Re-Think Mailing

It’s no surprise. Given the general downturn in mailing volume (see graph below), many print shop owners are questioning why they should spend several thousand dollars to renew their address presort and processing software. That question usually leads to other questions about printing and VDP software as well all of the time, cost and risk of doing mailing jobs. Add to those more questions about what’s in store regarding the USPS’ delayed Full Service Intelligent Mail Barcode program.

Fortunately, we have an answer. You can outsource all of your data merge and clean up, address list processing and print file creation work to us. You do what you do best: design, printing, finishing, etc. You simply send us mailing lists and artwork. We do all the hard stuff and deliver to you pre-addressed and pre-sorted, printer-ready VDP files imposed and ordered the way you want.

That means there is no software to buy, learn, update or renew or specials skills to learn. It also means you and your staff have more time to do important things such as selling, serving customers and all those things that make your business profitable. You also will likely also come to realize that by outsourcing you have gained a whole new set of capabilities from more data and data management services to all types of personalization and advanced VDP solutions.

Is it time for you to re-think your mailing process? If it is, give us a call.

Digital Formatting Services

Stop Stupid Marketing

Stupid Marketing: The process of trying to attract business while accomplishing just the opposite.

You'd be amazed how many print shop owners are quite good at stupid marketing. They aren't actually stupid but they aren't professional marketers, either. Stupid marketing mistakes are often obvious and can be disastrous.

One classic example of stupid marketing is: 

A print shop owner looking to expand his business finishes some lessons and decides to identify himself as a marketing services provider. As a good marketer, he knows he must let all of his customers know about his new services. He designs a very clever direct mail postcard campaign and adds some personalization to impress his audience. 

The campaign is hugely successful as evidenced by the print shop’s website experiencing a 45% increase in traffic immediately after the postcards are delivered. However, no phone calls, emails or any other communications are forthcoming. In fact, business overall seems to turn down rather than up! 

What’s the problem? Stupid marketing, of course!

As happens too often, the print shop owner failed to stand back and look at the image he was projecting to the marketplace. What’s that?

The owner did a great job announcing his new services and pushing his customers to his website…but, his old, ugly website delivered a totally different message to his customers:

• He does/did a lousy job of marketing himself
• He doesn’t keep his own marketing up-to-date
• He’s not particularly good with details
• He doesn’t have much sensitivity to image or brand
• If he’s this sloppy in his marketing, what else suffers?

Ouch! If you think the “stupid marketing” label is too harsh, consider this: the printer spent time and money to deliver a very negative message about his capability, image and brand to a large portion of his customer base. More to the point...he paid to drive away his existing customers! What do you call that?

We make this point intentionally edgy because we continue to see print shop owners doing this. But, now the good news!

We also see many other businesses doing exactly the same thing.

If your print shop does website design, you may have just learned a new trick for identifying and selling website opportunities.

Do You Turn Away VDP Customers?

What do you do when your best customer calls to say that they want to run a direct mail campaign for six months with 50,000 pieces per week and full-blown variable data printing? If you already do VDP on a regular basis, you probably make sure the office door is closed for starters. Then, you jump out of the chair to start doing your best version of the I-scored-a-touchdown happy-dance while spiking your desk stapler (since you have neither a football nor a helmet handy ). Then you gather up your graphic designer, programmer, mailing services manager, production specialist and data expert. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom. Hallelujah!  What? You don’t do VDP?

Surely, you don’t want to turn away your best customer. You may never see him again. Then, your stapler would end up on the floor for a very different reason.

Printers face similar challenges constantly. For example, when a customer wants a print job that requires die-cutting, what do you do? Send him somewhere else? Not likely. You do the job and outsource the die-cutting, right? How about booklets? You probably do the same thing: you print the job and outsource the booklet-making. Addressing and mailing? Yep - same thing. Maybe you can even do some of these in-house. But, variable data printing?

To satisfy your customer, you could outsource the whole job to a printer who can handle VDP (and will insist on printing the job), but where does that leave you? Sure, you’ll make some money on the job, but you may find yourself with a queasy feeling about the whole arrangement. If your customer realizes that you’re just a middleman, you might need a really good story about the value that you add to the effort. Or, you can take charge of the project.

Why not use the same technique you use to handle the die-cutting and booklet-making ...outsource the part of the job you don’t do in-house? Outsource the VDP print file creation, the data work or even the address presorting. You do the graphics work and the printing, and perhaps the coating, mailing and other work. This way, you really are doing the VDP job (or, at least, the majority of it) and you’re adding nearly all of the value to the job. More work in-house? You get that, too.

