Personalisation and mailing are two areas which offer printers added value opportunities, Wayne Robinson looks at how you get involved
AS prices for commodity print continue to decrease savvy printers are looking to new revenue streams on which to build their businesses. One of the most talked about is variable data printing (VDP), the term given for print where every sheet is different, that difference may be a name, a number, and image, or a combination of any or all of these. Digital presses, which is the key production technology for VDP enablement are now being installed in decent numbers by Australian printers, but for the most part they are being used to print short versions of the longer run work, in other words where all the prints are the same, it is just that there are fewer of them. While these applications are wholly relevant to digital presses the area where digital really comes into its own is in variable data, because here offset simply cannot compete. In short run work offset presses are coming down in their economic run lengths, the latest breed are just a couple of hundred, but offset will never be capable of printing variable data.However being able to provide a variable data service to customers requires printers to take on board some database management software, which may seem daunting, but in reality is not so, as there is a host of software out there that provides the link between the print engine and the customer. Essentially there are three aspects to producing variable data. The digital print engine, the database itself and the software, in fact there are two pieces of software necessary; the composition software and the workflow. The composition software takes the data and formats it ready to print according to the template and the business rules. The workflow is to optimise the automated document factory, in order that production keeps flowing. This is essential for instance when in a large run on a continuous feed printer if a few spoils occur they will need to be reprinted on a cut sheet device for economic reasons. The workflow software needs to be able to recognise the spoils and redirect the reprinting to the cut sheet machine.
It is, say the proponents, relatively simple to enter the VDP market, and takes a relatively low level investment to begin with. In fact you can start off for free, with MS mail merge or Adobe Indesign data merge, which almost all printers would have. From there the investment path can go from anything from a few hundred dollars to a few hundred thousand.
There are challenges in data though, but in challenges come opportunities, and those opportunities are where printers can add value and create decent margins. The need to configure, cleanse and optimise data so that when it hits the print engine it is the most profitable it can be for the printer. Configuring the data means having it ready for the print in the correct format. Cleansing means ensuring that the data is correct, that there is no duplication. Optimising means ensuring that the data is printed in the best manner for instance by state. These challenges are easily met in software that is available. For instance there are a number of software programmes for cleansing data, or you can use a hosted site. These sites allow you to upload your database, then they provide the cleansing. This is a service printers can provide to their clients, and whack a very decent margin on as well. If printers can move into becoming the database manager then that is a whole new revenue stream for them, and this is why there is such interest in it.
This database management is not just for the big players like Salmat, but just as much for the smaller print operations. To give an example a Health Club may typically offer new members a 30 day trial to get them interested. The potential new members just need to fill in a basic form; name, age, address, phone and the like. The printer would then create a direct mail piece, which when combined with the data that has been collected by the Health Club becomes a personalised mailout. However not everyone who went to the Healtrh Club would be happy to give out their details, so it is certain that some data would be unclean, for instance name Julius Casear, age 1950, address The Coliseum, town Rome. So the data cleansing software, or hosted service, would eradicate this dirty data. This means that each piece that goes out should be correct, with no waste. And at maybe $3 or $4 a pop total cost of each mailout eradicating waste will go down very well with the customer. It also means that the response rate will be higher, because obviously there will be no inaccurate mailouts, which would all be added to the not responded column if they were sent.
For printers looking to provide added value services, and that must be almost everyone, data cleansing and management, design, and complete cross media campaigns with personalised URLs offer a straightforward path away fm commodity print, and are not hard to implement. The last service, cross media campaigns, may also seem daunting to printers, but the reality is that it is very straightforward, and will place you ahead of the pack.
This cross media campaign is where printers can really score. Essentially each piece of mail that goes out is personalised with the recipients name, and maybe some other piece of data about them, for instance if it is for a holiday company it may be the number of weeks since they last booked a holiday. Then in the mailout is also a URL (website address) which is unique to the recipient. The idea being that when the recipient receives the mail out he or she goes to the URL, which is also personalised. The response rates are high, and entirely measurable. Printers can provide all this. Web site creation is not difficult, in fact if you have Adobe CS Premium you will have the software already, known in that case as Dreamweaver. You don't need to be a web programmer to make it happen.
This all means that printers can start to transform themselves into marketing service providers, so becoming broader in their appeal, and walking away from the commodity print business with its diminishing margins and into an area that provides real value for customers and real profits for printers. Software developments are continuing, in the future new marketing automation programmes will be launched.
These provide automated mailouts generated by certain parameters, for instance a local dentist may provide his data, which has the people who have not been to that dentist for the past seven months, or a car dealer for people that haven't been in for six months after their last service.
If printers can manage this then the revenue opportunities are far greater than just putting ink on paper.
If printers truly grasp the opportunity that personalistion provides there is in theory no reason why they should not cut out the middle man, that is the agency, and relate directly to the end client.
After all if you can go to the client and provide a service that includes database management, design, personalised webpages, print and mail that is a winning combination for the client, as the printer– or market service provider - becomes one point of reference, and for the printer it is a serious win, as it means that instead of just performing one task, putting ink on paper, or two if you have some kind of mailing solution, you are actually providing around seven separate services, each of them billable.
Personalisation Software
Adobe Systems Incorporated –
Adobe Central Pro Output Server
Atlas Software (Objectif Lune) –
PrintShop Mail
Creo – Darwin Desktop
Document Sciences –
AutoGraph, xPression
Elixir – Vitesse
Exstream – Dialogue
GMC Software – PrintNet Suite
Group1 Software – DOC1 Suite
Hewlett-Packard – Indigo Swift Native
Accelerated Personalization
InTelmail exploreneT
ISIS -– Papyrus Document System
Meadows – DesignMerge
Objectif Lune – PlanetPress
Pageflex – Persona, Mpower, Storefront, .EDIT
Persona
Printable Technologies – DL Formatter, PrintFusion3
PrintSoft PReS
Sefas Open Print
Xerox FreeFlow Variable Information
XMPie
