PRINTING AND PRODUCTION: A Tight Fit

Digital printing targets prospects ever more closely, affordably

Knapp Shoes used delicate means last year when it wanted to sell off its extra-large and otherwise odd-sized shoes: digital printing.

Using technology affordable only within the past year, the Pittsburgh-based cataloger sent out 5,000 personalized postcards to current and lapsed customers, choosing prospects based on shoe size, color preference and past purchase history.

Vestcom, Knapp’s West Caldwell, NJ printer and database marketing service bureau, printed the full-color postcards on Xeikon digital color presses. Vestcom turned out cards with photographs of products that matched customer’s previous purchases, says director of sales Robert Messinger. Each card, which displayed three pairs of shoes, was printed on two types of Xeikon presses which can run at speeds as high as 8,200 color pages per hour.

Knapp pulled an 11% response rate. Respondents who dialed Knapp’s toll-free number contributed an average order of $45. Those who responded via Knapp’s Web site spent $120. And Knapp only had to lay out about 50 cents a page, says Messinger. These prices would probably run a bit higher for catalog pages, which need things like varnish, he notes.

Vestcom is working on a campaign like this for a major cataloger. It will print about 25,000 24-page catalogs, 80% of which will be customized for less than 50 cents a page. And Messinger wants to make this improved technology available to more direct marketers this year.

At the core of Knapp’s system is variable data printing, a method that allows printers to store all their images and text on magnetic tapes and create templates that can be easily interchanged.

Printers have only been able to do these things for about the past eight to 12 months at such a low cost. Digital printing systems have been around since the mid-1990s, but they have always been more expensive than conventional offset printers. However, they’ve usually generated strong response and conversion rates for marketers and good returns on investment. Now, apparently, falling prices are influencing digital printing.

Part of what’s helped drive down the price of digital printing is the adoption of personal pagination markup language (PPML) among printers, says Bob Barbera, vice president and general manager of commercial printing at Xeikon America in Wood Dale, IL. PPML provides a way to run variable data printing across different types of presses and makes it easier and less expensive to print digitally, since printers — and ultimately marketers — no longer have to depend on proprietary systems.

PPML specifications first came out about a year ago and began spreading around last fall, says Barbera.

On top of this, he adds, the prices of “consumables” like digital toner, ink and front-end software have fallen in the past year or so. And press speeds have gone from 4,200 pages per hour to 8,200. The cost of digital coloring systems has also dropped nearly 30% over the last year.

Overall, digital printing has been “an evolutionary process and it’s just getting out of its infancy,” says printing consultant Alex Hamilton of Philadelphia. “There are still a lot of problems with the technology but we’re 80% of the way there.”

One event that’s helped advance the spread of digital printing occurred last year when printing systems manufacturer Agfa sold its digital front-end technology, manufacturing operations and other assets to Xeikon. Agfa had developed the Chromapress, which lets marketers customize catalogs for individual customers, as it had done for Novartis Seed Co. a year earlier (DIRECT, May 1, 2000). Xeikon has since begun using Chromapress technology in its printing systems. In fact, Xeikon is using this same technology as part of a project it’s doing for SunAmerica Mutual Funds.

SunAmerica, New York, is even taking digital printing one step further in an effort to enable its sales force to sell retirement plans to companies, says project manager Todd Barmash.

The financial firm is employing digital printing with an Internet interface to allow its salespeople to design, order and print customized, full-color booklets for corporate customers and prospects interested in its new Premier Select 401(k) plan.

Working with New York printer Royal Impressions, Sun devised what it terms marketing collateral order management, the system that enables its sales force to customize the brochures.

Specifically, the salespeople enter information into predetermined data fields on a secure private Web site, on which they write the booklets according to a prospect company’s number of employees, payroll size, current 401(k) program and other parameters, Barmash notes.

Once SunAmerica approves the document on the Web, it sends an e-mail to Royal Impressions indicating that a new order is waiting online. Data from the Web site is then merged to a template file and a set of personalized 16-page brochures is printed on a Xeikon digital color press at speeds up to 6,000 full color pages per hour. The literature reportedly can be delivered to SunAmerica’s salespeople in less than 48 hours.

Sun started its current program in January 2000, sending only 75 pieces to managers at target companies for its mutual fund-based 401(k) plans. While Barmash declines to reveal just how well these customized brochures have translated into sales, he indicates the company is staying with the program.

Barmash also hints that SunAmerica will be coming up with a similar project later this year “that’s more like traditional direct marketing, like J. Crew.”