Don’t turn away your best customer, or any customer, because they want variable data printing. Just know that when the opportunity presents itself, we’re here to handle your VDP print file-related work. When that phone call comes, be ready to start dancing and looking for a new stapler.

While you’re at it, you might want to make sure that your customers know that you do VDP. Notice that we didn’t use the “S” word...selling ( not stapler). Why not simply let customers know they can come to you for VDP. You might be surprised at the response.

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How to Design VDP (Part 2) - Dealing with the Dreaded Data

Without data, variable data printing is non-variable (static) printing. As much as you might not like dealing with customer data, it’s here to stay and will only continue to grow in importance in business and marketing. Get used to it. With respect to VDP, it’s data, and how it’s used, that make all the difference. With those words of advice, let’s take a look at some common problems with data and some ways to make it work better for you and your customer.

Have you ever had customers claim they don’t have any data. Really? Don’t they know who their potential and current customers are? It’s pretty hard to imagine that they don’t have an email list or billing records. The story about not having any data sometimes a smokescreen for not wanting whatever you’re selling. Customers usually have lots of data…they just forgot, never knew about it or don’t want to be bothered collecting it. Places that customers can find data include CRMs (Customer Relationship Management software), accounting, shipping and billing systems, email communications, old computers, paper invoices, printouts and lists, third-party lists, public records and all of the resources available on the internet. Even if the customer has no interest in VDP, managing his/her marketing database can be a good way to keep him engaged with you.

Once you have data, the next question is, “Is it any good?” While this is really the customers’ responsibility (i.e. garbage in, garbage out), you want to be aware of potential data quality issues. Is it timely, or is it old? Is it complete, or are there “holes” in the information? Does it look like different data sets were combined randomly or does it look consistent? Is it valid - does it seem to make sense or do some phone numbers have too few digits? Lastly, is the data valid (i.e. correct or accurate)? If the data is a mail list, the NCOA process validates names, addresses and formatting, to an extent, but cannot validate other parts of the data (e.g. demographics).

Many printers get anxious when they receive customer data in formats such as “.dbf” (dBase), “.mdb” (Microsoft Access), “.tab” (tab separated values) and so forth. There’s no need to panic. If you can’t or don’t want to deal with data in unfamiliar formats, there are plenty of people who will do it for you…including us. If you outsource the data management, don’t try to convert it, especially not to or through spreadsheet software, like MS Excel. Spreadsheets try to read and format everything as a number. This can cause problems such as having leading “zeros” in zip codes disappear. All data will ultimately be converted to text form for use in VDP and mail presort software.

Having pointed out the above issues regarding data, dare we now talk about the fantastic things you can do with data and VDP? With a little creativity, even the most basic mailing list provides ample opportunity to design VDP pieces that connect with, provide value for and motivate recipients.

From a basic mailing list, first names can be used to discern the gender of the recipients with a high degree of accuracy. This enables you to target messages or offers much more effectively. Perhaps it’s sporty wheels for the men or kitchen remodeling for the women (Sexist? Nope. That’s market segmentation). With an address, you can point recipients to their closest retail store or tell them who their sales or service representative is. This is the real advantage of VDP…by using data to deliver very engaging messages (and images) to a targeted audience.

If you want to be seen as a marketing solutions provider rather than a copy shop, you have to get used to dealing with customer data in whatever way works best for you. More and more of your customers will come to recognize the value and power of their data. You will look like a superstar if you are ready to help them and have solutions available when this happens.

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How to Design VDP: Sand, Sky & Sports Cars



Skewed Basic Text



Last week, we were taken aback somewhat when we recieved numerous requests for samples of variable data printing jobs. Aren’t there hundreds and hundreds of samples of VDP on websites like FusionPro or Direct Smile? There are names written in the sand, in the sky and on sports cars, just for starters. We even provide links to more than 20 websites with samples and VDP ideas. So, exactly what types of samples were we expected to produce?

Then, it occurred to us that rather than providing samples of VDP, it might actually be better to explain how one goes about designing a VDP piece. Something along the lines of - “Give a person a VDP sample and you have solved today’s issue. Teach a person how to create VDP and he/she can be making and selling it!” Given that thought, we start here a multi-part blog to explain how we look at designing VDP pieces.

Sand, Sky & Sports Cars



As you look through the array of Expressions (FusionPro) and Smilys (Direct Smile), you need to be able to recognize how the various text effects are created. There are three basic techniques used in virtually all VDP jobs: basic text, font fill and 3D font effects.

The basic text technique is just that - a plain TTF font text placed on top of an image. This is the simplest and most common technique used. A slightly advanced version of the basic text technique is to shape and skew the properties of the text placeholder so the flat text appears to follow the contours of an object in the underlying image. This simple technique can have very stunning results, as the text appears to be on almost any type of object such as cups, airplanes, footballs, skin, paper, sports cars, etc.

