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.

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.