customers aware of any postal regulation changes such as rate increases or upcoming inspections, now done remotely via the Internet. Here they are still married to the industry regulations and labor of remaining cur-rent but with far less the amount of revenue since they have less hands on in the process.

Another threat, and perhaps the elephant in the room, is the volatility of the USPS, itself. Much conversation and debate about the potential (or possibly inevitable) demise of the USPS has already risen in recent years. If so much rides on whether or not customer will send and receive via a system that may soon plummet or no longer be recognized or in operation, other avenues for di-versification of products and services offered should be explored. While this last threat may be extreme and not in any immediate future, the long-term projection of the possibility should be somewhere on the table.

TECHNOLOGICAL NOTE Previously, yearly postage meter inspections used to be a significant

source of yearly revenue for The Alternative as they would collect fees for dis-patching service reps into the field to all customer locations in order to complete the necessary requirements for each inspection. Naturally, because the ma-chines are now “smart” meters, designed with built-in computers with internet connectivity, most owners no longer have to pay for The Alternative to physically inspect or update their machines, as ascending and descending reading reports of stamps printed can automatically be sent via the internet. Those reports can automatically be checked to confirm the amounts balance out for national postal accounting purposes. If something doesn’t add up, the USPS can remotely de-activate the machines until an audit can take place or error is corrected.

Existing Marketing Plan:

According to the Management Team, The Alternative currently has no marketing plan or strategy in swing other than the hope of word of mouth recognition and recom-mendations from their longstanding, loyal customers, some of nearly 30 years. Where this loyalty, especially from their biggest accounts, has been extremely valuable to them, and in many ways, kept them afloat through drier years, it is not reliably sustain-able as the Internet and e-business practices continue to infiltrate the market where pa-per communication was once king. Because of the individual, made-to-order-by-by lo-cations’-needs types of products and services they sell, The Alternative’s office location does not serve as a place for prospects to come and shop, nor do the owners intend for



it to. However, they are willing, on occasion, to prepare demoing appointments for leads to come and see their possible purchases in action given ample time in advance.

E-Marketing Strategic Planning

With their new digital marketing plan, The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solu-tions is intending to capture and convert more businesses within the same market seg-ments mentioned above (see ‘Opportunities’) that still rely heavily on physical mail communication for operation. Because of their desire to maintain their 4-hour response time, those businesses must primarily fall within about a 9 county radius in and around the RTP area. For some of the suppliers they represent and sell, they are limited by preassigned territories of about the same size. For others, such as the Data-Pac family of products, they could technically have as large a territory as they desired, so long as they felt a new sale justifiably within their means of servicing the business. In general, most of the systems they instal are still hands-on and can’t always be serviced or trou-bleshooted remotely. For this reason, they have little desire to expand their reach.

Contrarily, they have, in recent years, been able to generate a steady trickle of online supply orders of products complimentary to mailing systems to places like Texas. Thus, they would like to expand those types of shippable sales where physical installa-tions and follow-up servicing would not be applicable.

For leads they may emerge outside there desired serviceable territory, they do have a network of affiliate businesses — both other independents and branches of larg-er corporations — that provide similar mailing systems and could service the customer locally. For these, they most often reach an agreement of a 50/50 split on the initial purchase or lease with all residuals going to the local business.

Speaking within their target area, they strongly seek to increase awareness of their brand for these mail services that are very much a niche product. In other words, they know that when another business is in need of what The Alternative provides, they either default to Pitney Bowes because it’s the only brand they know, or run an online search for what they might be needing. All other forms of marketing, be them print, ra-dio, TV, mobile, social, or otherwise wouldn’t be where their target segments are searching or looking. For the intents and purposes of this plan, these assumptions are made so as do appropriate limited resources in areas that are much safer, and probably more effective investments. If growth allows for paid ads for targeting new segments at a later date, those options will be reconsidered.

Businesses targeted need not have a minimum or maximum net worth, as The Alternative has systems to accommodate almost any operating budget, down to very lean start-ups or “mom or pop” corner stores.

The nature of their products and services limits the amount of transactions that can actually take place online. As mentioned above, their machine supply and individ-



ual parts business is something The Alternative would like to see increase, however, the main focus of their new e-marketing strategy will be to drive more traffic to a newly im-proved, fresher site, to set a friendly-service oriented tone, and to build brand aware-ness and trust through the use of added video, blog, picture, and page content.

