The Magic Bullet for Small Print Shops

When confronted by difficult or complex situations, it’s normal to look for easy solutions, painless cures and so-called “magic bullets”. Magic bullets supposedly work almost instantly, require no significant effort or investment and have no adverse effects. Small and quick printers need not search for magic bullets to improve their businesses…they can get them from any unicorn. Seriously, you can find magic bullets if you look in the right places.

Not-So Magic Bullets

Before telling you where to look, it’s important that we understand why so many supposed magic bullets have proven ineffective…why so many printers get so little out of the vast array of tools promoted by the print industry. Suppliers may argue to the contrary, but most magic bullets are too expensive, too complicated and/or require skills small printers don’t have and can’t readily acquire. Many magic bullets may work well for larger print shops with adequate financial and staff resources, but for small and quick printers they’re duds right out of the box. 

The website development magic bullet, for example, doesn’t work for many small printers because they don’t have the necessary skills of online marketing, copywriting, programming, search engine optimization, etc. Marketing services might seem like a viable magic bullet for small printers, but the websites (or lack of thereof) and online presence of many small and quick printers indicate this is likely to be another misfire. 

Many magic bullets such as QR codes, promotional items, email campaigns, signs and banners never left the gun for many small printers. Perhaps the classic case was the variable data printing magic bullet that ended up being nothing more than a very loud blank cartridge. Small printers bought VDP software by the truckload but were thwarted by the breadth of skills and extra software needed to create data-driven print files. 

What Are Magic Bullets?

All of this points out that magic bullets for small printers must be affordable, easy to use and sell and require minimal or no additional skills in order to be beneficial. See if you think the following three examples meet the criteria of magic bullets:

Magic Bullet #1 – DIY Mailings

You print pre-addressed postcards on your digital press using print files made from your customer’s design and address list. You cut, sort and drop off the job at the post office…done! You do all of this without buying any software, without studying the postal regulations, without cleaning up the customer’s address list, without filling out the USPS paperwork and without selling anything. If you know how to print, cut, count and the location of your post office, this is a potential magic bullet for you.

Magic Bullet #2 – Simple Personalization

Your customer needs tickets or forms which include unique numbering and a custom barcode. You send out the customer’s artwork and numbering/barcode requirements to a vendor who sends you printer-ready files, imposed the way you want, for your digital press. You print, cut and deliver the job without knowing anything about barcodes or creating them and without any new software or special skills. This fits the requirement of a magic bullet and you probably don’t even have to do any selling (customers usually don’t care how you things done). 

Magic Bullet #3 – Capturing VDP Opportunities

Your largest customer says his new marketing campaign requires mailing 20,000 self-mailers per month for about a year. He then says he needs to include some variable data such as image swapping, personalized salutations and the local agent’s contact details for each recipient. You simply say. “Send me your artwork and data and I’ll take care of it”. You contact your VDP print file vendor and forward him the customer’s material. Your vendor does all the data and address processing work and creates the VDP files for you to print. After printing and approving the proofs, you print, cut, sort and mail the jobs…month-after-month. Your biggest customer has become even bigger. You’ve done little more than find your vendor, take an order and do what you do best: printing and satisfying customers. Wouldn’t you call that a magic bullet? 

Look again at the three situations above and see how they fit the requirements for magic bullets: 

• Easy to use (you outsource the data and print file work then you print and deliver)
• Easy to sell (in many cases, selling isn’t necessary)
• Minimal or no additional skills needed (any skills relate primarily to taking orders)
• No upfront investment (services are pay-as-you-go)
• Immediate application (you can start selling and using today)
• You’ll have to trust us about the cost…but that’s a great reason to call

We aren’t unicorns but we do have plenty of magic bullets for you. Get yours and put them to work.

Web: www.ez-vdp.com

Phone: 888 977 4711 x134

Email: support@ez-vdp.com

Printers Should Be Asking WWJD?

Yes. We are suggesting printers look for inspiration and guidance by asking, “WWJD?” In this lousy economic environment, it only seems to make sense to ask - What Would Jobs Do? You know, Steve Jobs. If you thought we would attempt to discuss spirituality and printing, we can only say, “Heavens, no.” Steve Jobs is enough to make our point.

In 2003, when the stock market was dipping to 10-year lows, Mr. Jobs was asked why he wasn’t cutting back on Apple’s development of new products. Mr. Jobs’ often-quoted response was, “A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.” Perhaps that’s an answer to our question, “What would Jobs do?”

Many situations change when business slows down as much as it has in the past few years. For printers, this includes situations such as:

• A broad reduction in business volume,
• Long-time customers who disappear or merge,
• Order frequency declines,
• Job runs get smaller,
• Customers want more for their marketing dollar, etc.

