EMC recently acquired Document Sciences and this will open up a lot of new conversations with our customers. HP had acquired the other big player in the Document Output Management Space, Exstream, back in January 2008. The ability to merge print communications with web, SMS (text) and email is the eventual destination for large companies trying to integrate their marketing message across all these channels.

I got a mailer at home the other day that was the only piece of direct mail (EVER!) to make it past the trash bin and onto my refrigerator. It was a customized postcard with my last name spelled out in the sky with the sun setting on the ocean below. Here’s an example from the website of the company that produces the postcards for the Realtor that sent me mine…

There is a ground swell of custom content happening out there and the trend is toward dynamic, real time customization. In one of my posts, I brought up the notion of Social Media Theaters and the existing capabilities to project SMS text messages up on big screens in clubs. Here’s another example that I came by recently that brings this all together at an even higher level.

There is a business model here and it isn’t just selling i-bars to the hospitality industry. What happens when you start interacting with customers across all the surfaces in your establishment?  Not just your web page or your social media sites. This can get a little creepy when taken to the extreme but with the right balance it is Experience Marketing at its best. Take this example that I recently read online at strategy+business :

Consider the strategy implemented by ING Direct, a retail bank with no physical branches — it conducts all transactions via Internet, phone, and mail. To promote its banking business among potential new customers, ING Direct opened a café in midtown New York. It serves coffee in a pleasing environment, with a comfortable lounge where patrons can read the financial newspapers, watch the markets’ movements on plasma screens, use the complimentary Internet access to check their portfolios — or simply chat with friends or people-watch.

Surprisingly, customers can’t perform financial transactions in the ING Direct Café. Yet this single “branch” yielded more than $200 million in new accounts and mortgages within a year of opening.

Here’s the part where I tell you the business model but I’m going to wait for someone to ask because so far this has been a pretty one-sided conversation. Thanks to all that have been reading so far during my first week.