Font Fill

The most recognized example of the font fill technique is probably the name spelled out in puffy clouds. This technique also uses standard TTF fonts but in a slightly different way. The font is applied transparently in a layer over the image. Small GIFs or other image types are used as the fill for the transparent font. If you want the text to appear to be formed by clouds, you have the font automatically filled with your collection of cloud images. If you want flying ducks, fill the font with flying duck images. You can control the density and other characteristics of the fill to achieve the desired effect. This technique allows for some interesting and some unusual designs. Round, amorphous fill images (e.g. clouds, diamonds, water drops) can make for a natural looking image. Fill images with an obvious orientation (e.g. animals, people, etc.) often look surreal because the repetition of the fill images becomes more obvious. The font fill technique is also relatively simple if you have the right fill images.

Handwriting 3D Effect

3D font effects are one of the biggest challenges in VDP design. A name written in the sand is the most common example of this technique, and it is too often done very poorly. What makes this effect so difficult is that each text character requires its own texture, depth and shadowing. When using a custom background image, it is often necessary to generate a unique character set where each character is a separate image. Multiple character sets are desirable when the text is supposed to be handwritten so that repeating characters are not exactly the same (e.g. so the n’s and a’s in “Hannah” would be slightly different). Obviously, creating custom character sets is quite time consuming and not something to be offered to customers without considering the time involved.

3D Effect with "Extruded" Text

When using 3D font effects with a standard (non-handwritten) font, things get a bit easier. Font extrusion tools can create some very nice effects, although you will still have to do some amount of tweaking to get the right look.

What Now?

Practice! Now that you know about the different types of text effects, examine a variety of VDP until you can readily recognize how the effects were created. This will help demystify a substantial portion of VDP design work. It also makes it easier to visualize options for creating text effects as we go forward with the design process.

We want to thank the CPrint staff for letting us participate in their Annual Production Conference last week. That’s where all the questions came from. It was a very educational event and a great group of people. We already make the VDP process as easy as it can be. The next challenge is to provide the tools to make selling VDP easier. Thanks for the inspiration.

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Using Rubber Chickens Can Improve Your VDP Jobs



Rubber Chicken



An interesting read on marketing tactics is Jon Spoelstra’s, Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts! Jon details his experiences as a marketer for a variety of professional sports teams and provides plenty of examples of marketing outrageously. In one instance, renewals by season ticketholders for a pro basketball team were lagging. His technique for fixing the problem was to launch rubber chickens at those season ticketholders that were slow to renew.

We’ll explain how you can use the “rubber chicken” concept to jazz up your VDP projects.

Jon bought hundreds of the classic plucked rubber chicken, tied his message to a foot on each one and sent them in large, FedEx tubes normally used for drawings. If nothing else, the shear curiosity factor of receiving a mailing tube was enough to get the package opened…only to reveal a rubber chicken. The tag on the foot warned, “Don’t fowl out!”, and the accompanying material made a compelling offer for the ticketholder to sign up right away. The really creative campaign was a complete success.

Didn’t that cost a lot? Yes. However, Jon is also a fanatic about ROI. The thousands of dollars spent on the rubber chicken campaign paled in comparison to the revenue generated by the ticket sales. Nevertheless, we’ll leave the discussion about ROI for another blog to focus on outrageous marketing and variable data printing.

Another Rubber Chicken

The image on the left is one that we used in some of our own direct mail campaigns. Is it outrageous? Maybe. Provocative? Perhaps. Attention-getting? You bet. Did it get our message get read? Absolutely! In fact, we did an A/B test with the other piece being a dramatic shot of a snowboarder and some impressive “name-in-the-clouds” VDP text effects. You can probably guess how the test turned out. Writing on a woman’s stomach turned out to be our rubber chicken.

If you do go down the path of marketing outrageously, there is the potential for blow back. Our VDP girl campaign earned us an irate phone call from an older gentleman who was highly offended that his name appeared on the young lady’s stomach. He yelled something about it being evil at least five or six times. We apologized profusely and promised never to send him any more pornography (or anything else, for that matter). Besides that one complaint, we received plenty of kudos and inquiries from recipients…many of them from women. It certainly helped that our very creative (but sensible, conservative and female) graphic designer added the woman's perspective to things.