The iPod was barely a year old when Mr. Jobs made his comment, above. Apple dominated the personal, portable music player market but was already releasing the third generation of the iPod.  If Steve Jobs had been in the printing business, he might have been looking for ways to provide great [new] products for his print customers. So, what great products can printers offer? There are QR codes, websites, print-on-demand, mobile apps and wide-format, among others. And, there’s variable data printing and PURLs.

Steve Jobs was a big proponent of personalized things, which happens to be one of the primary uses of VDP. We often forget, but the original Apple was touted as a “personal” computer when mainframes were the order of the day. Then, there was the iPod that permitted people to create a personal collection of music to carry around. The iPhone, with its thousands of “apps”, certainly redefined personal mobile …uh…just about anything. If Mr. Jobs had been in the printing industry, there’s no telling where we might be today.

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, ...”

This is what a lot of printers have already done…and some continue to do. It is hard to see how to add great new products under such circumstances. Many printers are simply looking for ways to continue offering the same products while no longer having the in-house staff they once had.

WWJD?

Outsourcing is one way printers can maintain, and even expand, their product offerings - following the Steve Jobs concept of “We took a different path.” For example, outsourcing the VDP print file work is a way to control (or reduce) costs while keeping VDP as a product or adding a new product offering. In tough business times, customers may be more willing to try something new. Although a VDP job is more expensive than static print job, the increased effectiveness (in response) might be used as a rationale to send out fewer pieces…and possibly reduce the cost to the customer.

It’s not clear what Mr. Jobs meant exactly when he said, “…putting great products in front of customers.” Why not try putting VDP in front of all your customers. What do you have to lose? If some of them “bite”, we have you covered. If you tried this before, you may find some customers have changed their minds.

There’s no argument that Steve Jobs took a different path - quite successfully. You might want to think about your own version of a different path such as VDP and outsourced file work. Then again, you can always reflect on the original meaning of WWJD.

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QR Code Tools & Tips



Customized vCard QR Code



One of the better uses for a QR code is to capture and share vCard information. Scanning the QR code (and a few button pushes) can very quickly store a host of contact information in a smart phone such as:

• First and last names
• Phone numbers - mobile, home, work, fax, etc.
• Email address, URL, web site, IM
• Company, department, title
• Street, city, state, ZIP code, country
• Notes, birthday, etc.

Here’s a web site that has a nice interface for creating a QR code from vCard information or many other types of input data: http://www.quickmark.com.tw/En/qrcode-datamatrix-generator/default.asp?qrVCard.

When you look at the raw code, you will see that the secret to QR codes is the use of tags to identify or label each string of information.

Once you have created a QR code, the natural question has to be, “does thing work?” So, here’s another web site that will decode what’s in a QR code: http://www.onlinebarcodereader.com. You simply upload the QR code as an image and get back the contents in “code” form and in plain language. Try copying and pasting the QR code above to see how it works.

As the amount of information contained in the QR code increases, the “physical” size of the code symbol and the number of “dots” also increase. This means that QR codes with vCard information will need to have larger dimensions than a code with something simple like a phone number. Too small, and the scanning may not work well, or at all.

Once you have generated a vCard QR code, you will see it is a large and hideous thing. However, there are ways to dress them up a bit. The most critical factors are keeping the contrast high and the resolution good. See the example above.

A word of caution to avoid wasting a lot of time - the more information in a QR code, the larger the printed image must be. As the amount of information increases, the module (smallest square element) size decreases for a fixed size of QR code. One reference suggests that for a QR code containing only a URL the minimum print size should be 1.25 x 1.25 inches. A vCard QR code may need to be a minimum of 4 x 4 inches to be compatible with the resolution of the majority of smart phones.

QR codes can be used in your VDP project in almost any way that you would use variable graphics - in fact, that's what they end up being. On pieces where the customer includes individual pictures of their representatives, you might suggest adding a vCard QR code for the representative. Although not all that high-tech, that would certainly be at the leading-edge of common usage for both variable data printing and QR codes.

For more information see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qr_code

QR Codes: Tattooed or Tasty?

Amid the quandry about good uses for QR codes comes two new stories - one quite clever and one blantantly bizarre.

A supermarket chain took advantage of several characteristics of life in Korea to use QR codes to more than double their sales. Cleverly, they replicated the supermarkets' shelves on subway platforms so that commuters can shop with their smartphones and have their groceries delivered when they arrive at home.

http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/koreas-tesco-reinvents-grocery-shopping-with-qr-code-stores-20110628/

On the other end of the scale and demonstrating the potential to be a future Darwin Award candidate, a man has a QR code tattooed on his chest that links to a whiskey company's Facebook page. There are so many things wrong with this, we can't even begin to cover them. After all, how can you focus the smartphone when the QR code's on your chest?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20078153-71/man-has-qr-code-tattooed-onto-chest-really/

The use of QR codes by the supermarket points to one of the better uses of QR codes - allowing the user to collect and use lots of information. For many smartphone users, scanning a single QR code to see a website is more trouble than it's worth. But, being able to scan lots of QR codes to get something done makes the effort worthwhile.