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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Are You a Redundant Printer?

We don’t mean redundant as in not needed. What we mean by "redundant printer" is one who needlessly prints the same piece twice. Redundancy can be funny (visualize belt and suspenders), it can be good or it can be a waste of time, effort and money. We’ll look at the ways redundancy can be good or funny and then let you decide if there is anything good or funny (or useful) about redundant printing.

You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish

Why do people talk about tuna fish? What’s a tuna if not a fish? No one talks about salmon fish or trout fish. This type of redundancy (called Pleonasm) has found its way into everyday usage. Here are a few others:

“…receive your free gift” - We hear this so often, we ignore the silliness of it. How can anything be a gift if it isn’t free?

“hot water heater” - If you have hot water, do you need to heat it more? Perhaps, it would be more precise to call it a cold water heater, or maybe just leave it at water heater.

There’s another type of linguistic redundancy described on the internet as RAS syndrome (or “Repetitive Acronym Syndrome” syndrome). Do you have RAS syndrome? If you are guilty of using any of the following terms, you definitely have it:

“ATM machine” - Automatic Teller Machine machine

“LCD display” - Liquid Crystal Display display

“Pin number” - Personal Identification Number number

“VDP printing” - Variable Data Printing printing (we know we have RAS)

"Please RSVP" - RSVP is French for répondez s'il vous plaît, or "respond if it pleases you". So, we have "Please respond if it pleases you". Maybe sticking with English acronyms would cut down on RAS.

The What Failed?

There are circumstances when redundancy is good or even critical. Commercial airplanes have redundant control systems to avoid becoming expensive falling objects should the primary controls fail. Hospitals have redundant electrical power supplies (such as backup generators) since doctors aren’t too good at operating in the dark. While those are cases of critical redundancy, sometimes redundancy is simply good. Like chocolate cake with chocolate frosting topped by “Death by Chocolate” ice cream type of good. Have you noticed that choco-holics seem to take perverse pleasure in being redundant?

Redundant Printing

Everyday, hundreds of printers use their digital presses to print postcards (or other self-mailers). They then take the already printed postcards (plus the overs) to a mail house to have someone else print addresses on them with an inkjet printer. Digital presses are certainly capable of printing addresses (better than an inkjet), and the printers’ click charge won’t increase due to printing addresses. Therefore, inkjet addressing qualifies as a type of redundant printing. Factor in all the extra handling, the paperwork, transportation, the hassle and so forth, and it’s hard to find anything funny or useful about this type of redundant printing.

How to Stop Being Redundant

Yes. We know exactly why this type of redundant printing occurs everyday... something about creating print files. We also have a solution that permits printers to print, cut and drop off their self-mailers at the post office - skipping the inkjet addressing and the mail house.

It’s the newest addition to our EZ-VDP^SM services…EZ-VDP^SM Addressing.

Designed for small self-mailer jobs, it eliminates the issues (and costs) involved with using a mail house for inkjet addressing. If your mail house has a minimum charge for inkjet addressing that's more than $40, you ought to take a look at this new service.

Read more about EZ-VDP^SM Addressing…

Finally, there is no need to point out our raging affliction from RAS syndrome. We simply refuse to stop using terms such as “VDP printing” and “VDP print files”.

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Cashing In on the VDP Bonanza of 2012

The predictions are that 2012 will be a very interesting year and one that promises a substantial upsurge in the demand for variable data printing. We have the Mayan apocalypse forecasted for December 21st (get those personalized Christmas cards out early!). The biblical numerologist, Harold Camping, who told us the world would end in 2011 has checked his math and now says the right date is October 21, 2012 (think mailings for those for pre-Armageddon specials). Even the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has issued preparedness guides in the event of a zombie outbreak (survival-related industries should be advertising big time). While there may be a huge spike in personalized thank-you-for-your-business (and farewell) mailings, the real bonanza in VDP work will come from all of the campaigning focused on November 6, 2012.

[Update - The first political job of 2012 hit our inbox on January 3. The recruiting piece for campaign volunteers with 7,000 pieces.]

To put this into perspective, we did some “cocktail napkin” analysis of election season spending. More than $6.2 billion was spent on electioneering and promoting various issues during 2008. Similar expenditures during 2012 are predicted to be at least 30% higher than 2008 and should easily top $8 billion. Doesn’t that make your head spin?

Data from the Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org) indicates that 2012 campaign printing expenditures (postage not included) have been running around 10% of total expenditures (see complete details here…). That suggests there will be more than one-half billion dollars in additional printing work available in 2012. And, some portion of that half billion will require variable data printing. How much? Well, we can’t say for sure.

Nevertheless, we do see some trends for direct mail for political and issue-oriented printing:

• Increasing use of VDP for addressing and/or personalization
• More targeted messaging through versioning
• Fewer pieces per mailing but increasing frequency of mailings
• Growing demand for turnaround times (mailed) less than 24 hours
• Increasing use of variable graphics

A common type of VDP political work is issue-demographic personalization. These pieces use a specific issue message and a demographic-appropriate image as the focal point. For example, Mary Smith indicates in a telephone poll that education is her primary concern. The campaign turns around and sends her a postcard (usually the next day) versioned with their message on education combined with a picture of school-aged children on the front.

Another popular use of VDP by political campaigns falls into a category we call “the issue du jour”. To capitalize on the revelation that candidate Joe Blow spit on the sidewalk as a young child, his opponents send out postcards as quickly as possible claiming that their candidates never spit. In these situations, the printer typically receives artwork, image files and anywhere between 500 and 15,000 addresses…and has to have the job in the mail the next day. VDP is frequently a convenient (and usually less expensive) way to get this type of work done.