We see lots and lots of VDP jobs and, frankly, the majority of them seem more like rotten eggs rather than rubber chickens. Boring! It appears that many marketers have yet to recognize the creative and attention-getting potential of VDP. So, having firmly planted foot-in-mouth, we put together some suggestions for moving a little closer to the outrageous with VDP:

Ÿ Use a dramatic image that makes the piece stand out from the rest of the mail (a scantily clad woman is not necessary, however recipients are much more likely to be attracted to images of people or familiar objects or locations)

Ÿ Find a clever or unusual away to include the text with (or on) the image

Ÿ Make sure that the personalization stands out (it has less value if it can be easily overlooked or is hard to recognize)

Ÿ Also, make certain that everything looks clean and as natural as possible (it is easy to end up with weird-looking effects that can leave the wrong impression)

Ÿ Personalize with a simple message that compels the recipient to want to know why they got the piece

Ÿ You don’t always have to spell out the purpose or sender on the front of the piece (a bit of mystery can heighten interest to read the message on the back)

Ÿ Consider adding some additional personalization to the message on the back - even something as simple as versioning for gender, age, interest, political issue, etc. that connects with the recipient

Help your customers find their own rubber chicken and they may never think of you again as just a printer. For that matter, create a rubber chicken to launch at your own customers.

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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

How to Sell Variable Data Printing with Confidence

Confidence is critical to selling anything. Just as animals can sense fear, customers are quick to perceive a lack of confidence on the part of a salesperson. Once this happens, customers’ apprehension levels increase and the sales process rapidly deteriorates. Offering and executing variable data printing (VDP) jobs, while turning a profit, can have so many uncertainties that exuding confidence is a challenge –

• Can I deal with the customer’s data efficiently?
• What if I bring up VDP job and can’t deliver what the customer ultimately wants?
• Will he want a special effect or something else I can’t do in-house?
• Are my staff and software up to the challenge?
• How many hours will all the data and file work take?
• Where do I go if I have a problem with some part of this job?

Any or all of these questions can certainly be confidence-busters. If it’s not obvious, the questions all boil down to a simple point: how do I create the VDP print files and how much will they cost? If the answers to all of these questions were clear and simple, the confidence in selling VDP would be much higher. 

 

Printers commonly outsource all sorts of work such as data cleansing and mail presorting. Why? They do it because they can’t do the work in-house or they can get it done cheaper/better/faster by outsourcing it. Why not outsource the VDP print file-related work, or, at least, all of the parts that raise questions and reduce confidence? 

Even print shops regularly selling and printing VDP jobs can have issues: a customer wants a tough special effect, the in-house is out for a week or there’s just too much work to do. Again, outsourcing would be the answer to keep things going.

Where do you find this outsourced VDP resource? You’re already there.

CPrint Surprises

Being a new Premiere Partner for CPrint International Affiliates, we sent our CTO, Dave, to their Annual Sales Conference outside of Chicago last month. Of course, we are delighted to be working with all of the CPrint folks.

The first surprise about this event is that we cannot keep Dave from reminding us how impressed he was with all of the presentations. As a former print shop owner, it’s hard to impress Dave on print shop-related topics. Therefore, our hats are off to CPrint on that count. The rest of us at DFS had the additional surprise that someone could get Dave into a coat and tie.

The second surprise came the day after the conference. A CPrint Affiliate contacted us to say he had just “lost” his VDP person and needed some help. Happily, we had a new customer and the Affiliate got more VDP capability than he previously had while not feeling pressured to find a new VDP person immediately.

Sweet CPrint surprises!

Skills Needed for VDP

For the average trade printer, there has been no such thing as “easy VDP”. If there is any doubt about this, see the 109-page paper from College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Designing for Digital: Skill Sets Needed to Design for Variable Data*.

The paper's author, Jessica Jordan, puts it this way,

“Eventually, designers will need to be familiar with the skills of a marketer, programmer, database analyst, and printer. The following list of skill sets for designers of VDP has been identified ...

• Information, knowledge, and experience in VDP
• Networking and system integration skills
• Business and marketing awareness
• Image, color management, and asset management skills
• Text manipulation and process skills
• Knowledge of programming skills
• Database administration
• Proper preparation and data-mining skills
• General design skills
• Proper layout for addressing VDP pieces
• Proper coding being placed along mailing address
• USPS rules and mailing penalties
• Cross-media development skills

In summary, …one possible reason for the delay in growth for VDP, was that designers do not have adequate training or skills needed for VDP.”

The paper’s conclusions are on the mark. However, developing or staffing for all of these skills is not practical for the average print shop. The paper focuses on how printers acquire these skills in-house but does not address the potential of outsourcing the work needed to create VDP print files for in-house printing.

Ta-Da!

*The full paper is available here: https://ritdml.rit.edu/bitstream/handle/1850/10895/35274_pdf_707B6614-DF7A-11DE-A4BD-8F409E1A67F9.pdf?sequence=1