Dirty Little Secrets about Variable Data Printing

Secret #1 – 120 Billion

More than 120,000,000,000 pieces are printed in the U.S. each year using VDP. That’s about 400 pieces for every man, woman and child every year! What percentage of those do you produce?

Secret #2 - Software

Variable data printing requires a dozen pieces of software, or more. How many of these do you have and how many can you use?

Most VDP programs are add-on modules to graphics software such as Adobe Creative Suite. Several additional modules for special effects and imposing may also be required.

Fixing up data to for use in VDP may require six, eight or more pieces of software to:

• Open and convert
• Cleanse and de-dupe
• Format and test
• Correct upper/lower case, abbreviations, suffixes, prefixes, etc.
• Sort and analyze
• Enhance

Finally, address list presorting, NCOA, CASS, etc. requires at least one or two pieces of software.

Secret #3 - Presorting

The annual renewal for address list presorting and processing software can cost $3,000 or more. That requires a lot of mailing work to justify the cost when you include the cost of the time spent learning and using the software.

EDDM has reduced the amount of presorted direct mail work in many areas.

Secret #4 – Crossing Over

VDP isn’t just for printing or making fancy images…it’s a crossover technology between print and electronic media. The same data-driven processes used to create VDP print files can also create electronic documents such as personalized PDFs for emailing (also personalized). Moreover, VDP can be used to add security elements to printed or electronic documents, tickets and events.

Secret #5 - Easy

Any digital print shop can easily be in the VDP business without buying or learning any software. Outsourcing mailing list processing eliminates the annual renewal expense. Similarly, the creation of printer-ready VDP print files can be outsourced…leaving the print shop owner with nothing to do but print and deliver VDP jobs.

See how you can easily include new high-value products and services into your business…

www.ez-vdp.com or www.printshopmarketing.com

Print Shop Rescue

If you haven’t seen it, Bar Rescue on the Spike channel provides a great business lesson for print shop owners. All the rescued bars are hemorrhaging huge amounts of cash and are within months of failure because the owners did one thing…they forgot to provide value and satisfaction to their customers.

Value and satisfaction are ever-changing qualities. They change because customers change, products change, technologies change, expectations change…lots of things change. To be successful, businesses must change. Bars and print shops must change in order to continue delivering the value and satisfaction customers demand

In Bar Rescue, you’ll see that regardless how cheap the liquor may be (value), few customers want to frequent a bar that smells like a urinal and is full of jerks and morons (satisfaction)…especially if those jerks and morons are running the bar. We aren’t suggesting print shop owners might be jerks or morons or smell like a… no, we would say anything like that.

We suggest, however, print shop owners assess whether they are providing value and satisfaction to their customers. If the business bank account isn’t full, that might be a sign it’s time for self-assessment. Many small and quick printers are struggling these days…and in need of a “print shop” rescue.

National and online competitors (e.g. Staples, Vistaprint and UPS Stores) have redefined the print market by substantially raising the bar for value and satisfaction. Prices for print jobs look like paper being sold by the pound. Tons of free templates, 24/7 online ordering, convenient store locations and printing-while-you-wait provide extremely satisfying experiences that are hard for small and quick printers to replicate.

Just as in Bar Rescue, print shop owners need to look at their customers and competitors and decide how to provide value and satisfaction to customers better than the competition. This frequently means having a slightly different focus to avoid head-to-head competition that would be costly or impossible to win. Customers have varying views and expectations of value and satisfaction…one likes beers and burgers while another likes martini’s and gourmet stuff. Some print customers want cheap, cheap printing while others want advice, ideas and solutions.

In the fantasy Print Shop Rescue, the star of the program yells at the print shop owner to start offering valuable, print-related products and services that the competitors don’t offer. The print

shop owner ends up being pounded verbally into a compliant, quivering mass. At this point, the star brings in all the professionals to train the print shop owner and the staff how to have a winning business.

We’re professionals and we don't yell (most of the time)…Print Shop Marketing & EZ-VDP services

Kicking the **** Out of Salespeople

Pity the print salesperson…when they regularly get the [insert expletive] kicked out of them by their supposed customers. How anyone can do this on a daily basis is something of a mystery.

Consider this scenario…

Before the salesperson shows up, customers have been all over internet collecting information from and being influenced by online and other print providers. When the print salesperson walks in, the discussion naturally devolves into how the salesperson can beat whatever the online providers offer: options, alternatives, pricing, delivery, free artwork, service 24/7, etc., etc. etc. When telling the customer that the price is higher, the delivery is longer, no one answers at 3AM, no to this and no to that, the salesperson may feel like the Penguin encountering Batman …POW!! ...BOFF!! ...WHACK!! ...BONK!! It’s painful to even imagine this situation.

