Experts Offer Advice on Selling to Marketing Professionals

Important How-To Guide for Print Service Providers Presented by WhatTheyThink and NAPL, Sponsored by MindFreInc, Draws Large Crowd

December 10, 2007 -- Lexington, Kentucky USA -- WhatTheyThink.com today reported that more than 425 industry professionals registered to attend a free printing industry educational webinar conducted in partnership with NAPL.  Talking to the Marketing Professional: A How-To Guide, led by industry expert Barbara A. Pellow, Director of the Business Development and Custom Communications Services for research firm InfoTrends.  The program was sponsored by MindfireInc.

The webinar archive is available here:

http://members.whattheythink.com/home/webinars/webinar071205.cfm

“This exciting session gave attendees specific guidance on how to approach marketing professionals and the types of services they are seeking,” said Randy Davidson, President, WhatTheyThink. “WhatTheyThink is especially pleased that MindFireInc has chosen to sponsor this important educational event, which allows us to bring the session to printing and publishing executives at no charge.”

Pellow has proven to be one of WhatTheyThink’s most popular webinar hosts, with hundreds of printing executives regularly attending her WhatTheyThink webinars and accessing the archived material for later review. She was joined by a panel of experts, including:

• Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, provided a “big picture” view of the needs of marketing executives
• Nancy Master, former Sr. Marketing Manager for Sage Software, where she implemented innovative direct marketing campaigns incorporate variable 1:1 and personalized URL technologies
• Steven England, Business Development Manager, R and R Images, a company that has leveraged its one-to-one communications efforts into successful integrated marketing campaigns with such companies as Taser, Inc.

“As one of the key initiatives at the CMO Council for 2008, we are embarking in a big campaign to drill into the power of personalization to find out what is going to influence and shape future adoption of personalized multichannel communication,” said Neale-May. “Our 2008 Marketing Outlook highlighted the need to quantify and measure the value of marketing programs and investments as a top challenge facing our members, and direct marketing is the top area of planned expenditure for these professionals in 2008. And they are looking for value-added thinking from their vendor partners.”

“Marketing executives face a number of challenges in a highly dynamic business environment,” said Pellow. “Print or marketing services providers must be prepared to have the right dialog with these marketing professionals, and to help them understand how to most effectively deploy the various media types available to them, including print.  Our panelists did a terrific job of providing valuable guidance on successful interactions with marketing decision-makers.”  

About Mindfire

Since 1999, MindFireInc has been the leader in helping marketers link the impact-power of direct mail with the interactive capabilities of the Internet. MindFireInc's flagship product, LookWho'sClickingTM, is a web-based application suite that automates the creation, management, and tracking of Marketing Campaign’s utilizing Personalized URLs and VIP Landing Pages. The company delivers LookWho’sClickingTM through its expanding network of Solution Partners, which are typically print service providers, agencies and consultants. With offices in California and Asia-Pacific, MindFireInc is a privately held company led by a seasoned management team with proven industry success. For more information, please visit www.mindfireinc.com.

About WhatTheyThink.com

WhatTheyThink.com is the printing and publishing industry's leading online media organization; offering a wide range of publications delivering unbiased, real-time market intelligence, industry news, economic and trend analysis, peer-to-peer communication, and special reports on emerging technology and critical events. Serving a membership base of more than 50,000, WhatTheyThink.com also hosts webinars and live events as well as providing content through a syndication program, which delivers content directly to related websites and through RSS.

About NAPL

A not-for-profit trade association serving companies in the $100 billion+ printing and graphic communications industry, NAPL offers a comprehensive slate of business-building solutions that provides company leaders with the strategies, insights, and guidance they can use to make informed business decisions, minimize risk, anticipate change, and profitably grow their business.

For more information, visit www. NAPL.org.

About Barbara Pellow

Barbara Pellow recently assumed responsibility for the development and delivery of two new services at InfoTrends specifically focused on the evolution fo the Graphic Communications Market – The Business Development Service and Custom Communications Service. Pellow has served in a number of roles including the Chief Marketing Officer of Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group. In the role of Chief Marketing Officer, Pellow was responsible for all marketing activities for the division, including marketing communications, public relations, marketing intelligence and advertising strategy. She was an active participant in developing business strategy and helping define the group’s go-to-market organizational structure.

Prior to joining Kodak, Pellow was the Gannett chair in integrated publishing sciences in Rochester Institute of Technology’s (RIT) School of Printing Management and Sciences (SPMS). She has also held senior marketing roles at IKON Office Solutions, InfoTrends, Xerox and IBM.

Pellow can be reached at barb_pellow@infotrends.com. 

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