VDP is used with GOTV (Get-Out-the-Vote) efforts to include geo-location information while fundraising messages often utilize personalized financial data to increase contributions.

What about the bug?

A union bug may be needed to secure certain political work but the requirement seems to be softening as the number of organizations and groups that are indifferent or prefer dealing with non-union shops is on the increase.

Political campaigns will continue to use mass mailings for broad branding and messaging however, 2012 should be a banner year for digital and variable data printing. If you’re ready to cash in on the 2012 VDP bonanza, good for you. If “variable” and “data” aren’t in your vocabulary, you may want to give us a call. In any event, here’s hoping that your zombie outbreaks are small ones and that you have a very profitable 2012.

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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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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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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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"I Love Lucy" and the Source of VDP Business

We are constantly asked, “Where can I find VDP business?” The questions tend to be couched in terms of the best type of business or industry to find VDP work. It’s a perfectly natural question since we deal with so many printers doing VDP across the country.

However, when we’ve looked at the types of jobs that have come through our shop, we find they’re all over the map, literally and figuratively: electioneering stuff, local and national retail/consumer stuff, all types of services, fund-raising, school district issues, insurance companies, clubs, associations, etc., etc., etc. There’s just no common denominator that jumps out…except one.

A few days ago, we were going through the same exercise to find the magic bullet for VDP business when one of our more nimble-minded colleagues announced that we may have been looking at things the wrong way. At that point, the rest of us had a collective I Love Lucy moment just like when Ricky would say to Lucy, “I will ‘splain it to you.” With all of our hair seeming to get redder and looks of skepticism all around, someone blurted out, “Start ‘splaining.” - just the way Lucy would mock Ricky’s heavy Cuban accent.

It turns out that there is no correlation that we could make between businesses or industries and volume of VDP work, but there is a strong connection between volume (frequency and job size)…and the source of the business. What we could easily see when we looked at the data a different way was:

- Printers getting work from marketing agencies (or ad agencies) had/have a much higher frequency of VDP work and higher average order sizes.

- When a printer begins to get work from an agency, the order frequency and size usually ramp up quickly.

- There are no identifiable business types or industries that dominate the VDP work originating from agencies.

- Much of the work appears to have been ongoing and the agencies are simply changing printers. [This might explain the rapid increase in work as an agency gains more confidence in a new printer.]

That’s some interesting ‘splaining, Ricky.

There may be more, but we can offer three possible explanations for these results. One might simply be that more people are recognizing the value of personalization. Another could be that agencies are becoming more comfortable promoting VDP as a means to differentiate their services. And, lastly, the sluggish economy might be forcing the agencies’ customers to look for ways to do more with less.

Draw your own conclusion about what the data means. We’ll just note that we do not ask about the source of anyone’s work, however it is often volunteered by our customers during discussions about their jobs.

L-u-u-u-cy!!!

Even Lucy might see that VDP work can come from sources where VDP work is ongoing - either marketing agencies or customers. We can confirm that price and performance have played a key role in some of our customers getting lots of work from marketing agencies. Our EZ-VDP services certainly provide advantages on both counts.

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Here's some original 'splainin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMj9Fm4SBq8&feature=related

Industrial-Strength Business

In our last blog, "R.I.P. Reps", we talked about the changes the internet has brought upon B2B marketing, particularly in the industrial sector. To round out this discussion, you should be aware of the one website that clearly dominates online industrial B2B marketing: GlobalSpec.com. If you’ve never heard of GlobalSpec, it might interest you to know that more than 4,000 of your competitors (or friends) have already listed their businesses (free) under “Commercial Printing Services”. There are many other printing-related categories where you can list your company in GlobalSpec.

Before you run off to check out GlobalSpec, you should note that you have to register to use the site. Just do it. With more than 6,500,000 registered users and thousands of advertisers, they can’t afford to do anything creepy with your information.

Industrial/B2B marketing is clearly different than B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing. B2B marketing is much more focused on generating and maintaining relationships while B2C marketing works on emotion or impulse.

Using personalization with variable data printing can be a way to generate and maintain relationships. While direct mail and VDP probably aren’t viable choices for the very large, trans-national OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), the fact is that there are many, many more small, local industrial businesses, distributors and resellers that service local or regional markets. You can find thousands of these smaller businesses in GlobalSpec.

If you offer any type of marketing solutions or websites to B2B companies, you should be familiar with GlobalSpec because your customers might know about it. If they don’t, then you can be a hero by telling them about it. Superficially, GlobalSpec may appear to be a gigantic industrial directory - it is, but it also much more. There are many very sophisticated marketing tools behind the curtain including broad syndication opportunities, online trade shows, on-demand events, highly subscribed e-newsletters, etc. If you wonder how companies with huge marketing budgets use the internet, just keep an eye out for new marketing tools appearing on GlobalSpec.

Lastly, GlobalSpec provides a great library of free marketing information, tools and tips. The focus is on the B2B segment, but much of it is readily relatable to B2C markets and businesses. Topics such as “Search Engine Marketing on a Small Budget” and “Top 10 Marketing Planning Mistakes” provide insight about the industrial and B2B marketing practices and trends as well as tips you can use in your own business. Look at the bottom of any page and click on “Advertise with us” to find this material.

Moving VDP and personalization to the industrial will certainly put you out front of the competition. We don’t guarantee instant results. We do guarantee, however, that if you never offer VDP to your B2B/industrial customers, they will never buy it from you.

Of course, VDP is always easiest when you use our EZ-VDP services.

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