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

Talk Data to Me

Don’t get this confused with the 1980 adult comedy, “Talk Dirty to Me”. 

You should consider talking “data” to your customers. The industry experts have finally started to address an issue we’ve identified for years…data and communications are inseparable.

Your customers can’t communicate with or keep track of their customers, donors, supporters, etc. without data. Customer data can be simple such as mailing, email and contact lists or more sophisticated such as CRMs, donor software or custom datasets.

Moreover, data tends to be dynamic. Contacts come and go. People make purchases, donations, inquiries, etc. At some point, all data needs to be cleansed, merged, de-duped, sorted, formatted, appended, enhanced or some or all of these.

Where do your customers go when they need help with their data? Many don’t go anywhere. They muddle along with poor data…with inefficient data…with some data they can’t use. You have customers wanting help with their data or ideas to use their data more effectively. Why don’t you help them?

Learn some basic data-related terminology and you’re ready to start talking about data with your customers. What type of data (e.g. mailing lists, CRMs, etc.) are they using? How do they expand and maintain their data? Who does that? How do they do it? Do they have any problems with their data? Are there things they want do but can’t? You get the idea.

What makes this so simple is that you let experts do the actual data work for you. Send the data and the customers’ requirements to the experts who use their expertise and software and send the improved data back to you. Have any questions about data, they have the answers. What’s more, there’s no software to buy or learn.

You’ll be surprised by some of the reactions you get when you starting talking about data with your customers. Some of your customers will have been waiting a long time to have that discussion. They’ll start by telling you all of the problems they have and what they want to do (or can’t do) with their data. In reality, what they are doing is explaining all of the opportunities they have for you. Don’t worry. You don’t have to answer any questions on the spot and you always have your experts backing you up.

Being a data solutions provider (DSP) immediately sets you apart from the competition. Customers will never again look at you as simply a print vendor. Data is integral to both print and electronic communications – broadening your business opportunities. Few, if any, of your competitors will offer data solutions because the vast majority of them can’t. 

When you’re ready to start talking data, give us a call…we’re your data experts.

www.printshopmarketing.com

www.ez-vdp.com

Talking Data

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