Objectives

The primary goal for this marketing plan is to reinvigorate a longstanding busi-ness’ brand identity and presence in the community it serves. As it currently stands, the business team feels as though it has lost its spark and zest and are aiming for a new digital presence to translate to increased offline presence and awareness. Supplemen-tal goals towards are to generate more warm leads on which they can follow up and ideally convert to new orders. With the implementation of an updated website, new con-tent that paints The Alternative as an expert in their field, and with paid search market-ing targeted locally, the business hopes to increase their current revenues by 30% in the remainder of the 2015 calendar year. In 2016, they want to drive that number to 50%.

At the heart of building their longstanding brand of 30+ years, they want to no longer be called what some of their customers describe as being their “best kept secret.” Instead, they want people to know who they are, recognize all their strengths and, especially, their values, and be able to view testimonials on their website from their existing (extremely) satisfied customers. As the CEO put it, “I want to be so known to the right decision makers that those people go, ‘why haven’t we tried them before!?’”

E-Marketing Strategy

With The Alternative’s new website in place, visitors will be able to see the busi-ness as they want to be seen: the name and team of people to trust in the business of managing paper and mail. Through added video content showcasing a couple in-depth, almost mini-biopic looks at a couple top clients, site visitors will be able to see just what their satisfied customers are saying and why they’re saying it. Additionally, through in-creased blog content discussing the mailing industry’s fluxes and suggesting new things to think about when it comes to mail, visitors will get a sense that The Alternative has been doing what they do for a very long time and knows what they’re talking about. Also, they might get a few new ideas for how they might be able to implement, say, new direct mail strategies into their own business marketing strategies and how the right piece of equipment could eliminate the need to outsource the production of those 8,000 pieces of paper to be mailed.

A new page devoted to The Alternative’s solid team of seasoned, expert employ-ees will also be shown to further develop visitor trust immediately. Several more videos will be made to provide impressive evidence of a few of the machines actually running at the speeds at which they are capable, with brief intros and commentary performed by the employees, themselves.



Implementation Plan (Marketing Mix 4 P’s)

Product

The new product page on the new website will remain the same as the current website in that it provides an overview of the brands and product lines and manufactur-ers The Alternative uses for its services. With the right site template and bandwidth se-lected, they hope to eventually digitize and add all associated customer-facing literature available for all the products they sell in PDF format so that visitors can download when interested in learning more about a specific product. In tandem with the new website, biweekly email marketing campaigns with a growing list of customers segmented by (loyal, newly acquired, neutral, likely to cancel, and all) will be going out to drive click-throughs to the site, remind customers of all they’re getting, suggest new ways to use mail or the equipment, and to inform of upcoming mail industry changes.

With all the added content and web presence, The Alternative can answer many of their target market’s questions up front, such as features of the systems, how they satisfy certain needs, where businesses could implement the technology, or how it can improve paper output. The new content can also reaffirm the previous purchases by existing customers to encourage lease renewal or even upgraded systems and soft-ware.

All of this combines to drive the main product: mailing systems and paper flow efficiency increases with consistent, friendly, and fast service by human beings.

Place

As previously mentioned, the new website’s main purpose is not intended to be a store where visitors and businesses can shop and complete purchases. It is, instead, envisioned as a storefront for the “thinking of or needing a solution” shoppers similar to those in the car buying funnel who might be 6+ months out from needing to make a ma-jor purchase (or having the allotted budget to do so). Being an independent dealer, The Alternative has much greater access to a wider catalogue of brands, products, software, systems, and even furniture for the machines to rest upon. This is a competitive advan-tage above their two main local competitors, Anza Mailing Systems, Inc. (of Neopost) and the local branch of Pitney Bowes, Inc., as they are both limited to the exclusive of-ferings of their respective companies.

Whenever possible, The Alternative also regularly sends representatives to at-tend annual conventions with the National Postal Service (NPS) and Association for In-dependent Mailing Equipment Dealers (AIMED). At these trade shows, there’s always a chance to develop stronger relationships with suppliers, manufacturers, and other busi-nesses that are a part of the affiliate network for referral, localized business.

Price



Usually, the systems and machines that The Alternative provides carry fairly hefty price tags, typically involving a lease agreement. For their new online activities and storefront, pricing will remain the same for the first 90 days of the new website being live in order to monitor initial visitor metrics and activity. For email recipients of the company newsletters, promotional pricing through “exclusive” coupons has been discussed. Ul-timately, The Alternative will stick to their commitment to finding a way to work with any size budget if they can actually fulfill the need. Further, they will try to match a competi-tor’s quote whenever possible, pushing their superior service and follow-up. All things priced, the value is truly in the comprehensive, individually-crafted ground-up approach to The Alternative’s service of making paper move better.

