Editable themes enable quick campaign planning with EFI MarketDirect
EFI has updated its DirectSmile multi-channel communications campaign management software and rebranded it as MarketDirect to reflect a broader set of applications including communication with existing customers as well as lead generation.
Introduced at the Connect user conference in Las Vegas, MarketDirect 8.0 is now described as a customer engagement platform and features a “theme”-based approach pre-configured for a variety of industries so that users can move quickly to campaign storyboards, though the themes are highly customisable. It retains the software’s popular “HTML-free” approach and includes responsive design to support online elements on tablets and smartphones.
Product manager Tim Daisy said at the launch that the new version was ‘crossing the chasm between early adopters and mainstream users’, and that while earlier campaign implementations required a ‘combination of techy and marketing people, you now shouldn’t have to involve a call to IT’. He added that print capabilities, including the generation of QR codes linked to personalised URLs for online response, were fully integrated into the software and ‘not an afterthought’.
MarketDirect can be hosted by EFI or via conventional on-premises licensing and can be made accessible via Digital StoreFront, EFI’s web-to-print offering, where it may be “skinned” to reflect a franchise or other brand. The MarketDirect line is completed by VDP and VDP Enterprise editions; the former provides a bridge to Adobe InDesign for variable data document creation and can also be linked to Digital StoreFront to enable online document creation and ordering, while the latter is a scalable server-based offering used to drive personalised product artwork creation in high volume e-commerce settings. All three versions are available immediately.
