Valassis pioneers closed-loop promotions

Valassis offers a complete managed service to maximise the effectiveness of sales promotions.

Valassis is offering a complete managed service that is unique in the industry to help brand managers maximise the effectiveness of their promotions throughout the entire promotional cycle.

Driven by rigorous data analysis and measurement, this new solution offers brand managers a unique insight into consumer behaviour and campaign effectiveness and a means of demonstrating the value of sales promotions to the board.

The Valassis portfolio covers all six areas of the promotional cycle.

* Plan - understanding the client's objectives and current situation.

* Create - developing a promotional solution to meet these objectives.

* Place - ensuring the promotion reaches the target audience.

* Capture - handling all responses to the promotion.

* Analyse - assessing results against campaign's critical success factors.

* Learn - applying key insights to future campaigns.

Charles D'Oyly, managing director of Valassis, said: "Life is increasingly tough for the brand manager, who has insufficient time to undertake closed-loop sales promotions that involve complex data analysis.

"The constraints of time and a lack of performance measurement to date have inhibited the evolution of many brand promotional strategies.

"Managers have had to rely on qualitative measures that, unfortunately, give no real insight into marketing success or failure".

D'Oyly continued: "In an increasingly performance-driven marketing environment and a weakening economy, brand managers need to develop new campaigns and refine previous ones to win consumer engagement in a more competitive and promotionally responsive environment.

"Simply repeating the same promotions year-on-year will not deliver better results or provide the return on investment increasingly demanded by the board, yet such repetition is common place and highly addictive".

The new Valassis portfolio enables brand managers to progress an entire promotional campaign through one provider from planning, creation and placement to the capture and analysis of relevant data, and insights that are fed back into the cycle.

D'Oyly added: "With brand managers under more pressure than ever and budgets continually decreasing, they must work much harder to demonstrate their value to the board in order to secure budgets for subsequent years.

"In this increasingly accountable corporate climate, the Valassis solutions portfolio is designed to help demonstrate that brand marketing is having a direct positive impact on the bottom line".

D'Oyly continued: "While the promotional marketing process is now inherently measurable, analysis of performance is still a major challenge.

"Few managers have the time or tools to wade through highly complex analyses and impenetrable reports to get to the information they need.

"This is where Valassis can make a real difference, keeping the data in context but streamlining the process to deliver only the relevant information in an easy to read format that clearly illustrates the areas where improvement is necessary".

By offering a complete managed service, Valassis ensures that each stage of the promotional cycle is delivered effectively - including the all important, but often neglected, analysis and insight.

Plan - Understand the client's strategy, their brand challenges and target audience.

Define clear objectives, measurement criteria and critical success factors.

Assess past campaigns to identify and understand what has and hasn't worked.

Recommend improvements.

Develop the best sales promotion campaign to meet objectives.

Create - Work with industry-leading partners to develop a solution that engages consumers, encourages them to buy and optimises budget.

Design and produce the promotion.

Create the delivery mechanic to reach the target consumer.

Define the call to action, data capture method and response handling.

Place - Ensure the promotion reaches the target audience through the most effective method.

Fulfil the promotion to the agreed timescales and in line with other marketing activity.

Handle all logistical arrangements.

Manage the entire process to make it hassle-free.

Capture - Capture redemption level data.

Capture any consumer feedback associated with the campaign.

Track and capture all sales uplift and market penetration data.

Handle gone-aways.

Capture any associated research data.

Analyse - Accurately record and consolidate information and data.

Analyse and interpret response data.

Convert data into easy-to-understand reports.

Assess results against the campaign's critical success factors.

Learn - Identify insights, make recommendations and highlight improvements.

Define the next action steps.

Apply the learning into future campaigns.

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