Promotion

Aside from on several new, redesigned pages of the new website, all of the above information will be delivered via targeted email newsletters, paid search advertis-ing via Google AdWords, and superb, yet simple examples of direct mail marketing us-ing the very machines that make direct mail marketing look great! For the first 90-120 days, the AdWords will redirect to the company site. Down the road, the company does see the use in building designated landing pages to better capture leads and other use-ful information.

To their knowledge, they are not currently aware of any local promotional efforts or marketing tactics being used by their competitors. Pitney Bowes is running several ad campaigns online via AdSense and cookie traffic, but it is from a national level to push the brand rather than individual dealerships. Anza Mailing Systems, Inc. relies heavily on their small team of cold call sales professionals.

In recent years, The Alternative has caught wind that Anza has been using their common Neopost affiliation with The Alternative to their dirty advantage, claiming to be the same company and offering the same products to new leads. The Alternative can use this intel to better position their messaging to distinguish themselves as being the better way of tackling every need using the best of all product worlds.

In terms of timing, The Alternative’s heavy presence and potential in the local Government sector could dictate well-timed marketing efforts around the times when standardized Governmental budgeting rolls into a new calendar year, currently on July 1st of every year.

Budget

The Alternative Mailing & Shipping solutions currently brings in roughly 1.7 million USD in revenue every year. Out of that, it takes an average of 1.56 million to cover all operating and overhead costs, leaving only $140K in profits that were hit with some $55K in taxes for calendar year 2014. Thus, they have a very limited budget of 1-3K per month, depending on ROI, for investment into their new e-marketing strategies.



On the front end, the initial costs of labor in transitioning over to a new website, launching a regular email newsletter campaign, and commencing paid search advertis-ing through AdWords are estimated to be about $500 - $1K per month. Because they plan to go the pre-made, templated website path, they will save a substantial amount of back-end development money that would typically go to a web designer.

The biggest expense to be incurred will be an initial investment of anywhere be-tween $1-5K for some high quality video content production, depending on several pending estimated quotes from a few outsourced production houses.

Assuming the generation of new leads and sales and the initial new website launch out of way, more budget can be spent on finding and hiring a marketing coordi-nator to take on the regular maintenance tasks of monitoring/adjusting current e-market-ing efforts, creating new, optimized blog content, writing relevant email newsletters, and lead reporting to the sales and service teams.

Evaluation Plan

The new e-marketing plan and practices is entirely ROI driven and will be heavily monitored within the first 90-day period. Based on the visitor traffic seen and where they are spending time on the site, experimental tweaks to paid search keywords, the rearrangement of new site content, and/or email pushes for that content can be done. If more activity, engagement, and leads are seen via increased phone calls, emails, and general inquiries, more resources may be allotted.

Site metrics will be monitored using Google Analytics for now with the potential to upgrade to other metrics platforms later. Email campaigns will be run through MailChimp, and the new site redesign will be selected from a remade template platform such as Weebly, Wix, or Squarespace.



E-Marketing StrategyE-Segmentation Strategy

With their new e-marketing plan, The Alternative Mailing & Shipping solutions hopes to target the exact same businesses online that they have gone after via cold-calling offline for so many years. They are well aware that most businesses start online in today’s world with a simple Google search once they realize they are in need of a bet-ter way to process their internal paperwork and mail. The Alternative retains the same product flexibility to help businesses of any size and at any level of operation — so long as they require some sort of regular need to move paper within or without the company. Because they need to still all for in-person consultation,installation, and periodic servic-ing, they must market in and around the RTP area, or approximately a 9-12 county ra-dius.

As previously outlined, the types of industries that usually need the kinds of ser-vices and products The Alternative provides are in the legal, educational, governmental, banking, or medical sectors. Obviously, those businesses need to have the facilities to incorporate often very large pieces of machinery and furniture.

E-Targeting Strategy

The Alternative is exclusively a B2B operation. Consumers simply don’t need their products and services. To find businesses, they plan to finish gathering all the best email addresses from their current list of customers and proceed with sending e-mail marketing newsletters to lists of “loyal,” “newly acquired,” “neutral,” “likely to cancel,” and “all”. For now, they are opposed to buying new batches of opted-in email address lists because they are fundamentally against the idea of sending more “spam” to people who would not be making large purchase decisions for businesses.