A sure way for the salesperson to avoid this is type of whoopin’ is to focus on those areas that should be important to customers such as: effectiveness, focus, reach, ROI, etc. Customers won’t find this type information on the internet nor find most competitors ready to discuss such things…vastly reducing the potential for a beat down. If there's no interest in non-price subjects, then there's probably no sale to be had anyway.

The salesperson can test the waters and set a positive tone by opening with a few questions such as:

• Is your mailing list complete or are there contacts not included (because the customer couldn’t combine all his/her lists)? 
• Can we improve the response by segmenting the recipients and messages? 
• How could we increase the value of your message for the recipient? 
• Would there be value in tracking responses by location, gender or some other demographic? 

Cool! Right? However, there’s one huge potential problem with this approach…the salesperson has to be able to provide a solution should the customer answer “Yes” to any of these questions…or suffer some serious customer-driven wrath.

Actually, there is no problem as long as the salesperson has a friend…we’re your friend.

Printers Swimming in a Red Ocean

In the business world, spending all your energy selling and competing against the same products and services offered by everyone else is called a “red ocean” strategy (it's not really a strategy anyone would choose). Red…the color of the financial ink or something else red in the waters of the marketplace. Red…because it’s a zero-sum game - your financial success comes as a result of another’s financial loss - or vice versa. Red oceans are full of sharks. Can you hear something like rapidly pulsing beat from Jaws in the background? We’ll give you the shark repellant later.

The typical smaller print shop or quick printer swims in a red ocean populated by an ever-increasing number of sharks. If you don’t recognize the sharks, here’s a partial list of everyone wanting some or all of your customers’ printing business:

• Office supply stores,
• Mailing stores,
• On-line print providers,
• The new print shop or franchise across town,
• Local and national marketing agencies…and more

And, the red ocean concept applies to more than ordinary printing. There are sharks for wide format printing, banners, signs, web sites, promotional items, door hangers, email stuff, etc. It’s usually good business to be different from the competition, however in a red ocean, it’s hard to…have the lowest price, the fastest delivery, the most convenient locations or hours, the broadest or best set of offerings…it’s hard to be the best at anything.

The solution is to find unique and valuable products…stuff your customers want but few or no people offer. Then, you can spend your energy growing your market…that you monopolize…rather than fighting with the sharks. Moreover, if your unique and valuable product happens to tie into printing or communications, then a potentially large portion of your red ocean may turn a more attractive color…blue!

Now, for your shark repellant - data! Most of your sharks can’t do data!

Think about it - data is at the heart of all of your customers’ communications… data makes your customers’ communications possible…data makes your customers’ communications valuable…data is what your customers want to get from their communications…data…data…data! Data ties into many types of printing and virtually all types of communications. Data can take you to a blue ocean!

Call us if you need swimming lessons.

Frogs That Print

Here’s the theory: typical print shop owners are like frogs. The question is whether that’s a flat, sun-bleached road-killed frog, a steamy hard-boiled frog or a happy, thriving frog. What type of frog are you?

Before we get to the frog thing, we need to take a simple look at the progression of print shop printing: 

• Thirty years ago everyone did only offset printing,
• Twenty years ago, some printers started digital printing, but it was still mostly offset,
• Ten years ago, many printers were doing offset and digital - and many “digital only” quick printers were popping up,
• Now, more and more print shops are dumping their offset equipment and outsourcing their offset printing…keeping the digital printing in-house

Of course, there are always exceptions, but you get the general idea. There's no question that digital printing is overtaking offset printing at an accelerating rate. There’s no question that the face (and location) of the printing competition is rapidly morphing. In the “offset days”, printers could identify virtually all of their competitors. The internet and the “digital” explosion, however, have made the competitive environment much broader and more complex: on-line print providers, office supply stores, mail houses and letter shops, mailing stores, the post office, integrated marketers, quick print shops, and even some customers (doing their own digital printing).

What kind of frog are you?

Flat, sun-bleached road-killed frogs - These are print shop owners offering only (or mainly) offset printing. Running back-and-forth across the highway to chase a shrinking number of offset opportunities, it’s only a matter of time until…splat…offset printing becomes a money-losing proposition (if it isn’t already).  

Steamy hard-boiled frogs - These are digital printers offering only static printing. They sit contentedly in their pan of water…but, they don’t see that the competition has set the burner on “high”. They adjust to the increasing water temperature until one day they find themselves financially boiled.

Happy, thriving frogs - These are digital printers that recognize the result of sitting in water racing to a boil. They realize customers increasingly need and use data to communicate...and to print those communications. They understand that they can get out of the hot water, and into a happier place, by making data and communication easier, more efficient and more profitable for customers. 

