The cost savings of a totally digital workflow are numerous. But the time saved by print-on-demand (POD) technologies is what many printers say marketers are excited about.
“They're looking to collapse the entire cycle,” says Chip Fuhrmann, market segment vice president at Banta Corp. “How can they take today's feed and have it printed and shipped tomorrow? How can they make a change to their marketing program and have it effective tomorrow without having to worry about obsolescence?”
“I don't care if you're doing 10 million or 10 copies,” says Clint Humphrey, executive vice president of operations for Quebecor World's commercial direct group. “Time frames are continuing to shorten with customers. They want to have the latest, greatest data, the timeliest data available. They want data that's fresh, so they don't want to give you the data until the day before they want it dropped. They want you to be able to react on a dime. ‘Here's the data, so let's get it imaged and into the mail.’”
Janice Mayo, Vertis' senior vice president of national sales and marketing, says she is seeing customers looking to print-on-demand or customized variable solutions (such as those shown on this issue's cover) which are driven not only by a desire for shorter lead times but by a need to reach customers more quickly.
“We're seeing customers wanting to get closer on a more timely basis to their customers and prospects,” says Mayo. “They're coming to us looking for ways to increase the personalization in traditional direct marketing programs, and more importantly find ways to truly customize their message, whether it be through visuals or copy or content, to really start speaking to the individual.”
One Vertis retail client has turned its direct mail program into a completely customized trigger effort, using weekly information on purchase behavior and marrying that to a segmentation program. Using RFM data and analytics on the customer's likely next purchase as a trigger, the retailer is back in the mail to customers quickly with a new communication acknowledging previous purchases, and leading them toward new items the retailer knows they haven't purchased but might next. “They get [the mailing] into their hands two or three weeks after the initial purchase,” says Mayo.
Increased “speed to market” takes the focus away from unit costs and looks more at variables like smaller unused inventories of materials and the ability to avoid missed opportunities, Fuhrmann says. “Changes to marketing programs can be made quickly,” he said. “[Marketers] can redirect so they don't miss an opportunity to convert a customer.”
Debbie Roth, vice president for sales and marketing at Japs-Olson Co., says she's seeing the data supplied by clients determining lead times.
Until recently, the steps involved in printing a mailing piece — the actual printing, any variable imaging and the process of getting all the materials in the envelope itself — usually had to happen in order. Now Japs is often doing laser personalization in a PDF format, including variable information, and sending that electronically to clients so they can do data audits, sometimes even before the forms are printed.
“We [used to have to] wait to go from one operation to the next,” says Roth. “Now we're doing things simultaneously, shortening the turnaround time to previously unheard-of times. If I can get laser personalization and audits completed and approved by clients, we can save them a good two to four days in turnaround time.”
“The natural advantage of print on demand is that turnaround. It's not like the lead times for offset printing — when things are stored digitally we can respond more quickly,” concurs Thomas A. Wilde, president and CEO of W.A. Wilde Co. “[And] it helps with obsolescence of inventory and with speed to market.”
Another advantage of POD is the ability to print multiple lots in one continuous ZIP code stream to take advantage of postal savings, says Wilde. “You can change dramatically from one name to the next, but you're keeping it in the same ZIP code sequence for postal presort discounts. In smaller lots that's been a big advantage, allowing people to test offers, pricing, copy, all that stuff.”
“Companies aren't just looking at campaign results and ROI by channel but the overall marketing relationship. That trend is driving marketing folks to not just look at creative and campaigns but dive into infrastructure,” agrees Rip Gerber, managing director and group vice president of Carlson Marketing's Pacific Region. “As a result, we're seeing companies [trying] to increase communications' impact.”
Content management systems are becoming particularly important, notes Gerber. “You have technology [officers] looking at how they can start to manage all of their databases and content in an effective way to allow their teams to pull together the content they need to close a deal or change a behavior.”
Automotive and financial services marketers also are making great use of POD technologies, notes Tom Dyson, vice president of sales and technical services for Vertis, noting the newer technologies are great in industries where a marketer may want to subtly influence a customer through images rather than text‥
“Customers are continuing to look for more targeted messages and they're doing that in smaller and smaller time frames and smaller and smaller quantities,” says Quebecor's Humphrey.
Both Wilde and Humphrey add that there has been more use of color in POD as the cost comes down. And Humphrey says POD is used well by the same industries that employ extensive imaging capabilities in their more traditional packages, and have a high customer lifetime value, like financial, automotive and tobacco.
“Automotive [marketers are doing] a lot of communication for things like service reminders and brochures, as well as end-of-lease [notices] and mailings [urging] someone to sell and replace a car if it's not leased,” says Humphrey. “We're also see interesting things in more mundane areas like stationery and office supplies, encouraging reorders and [trying] to increase the frequency of orders and average order size.”
Online applications and content management also are allowing marketers to do more work in less time, as are internal applications that help smooth out marketing production, says Dyson. One example is in the healthcare industry, where internal client representatives can customize materials for individual human resources departments.
“It eliminates physically marking up brochures, taking a six-week process and making it more like a five-day process,” he says. “Printing in an on-demand environment allows a client to [work] better with internal customers.”
And of course, there's the cost savings. “A totally digital workflow comes down to eliminating materials that would be sitting in a warehouse somewhere,” says Dyson.
While there are numerous customers that Quebecor works with that want to do online approvals, there are still many who want to work with a traditional blueline. “Especially if it's a new project, you want somebody to have an actual mock-up of what this is going to look like,” says Humphrey. “We see more customers going online for approval when it's an existing format that they may be doing repetitive mailings of, may just be doing a tweak here or there. People still like to touch things.”
“Agencies are a little more reluctant to go to online approval,” he adds. “I don't know if that's because they feel part of their job is to make sure it's right, [but they want] to physically see it in their hands rather than just look at it on a monitor.”
