Data Management Delivers Huge Cost Savings

Reduce your customer’s job cost by $10,000 and you’re certain to get some kudos. If $10,000 cuts the job cost in half, you’re likely to have that customer’s business for a long, long time. It’s unlikely, however, that you’re going to achieve such huge savings without doing something differently such as using the customer’s data more efficiently and effectively. We’ve helped lots of print shops deliver dramatic savings to customers (and higher profits for themselves). You’ll see in the following example how simple and straightforward it is.

Say you have a hypothetical customer who manages 100 offices (stores, outlets, salespeople or whatever). Your hypothetical customer wants to announce a special offer (sale, discount, opportunity or whatever) to the top 100 customers for each the 100 offices. The offer is exactly the same for all customers and is to be made via direct mail postcards with each local offices’ return address on the postcards.

There are two basic ways to accomplish this

1)  Your hypothetical customer sends text and artwork so each office can have postcards printed and mailed to its’ top 100 customers (literally, 100 static postcard mailing jobs), or

2)  You use some data management and a little VDP to do the entire mailing as a single job.

A simple “back of the cocktail napkin” estimate suggests that option 1) would have a total cost to your hypothetical customer of approximately $20,000 or $200 for each of the 100 offices. We estimate the $200 this way. Postage for the one hundred 6” x 9”postcards is almost $50. Each office likely spends at least $50 (one hour or more) in time to manage the job and get material, artwork and its mailing list to the local print shop. The local print shop would have to set up the artwork and print file (at least adding the return address), printing, cutting, addressing, putting postage on and mailing the 100 postcards. We guesstimate the print shop would charge at least $1 per postcard or $100. The price tag for your hypothetical customer ends up at $20,000 ($50 postage + $50 office time + $100 print & mail cost times 100 offices).

Alternatively, you might do the same (or better) job for $10,000 or less. Here’s how…

Your hypothetical customer gives you the 100 mailing lists. You combine them into a single, clean and formatted list of 10,000 addresses pre-sorted for a Standard mailing. You set up your artwork and do a simple VDP merge that applies the various return and mailing addresses. Print, cut, sort and mail the 10,000 postcards. We estimate that costs: 

$2,800 in postage (saving $2,000 for presorted Standard vs First Class)
$1,500 ($15 worth of time per office) to have the 100 mailing lists emailed to your hypothetical customer, and
$700* for data management work (merging, cleansing formatting & presorting).

That leaves $5,000 of our $10,000 estimated cost for digital printing, cutting, sorting and mailing the 10,000 postcards. Besides a substantial cost reduction, your hypothetical customer will also know that all the postcards were mailed (or which didn’t) and on what date. There won’t be any need to check up on 100 different offices for status updates. 

This not-so-hypothetical example demonstrates the job cost savings potential of combining data or mailing lists. There’s no magic or mystery. It’s simply taking advantage of economies of scale while also avoiding multiple “per job” or minimum costs. While you'll probably never be faced with a hundred mailing lists, even combining a half dozen lists can yield cost savings of 40 to 50% on some jobs.

Keep your eyes (and mind) open.  Opportunities for significant cost savings with data or mail list combining are actually fairly common but too often overlooked. Of course, if you need help with data management, VDP print files or optimizing a data-combination job, just give us a call.

* If this seems like a lot, consider how many combinations and permutations of formatting, arrangement, font, case, file type, etc. you can get when 100 people independently prepare their own mailing lists. While not technically challenging, it requires time and care to conform that many lists.

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

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.

USPS = VDP

Maybe you missed the memo. Just in case, we’ll give you the message again:

"You can’t do variable data printing (VDP) unless you do mailing in-house! No mailing…no VDP!"

It should be obvious. Let’s say you use VDP to print a thousand postcards personalized with the recipients’ first names and the data and the amount of their last donation to the charity sending the postcards. How do you now put mailing addresses on those postcards after you’ve printed them? Send the postcards and the mailing list to the mail house and have them do it? Wrong! You don’t have a way to match each personalized postcard to right correct mailing address. It’s impossible to apply addresses to personalized pieces after they’ve been printed unless it’s done manually. 

When you use VDP to personalize printed pieces, the mailing addresses must be included on the pieces at the time the print files are created. In this way, the personalized pieces come out with the mailing addresses already on them. There’s no way to make a mistake addressing and no need to have the pieces addressed later. However, you end up with postcards ready to be mailed. What do you do?

Why not just mail them?

If the postcards have a mailing permit indicated on them, it’s near certainty someone has created a set of documentation for presentation at the Post Office to mail the postcards. All you need to do is to put the pieces in the proper mailing containers – available free at your local USPS location.

The bottom line…there’s no point in even considering doing variable data printing until you’ve figured out how to do VDP addressing and in-house mailing. Personalized pieces have to be accurately delivered to recipients and this is nearly always done via direct mail. The few cases of VDP that don’t require mailing are limited to things such as sequentially numbered forms, event tickets or giveaway pieces with tracking numbers or URLs.

When you're ready to do your in-house mailing and move on to VDP...give us a call. We're the experts at helping digital print shops grow.

Eaten by the Mail House

Charles Darwin purportedly said, “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” We see Darwinian adaptation in the business world all around us: drug stores selling groceries and grocery stores with pharmacies, car washes doing oil changes and oil change shops washing cars and on and on. It’s move and counter-move with competitors, rather than nature, defining the environment.

Mail Houses Turn Print Shop

With more mail houses going into the retail printing business, what will we see the print shops do…start mailing themselves, stop selling any mailing jobs or offering breakfast burritos with every print job? We know many print shop owners with strategies to avoid becoming a much smaller version of Kodak. The bankruptcy of Kodak (who developed the first digital camera in 1975) points out the consequences of not adapting - of ignoring competitors’ moves - of being oblivious to a changing environment.

One print shop owner recently sent us a very succinct email explaining his version of adapting: “You guys have been very helpful with getting us up to speed on mailing, a totally new activity for us. Prior to now, we have been outsourcing the mailing function. Since the mailing houses are becoming printers, though, we have to become mailers.” That’s simple enough. If the mail shops are going to compete for printing work, he is not going to help them by identifying his customers to them or sending them mailing business.

Good or Bad?

The revelation that the mail house has turned competitor may actually be a blessing rather than a harsh reality. We know numerous print shops that keep paying outrageous prices to mail houses for even the simplest postcard mailing jobs. Other print shops pay more reasonable prices but find it takes three, four or more days for their jobs to be mailed (without paying a premium for expedited service). High costs and/or slow service put the print shops in a less-than-competitive position by over which they have no control. How do maintain or grow business in this type of situation?

So, the mail houses are acting in a predatory fashion by going into the printing business, right? Absolutely...from the print shops' perspective! The mail houses' are acting for their survival just as a leopard that chases down and devours a baby gazelle. Leopards have to eat. Mail houses have to adapt to a slow market and a decreasing number of print shop customers. What does the print shop gazelles do?

One thing you never see on the nature programs is a gazelle standing still while the leopard bears down on it. Nope. Gazelles run like hell to keep from being eaten. Are print shop owners placidly waiting to be eaten by the mail houses or running like hell? We see a growing number of print shop owners who recognize the threat and how they can use VDP to do their mailings in-house. Unfortunately, however, there are also many waiting for the leopard to strike.

Even if you're not in danger of being eaten, you could benefit from doing your own addressing and mailing. That's what our new EZ-VDP Addressing service enables you to do.

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