Simultaneously, they plan to start bidding on keywords and buying paid search space via Google AdWords targeting NC, using phrases like:

- “postage meters Raleigh”- “folder inserter Raleigh NC”- “tabbers” - “mailing machines Durham”- “sealers Chapel Hill”



E-Differentiation Strategy

The main ways The Alternative distinguishes itself is through its approach and “customer-first” philosophy. It is so strong that they would walk away from an eager buyer if they believed they couldn’t help the business’ needs. There individual cus-tomization through their tailor-made, bottom-up approach to a given situation is key. They get to know the customer first and foremost, watching how they work and move paper, then building a new mailroom or assembly-line around those needs — only one that finishes the job much faster.

In this approach, they set themselves apart with unparalleled customer service throughout the entire buying decision process, and then even many months following throughout the lifespan of the customer. Through added video content, they plan to capture specific statements from a few of their very satisfied customers working with their systems at very large operations.

Another big component to their approach which sets them apart from their area competition is their independent status. Because they are not tethered to any one brand as their main opponents are to Neopost and Pitney Bowes, and instead indepen-dently working and representing multiple brands and manufacturers, they have a much greater chance of hitting closer to their customers’ precise needs. When a Neopost machine can’t do the job best, they have options and can offer those options. Busi-nesses love flexibility in their options from a particular service, and because The Alter-native has the position of being able to differentiate their offerings through all their sup-ply channels, coverage, and need-specificity, they have a competitive advantage.

Lastly, over the last 30+ years, The Alternative has developed a lot of love to go around. Their staff is a small, loyal group of people who are committed to their brand of providing the best solutions. With great people comes great appeal to work with them. This atmosphere is exactly what The Alternative would like to brag about online, and is precisely what online shoppers need to see: that they won’t just be working with ma-chines and software — they’ll be working with people who care about whatever their business is trying to accomplish.

E-Positioning Strategy

The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solutions is currently in the business of pro-viding comprehensive, physical paper and mail-moving solutions custom fitted to an in-dividual business’ needs. Because they are not immediately seeking to diversify their product and service portfolio by offering digital items for purchase online, nor do they have have the time, talent, or resources to initiate a complete pivot or overhaul to their company, their sole focus for their new e-marketing plan is to increase their presence and reestablish or introduce their brand to businesses.



On the web front, its immediate competition — Anza Mailing Systems, Inc. and the local branch of Pitney Bowes, Inc. — have either remained at a similar level of inac-tivity online as them or have had to completely launch entirely new services to adapt to and fit in with the digital landscape. Still unique to their target market in their signature, bottom-up approach, the business is hoping to advance that method to a level of digital presence that is a happy medium between being totally unengaged online with a just a website and having to develop entirely new lines of services or pick up new products. The Alternative wants to maintain its value proposition of still being the best means for moving physical paper in and out of an organization, even in a digital dominant world.

With their quality of mailroom/paper channel designs, their supreme level of cus-tomer service and retention, and their people-first, friendly personality, they have a lot to showcase online via marketing communication tactics they plan to start implementing. Specifically, they will be: sending regular email newsletters, creation and uploading of videos of their products being demoed by amicable personalities and everything their top, longest-running customers have to say, and the feelings of “someone always hav-ing their back” that they elicit in others through displayed quotes and testimonials. All of these will be carried forth under their new slogan: The Alternative is: Evaluation, Build, and Support.”

Ultimately, a customer/shopper-facing version of their value proposition would be as follows:

Even in a digital world, not everything should be emailed. Hand-delivered paper will always have its place.

The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solutions gives businesses small and large the best and most efficient means of managing their paper and mail. Through a com-prehensive plan of:

- Evaluating your operation’s exact needs through observation and listening to the people that do it every day

- Building a customized paper-flow channel to maximize efficiency and save your business time and money

- Supporting your paper pros with installation, training, 4-hour response, and atten-tion from real people long after the solution is in place



Even today, your business still needs to move paper quickly. There’s Pitney, then there’s The Alternative. We’re in this for you and your customers.

E-Marketing MixE-Product Mix

Without the development budget to add an interactive, “build your mailroom” fea-ture into their new website launch, The Alternative will keep the products the services they offer the same, only broken down by brand with more downloadable information, literature, and spec-details respective to each machine or software product shown. The new site will be far more image and video-heavy to make the shopping experience as enjoyable and easy-to-follow as possible so that uniques and frequents remain on the site longer. Their direct telephone line will be visible on every single page to reinforce how their commitment to people and building connections.