OK. Perhaps it’s a silly analogy. We apologize if you don’t like being compared to a frog, but here' the reality check:

• Anybody can have a digital press these days
• The barriers to digital printing are already very low and falling
• Do you sit in boiling water or are you in a happy data-digital place?
• Do web sites, banners, promotional items or email services put much work through your digital press?

See how we can help you out of hot water.

Move Beyond Order Taking

When you go the computer store…yes, to buy a new computer…do you want to be waited on by the clerk who says:

Clerk #1 “Tell me which box of stuff you want me to drag out of the store room”, or

Clerk #2 “Tell me what your needs are and I’ll tell you what might be the best choices”?

Even if you are certain what computer model you want, you might happily engage clerk #2 to affirm your choice and check whether you might have overlooked something.

Your customers would probably rather deal with someone like clerk #2 when it comes to printing as well. They likely have a good idea of what they want. However, they might like affirmation that they are making the best choice for the purpose and the price. It’s not a matter of telling them what to do or how to do it, it’s a matter of building confidence and credibility for you. But how?

When the opportunity permits, why not simply offer some simple education or information about different printing concepts? Your points, of course, will all relate to services you provide. Even if the customer has no immediate need, you have accomplished two things: 1) increased your credibility (and the customer’s confidence) and 2) planted the seeds for future opportunities.

Consider the following educational points: 

• Increasing document security through printing
• Delivering more focused messages
• Expanding address lists
• Using gender or demographic marketing
• Getting more response
• Personalizing a business for customers

The easiest and fastest way to convey the points may be to give the customer a sample of a printed piece that demonstrates your point. Visual aids are always good, and leaving the piece creates a reminder.

Most likely, your competition isn’t talking or can’t talk to your customers about these types of things. This gives you the opportunity to be the de facto expert for your customers…and more like clerk #2. There’s a fair chance your customer may never find the need for any of these techniques. However, when a question about printing comes up, the customer is more likely to count on you for an answer.

Isn’t that the way you want it?

If you need more information on how to be more than an order taker, give us a call. We’re glad to help.

Managing Customer Deliverability Expectations

You have a mailing list in hand that you know or expect to be old. You expect the undeliverable rate will be high. You know your customer will freak out when 20% or more of the pieces are returned. What can you do? Your options include:

• Use Standard Mail (if possible) so no undeliverable pieces are returned and the customer never knows how many pieces aren’t delivered,
• Manually verify all the names and addresses (good luck!), or
• Discuss the likely results with the customer.

We recommend the last option. Getting a big batch of mail pieces returned does have an upside, however you better make sure your customer understands this before it happens.

First, make sure the customer actually wants a targeted mailing list to use in the not-too-distant future. If not, perhaps you want to discuss EDDM or other options. If the goal is to have a targeted mailing list, then a discussion about cleansing the old list is in order.

You can offer to NCOA the old list to pick up address changes back to 48 months rather than the typical 18 months. This gets you a search of all the NCOA records available. It costs more and should improve deliverability by a few percentage points. However, it will not overcome the “exact match” privacy limitations of the NCOA process (see the previous blog Handling Lousy Mailing Lists).

You can discuss non-USPS address validation with your customer. This should identify more bad or changed addresses. However,there is no guarantee this will change the old list from lousy to great, or even good. The issue here is how you determine that the improvement in deliverability is cost effective.

Ultimately, the surest way to fix the old list is to do a mailing and take the hit on the inevitable un-deliverables. However, once this is done and the undeliverable addresses are scrubbed from the old mailing list, you have a much higher quality mailing list. The “new” mailing list will not be perfect but no mailing list is ever perfect. The use and maintenance of a mailing list is the only way to keep deliverable rates high.

You could save some money by mailing “cheap and dirty” piece. The undeliverables will never see it, however the targeted recipients who do receive it may end up with a poor impression of you. The cost savings of this approach may not be worth the long-term results.

A scrubbed mailing list has numerous benefits. First, and foremost, is the knowledge that a high percentage of the mailed pieces will reach the intended audience. Subsequent mailings (in weeks or a few months) might be sent at discounted postage rates with a high degree of confidence of good delivery rates. Alternating First Class and Standard mailings is a way minimize costs  while keeping the mailing list in good shape. With a good mailing list, you can also discuss a number of other options to help increase your customers’ response rates and business such as data enhancement and personalization with variable data printing.

When a customer hands you a lousy mailing list, look it as an opportunity to generate more business for yourself and your customer. The customer looks to you for your expertise in mailing and expects you to work magic. So, work your magic by managing expectations.