PODi Reveals 2014 Winners of the PODi Best Practices Awards and Leadership Award

ROCHESTER, NY—April 4, 2014—PODi, the Digital Printing Initiative, has announced the 2014 winners of the PODi Best Practices Awards and Leadership Award for digital printing case studies. These prestigious awards recognize outstanding examples of cross-media and relevant direct marketing campaigns featuring the power and versatility of digital print. The winners were announced at the annual AppForum digital printing and direct marketing conference at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

PODi Best Practices Awards
PODi accepts case studies for the Best Practices Award competition throughout the year, and entries are judged on a combination of criteria, including pre-defined goals and measured results, value proposition, increased effectiveness, relevance, creativity and innovation. The 2014 Panel of distinguished judges:

• Dr. John Leininger, Professor, Department of Graphic Communications, Clemson University
• Cary Sherburne, journalist, author, and marketing consultant
• Jim Olsen, President, Imagination Ink

Best Practices Winner: Direct Marketing Category:
Direct Supply and JHL Digital Direct—"Direct Supply Increases Sales with Personalized Catalogs."

Direct Supply is the nation’s leading provider of equipment, eCommerce and service solutions to the senior living profession. The annual Direct Supply catalog is the single-most comprehensive marketing piece that the company produces. Using a traditional printing process for its catalog needs created unwieldy mailstreams and Direct Supply could not achieve the level of customer customization that they wanted. Working with JHL Digital Direct, Direct Supply set out to create catalog covers with differentiated marketing content for its large corporate customers. Using digital print led to a significant reduction in the number of mailstreams and top-line sales growth of 17 percent over a control group.

"Direct Supply is always pushing the envelope with their marketing," explained John Leek, partner, JHL Digital Direct. "This was a challenging project and we’re proud Direct Supply chose JHL Digital Direct to handle the data management and digital printing for it."

Honorable Mention: Leeds City Council & Resource—"More Than a Gym: A Sports & Leisure Service Membership Campaign."

Best Practices Winner: Self-Promotion Category:
e.f. marketing group—"e.f. marketing group Promotes Marketing Services to Higher Education."

e.f. marketing group wanted to generate marketing services business from higher education accounts across the nation. Its key challenge was that no one outside of its local area knew of their work. It created a full-scale marketing campaign to showcase its capabilities and drive traffic to its booth at the annual Council of Alumni Marketing & Membership Professionals (CAMMP) national conference. e.f. marketing group’s booth received visits from 95 out of the 100 colleges attending the conference and it realized $150,000+ in new business.

"Standing out in today's marketplace where hundreds of messages are seen by a consumer is something that is not easy to do," explained Jason Ellis, president, e.f. marketing group. "We took this into consideration and created something that would stand out over and beyond all the other messages our target audience normally sees. We wanted to create something memorable, and something that our audience would remember for years to come. Our results showed that it worked! And, two years later, we are still remembered by that target group for our great creative and unique idea. They know that the e.f. marketing group is the company to turn to when you want a campaign that uses all of today's cross-media technology and want results! Our team is proud and honored to receive the PODi Best Practices Award! It exemplifies all of the hard work we have done over the years and we thank them for honoring us with this fantastic award.”

Honorable Mention: MSP and BlueSky ETO—"MSP and BlueSky ETO Impress and Educate Through Multi-channel Campaign."

PODi Leadership Award:
Pacesetter Enterprises and Rosemont College

In addition to the Best Practice Awards, PODi recognized a service provider and their customer who have shown an on-going commitment to excellence in relevant, cross-media marketing. Their partnership has led to a series of outstanding, multi-phase campaigns over several years. To honor this achievement PODi presented its Leadership Award to Pacesetter Enterprises and Rosemont College.

"We truly value our relationship with Rosemont College," said Kim Gross, director of sales and marketing, Pacesetter Enterprises. "Together we continue to push the limits of technology to consistently deliver cutting edge fundraising programs year after year. Rosemont is a great example of a small institution that is embracing all that technology has to offer to more effectively and efficiently reach its prospective donors."

"Rosemont College has benefitted tremendously from our relationship with Pacesetter Enterprises," noted Christyn Moran, vice president college relations, Rosemont College. "Their ability to take our brand messaging and segment it for specific constituents has greatly enhanced the College’s ability to communicate effectively. Instead of sending one message to all, we have been able to customize our fundraising appeals in both print and e-mail formats for those who are loyal donors, those who sometimes give, and those who have never given. The team at Pacesetter is professional, knowledgeable, and detail oriented. They have allowed us to integrate our print and e-mail fundraising appeals in a way we never could on our own."

PODi’s 2014 AppForum is a three-day educational digital printing conference, featuring over 30 sessions, keynote presentations by top innovators, a full day of Pre-Conference Intensives, networking opportunities and a Vendor Fair. Tracks included Sales Strategies, Solution Workflows and Production Workflows.

About the AppForum
The annual AppForum is the only digital printing conference dedicated exclusively to marketing applications powered by digital print with a truly independent, vendor-neutral, unbiased agenda. All of PODi’s extensive research, resources, industry contacts, and expertise come together once a year to make the AppForum the cornerstone of what’s new and what’s next in digital print applications.

About PODi
PODi is a global, vendor neutral industry initiative with hundreds of member companies, including Executive Board members EFI, Franchise Services and Xerox. The organization drives demand for marketing applications powered by digital print and helps members build successful digital print businesses.

Source: PODi.