Whether a project is big or small, being on the same page as your client — understanding their needs and ideas — is key. MPX, a Portland, Maine-based business solutions and print services provider, worked with a large credit union that required new monthly and quarterly statements for their customers. The credit union wanted to make their statements stand out, and MPX worked with them to ensure their request was fulfilled.
MPX utilized the client’s brand colors that featured unique imagery and marketing messages, all while maintaining data integrity, security, regulatory and compliance standards, and more. Icons were also used to personalize and enhance marketing techniques. This improved the readability of the statement and called members’ attention to the most important areas of information.
We sat down with MPX's Mandee Fish, senior technology solutions analyst (above, left) and Tim Cole, chief strategic partnership officer (above, right), and asked them about their process and how they worked with their client.
When working on complex projects that require regulatory and compliance standards such as this, how do you allow yourself to think creatively and incorporate a client’s brand?
All industries we serve at MPX have unique regulatory compliance requirements that we fully support, and they are imperative to keeping our clients operational. But compliance requirements do not tend to get in the way of creativity and branding.
Our print and fulfillment customization options and flexible infrastructure enable creativity with all projects, whether operational or promotional. We look at all client solutions from a blank slate, which gives us a ton of flexibility on how we want to make something look. We approach this by working with clients to create that balance, to ensure compliance and creative requirements are always addressed. We ask questions such as what they like about their current system, what they like about their documents and current print materials, and what they’d like to improve. In addition, we also look at operational effectiveness. When we think about the design, we want the communication to work for its intended purpose.
What programs or applications did you use to create these designs?
For the conceptual design portion of statement creation, we use Adobe InDesign. Typically, we’ll have someone take the lead on the design itself. The InDesign document serves as both artwork concept and mapping reference for programming, and is then used as a guide when programming the code that generates the output for ongoing data processing.
We have someone who takes a sort of analyst role that reviews this data, and it presents questions like “Can this design happen?” and “Is this design going to work together?” We look out for what we can use in the programming to create different types of content.
What makes your applications easy to use for members?
Our design templates facilitate marketing and branding opportunities with easy-to-follow specifications. This makes it easier for the client to change the messaging on a regular basis, ensuring their customers are always receiving fresh messaging on their operational documents. Since the client is delivering print-ready artwork, the process is simplified and message changes can be completed quickly (as little as one day). This also decreases production errors as the messages are already specified for print.
We get a mix of feedback from members. Every project that we get involved with to create some sort of new document or fulfillment program, there’s never an absolute cut-and-dry finish. There’s always something that gets mentioned down that line that may require tweaking. But we’ll have members call up and say that they love the new look of the bank statements, and we’ll have some clients say that they’re excited to get rid of their old statements.
Could you elaborate more on how you utilized iconology in this project?
We use icons as a visual graphic assigned to every type of account the client offers. The icons provide a relevant and familiar visual to the customer since each account’s icon is determined by the banking product (i.e. an educational savings account uses an icon with a graduation cap). This brings a relativity design to the statements, which ties the person to their bank and gives a more personal feel.
What have you done to market this service to clients?
At MPX, we believe communications is the fulcrum for business and loyalty. In our direct outreach, in our webinars, in the industry blogs, white papers and related content, we emphasize the balance we strike to enable the integration of custom messaging, compliance, branding and operational functionality. These strategies have caught the attention of clients due to their easy-to-understand appeal.
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