They are now appealing to all businesses that used to shop via the Yellow Pages and have now navigated over to the very convenient Google SERPs for answers. Through the use of a pre-designed and coded website template provider such as those from Weebly, Squarespace, or Wix, the site will have a fresh look and be compatible across all screens to allow for the expectation of mobile and tablet traffic.

A page devoted to capturing curious visitors’ email addresses will be added so that they can be reached and followed-up with by a representative at The Alternative. That email will also be added to an email newsletter list devoted to “lead” messaging.

Physical solutions aside, The Alternative’s main e-products will be the messaging surrounding the intangibles that every business wants:

- excellent, consistent service from a friendly team of people who empathically care about what another business is trying to do (so much that business specific mes-saging will include linked promotion to the customer’s website — an added perk to a re-lationship with The Alternative)- ease of access and quick answers responses- commitment to their providing the best and most practical solution and success, even if it’s ultimately not a good fit- made-to-order customization for a truly unique experience and life-cycle

E-Place

Once their new website goes live, an mobile app via the DWNLD repackaging platform will be developed, allowing visiting sales and service reps to have a one-tap reference/link to The Alternative's website, demo videos, machine literature, and other helpful resources. While this app would not be directly intended for customer use, it would be available for them to download if they so chose. And again, like the pre-tem-plated websites, DWNLD’s apps look awesome on iOS and Android on all screen as-pect ratios. Meanwhile, shoppers and customers will be frequently encouraged to visit



the new site, reaffirming The Alternative’s presence and availability for any questions or concerns.

In the area of social media, LinkedIn YouTube will be the most useful for The Al-ternative’s purposes, as most businesses will jump there before FB or Twitter. Eventual-ly, a developed and maintained presence across all social platforms will be ideal, though it is not immediately a priority or part of this plan. Those posts will most likely be man-aged and monitored via Meet Edgar, Hootsuite, or the sites themselves.

E-Price Mix

Specific pricing will remain “by inquiry or quote only”, simply because every pa-per moving situation is different. This very message will be communicated simply and directly on the new site (ala: “Pricing for new systems typically ranges from X-Y, howev-er, because we make everything custom fitted to you, we’d rather come and see what exactly you’re working with.”) and in every applicable email campaign, along with typical price ranges for the average system shown.

Site visitors and certain email campaign openers will have the opportunities to view specific examples of previous customer solutions developed, metrics of the time and money they’re saving, and a recorded testimonial in either video, picture, or text format from someone at the organization helped.

Finally, space will be given to confirming The Alternative’s commitment to doing everything they can to match another quote if applicable.

E-Promotion

Coinciding with a fresh new website showcasing the full experience of having “The Alternative work for you, ” paid search marketing via Google AdWords in targeted to NC will initiated. Exact keyword bidding prices have not yet been nailed down, though specific figures will be worked out through experimentation. Site traffic and email opens will be monitored via Google Analytics and MailChimp metrics, respectively, providing insight into any adjustments that need to be made. Down the road, experi-mentation with LinkedIn advertising targeted at selected types of professionals working in the banking, legal, educational, and governmental positions where paper and mail handling decisions would be a part of the job will be done. Additionally, once more bud-get room permits the generation of outsourced web ad creative to be made, remarketing via the Google Display Network will be tried.

Email newsletters will include “Customer Appreciate” portions, where loyal cus-tomer’s own businesses will be linked and promoted. Also, satisfaction surveys will be regularly used, especially on the front end of the new e-marketing efforts, to make



gauge current impressions and feelings regarding The Alternative, as well as to insure the company is still providing the best service imaginable.

Certain phrasing similar to the following lines will be used across all new AdWord and email subject line marketing efforts:

- Not everything needs to be emailed.

- Email marketing can work. Direct mail marketing is better.

- We make paper handling a breeze.

- Sending a lot of mail? We can help make it a breeze.

- When it comes to paper, we believe in handling it as few times as possible. Less is much better.

As previously mentioned, another huge component of The Alternative’s new self-promotion will be the frequent use of their biggest brand ambassadors: their longest running and most satisfied customers. These happy people will be recorded through a series of 4-5 video interviews outsourced through a local production company. Initially, 4-5 companies, large and small, will be involved and shared with their permission.



References

The Alternative Mailing & Shipping Solutions. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.the-al-ternative.net/

Jones, M. A., Jr., & Jones, N. (2015, May 31, June 6, 11, 17, 23, 24, and 27). Tell Me About Your Business [Telephone interviews].

Strauss, J., & Frost, R. (2014). E marketing (7th ed.). New York: Pearson.


Documents

The Alternative Mailing_Marketing Revamp Plan_2015-2016