VDP Drives Cross-Media

CROSS-MEDIA services go hand-in-hand with digital printing and variable data. Two companies with lengthy digital printing experience, as well as two newer adopters, illustrate that point.
To be a cross-media company means bringing in IT expertise or training internally. It means convincing customers that the company is capable of services beyond print. And, above all, it means consultative selling and “walking the talk” with cross-media marketing campaigns that show customers the power of this approach.

Serge Grichmanoff, vice president of research and development at Avant Imaging & Information Management (AIIM), tells how in the early 1990s the company’s founders took the job of creating the Toronto Real Estate Board’s listing books from a 12-day process to four days plus a day for delivery by going digital. They gave digital cameras to key real estate people, wrote the software to collect the data and printed on a fleet of Xerox DocuTechs. “That was huge,” he says. The company still writes its own software for certain applications, primarily for data processing, CRM and Web order management. For variable data and personalized URLs (PURLs) they use Darwin, Bluestream and XMPie.

Mario and Frank Giorgio founded AIIM as a commercial printing establishment in 1990. Today, the 100-employee company, located just north of Toronto, offers 1- to 10-color offset printing and digital color and black-and-white output. Color digital presses include an HP Indigo 5000, a Xerox iGen3 and Xerox DocuColor 2060. Monochrome output is provided from various Xerox, Océ and Ricoh devices.

In addition to one-stop commercial services, AIIM offers database management, analytic services and e-mail marketing. Through aiim•Connect, the company’s Web-to-print portal, customers can access a suite of Internet-based workflow management tools. These include online template composition, digital asset management and more.

Grichmanoff says their real entry into color variable data marketing programs came in 2005 when they installed the iGen3 press. The 5000 followed in 2006. “The key thing for success is to gather the right resources and the right people,” he says. Market research the company did at the time also led to stepped-up customer contact. “With all the work we had done with our customers and our slick digital infrastructure, we thought they would identify us in our survey as leaders in the digital marketing space” Grichmanoff recalls. “Instead, we discovered that people viewed us as a trade printer. It was a rude awakening and led us to a path of re-inventing our marketing approach.”

Two years ago, the company joined the Association for the Advancement of Relationship Marketing and the Canadian Direct Marketing Association. AIIM is working to have everyone in the company receive CRM training. What’s more, Grichmanoff adds, “We do what we advise our customers to do. We send out a monthly mailing; we use personalized URLs. We show them the technology they should be leveraging and what they should be doing.”

ROI objectives have to be considered. He says, for example, that electronic coupons are not as effective as print versions, which elicit higher redemption rates. “Each company has an ROI objective,” Grichmanoff notes. “When we’re managing the data, we see if the campaign is successful, but even then customers don’t always share the final numbers.”

“You know a campaign is a success if they do it again,” says Susan Kinney, president of Castle Press in Pasadena, CA, agreeing that customers are reluctant to share specific results. A veteran digital printer, Kinney first adopted the process in the mid 1990s to print greeting cards for her social stationery company, Painted Hearts & Friends. Today, Castle Press runs a Kodak NexPress 2100 and a Digimaster 110. The 55-employee company, co-owned with husband George, also offers 1- to 6-color offset lithography and a full complement of services, from creative to fulfillment and wide-format ink-jet output.

“When you do variable data,” she points out, “you have to presort for mailing automation. That drove us into mailing services, which we now also offer our offset customers. We first offered Web-to-print using the Collabria e-commerce software in the late 1990s. When that company went out of business, we decided we needed to do it ourselves.” As a result, Castle Press uses workflow software from Kodak and tools for personalized URLs from Printable in a mix with their own homegrown applications.

Drip Marketing is the name of one of Castle’s Web-to-print services. Customers have a choice of six different products for a series of mailings. The clients put in the dates, whether that’s weekly, bimonthly or monthly. They can upload a mailing list or purchase one online from the printer. Four or five days before the scheduled print run, the customer automatically receives an e-mail reminder and then a personalized soft proof for an OK.

Like AIIM, Castle Press also offers digital asset management (DAM). “We started that about 18 months ago, and we’re still expanding that service,” Kinney says. “We were our own guinea pigs. We entered all 2,000 greeting cards. The advantage is that, unlike a CD, it’s searchable and can have both high- and low-resolution images. One of our customers, the Metro YMCA, which operates 15 area facilities, uses it to download images for its Website.”

Reps at Castle Press and their customers understand variable data because of years of marketing pieces showing what it can do; on-site seminars; and on-site training plus continuing Webinar training. Like the DAM system, Castle Press used personalized URLs for its own marketing campaign before offering these to customers. “You have to make sure it works and that it generates returns,” Kinney says.

She finds personalized URLs valuable for marketing, as well as for updating, cleaning and adding to a client’s database. “Our customers aren’t thinking about what it costs to keep up their databases internally,” she says.

Mike Robben, owner of a Grandview, MO-based digital printing company ironically named Printing Impressions, shares the same view. He describes a successful and
ongoing campaign for sewing machine retailer Bernina in Kansas City that hinged on personalized URLs with the goal of increasing foot traffic to the store.

“There were two goals for the first mailing,” Robben says. “One, we wanted to validate and update the contact information, including adding e-mails; and, two, offer to calculate the trade-in value of their current machine for a competitive upgrade. Close to 5 percent of the recipients used their URL and 1.5 percent of these people tried it. The shop has been overwhelmed with customers and the mailing more than paid for itself.

“We were able to identify and profile the largest group of customers, and we’re trying to understand their needs to communicate with them better. We are also identifying other customer segments,” he adds.

While Robben has more than 25 years of experience in offset and digital printing that includes programming, his company launched in January of this year with the installation of a Xerox iGen3 digital press and the purchase of Printable’s Fusion Pro for variable data and personalized URLs. “I intend to take advantage of automation to keep as lean as possible and deliver the results my customers expect,” he says.

With three full-time employees and relationships with designers who can create variable data projects, Printing Impressions indeed runs lean. One key to his quick startup and ability to handle complex campaigns is that his shop is located in a separately owned direct mail operation. “They’ve been successful with ink-jet, and so we complement each other,” Robben says. He has also added an online storefront to his list of services, but adds that, “We haven’t marketed that approach much yet because we’ve been so successful with direct mail.”

Another newer digital player is Seattle’s Litho Craft, which offers 4- and 6-color work and is the city’s largest independent printer with 44 employees. Its digital division, which runs an HP Indigo 5000, has been open for a little over a year. Kurt Bischoff, technical director, digital print, explains that Litho Craft’s digital commitment was driven by a large commercial print customer. An international trucking company wanted to enable its sales reps to order collateral on-demand and vary it based on their territories. Using Press-sense iWay, the company set up a branded site for the customer and a storefront for themselves. In addition to templates, Litho Craft customers can submit their own designs and receive a custom quote, as long as the project fits the 12x18˝ digital press format.

“We also have gotten our feet wet with some relatively small-scale VDP campaigns,” says Bischoff. “We’ve just recently used DirectSmile software and Printable’s personalized URL software to create an in-house cross-media marketing campaign to, first, gather information about which of our current clients might be a good fit for a similar campaign of their own and, secondly, to use as a demo of such a campaign.”

According to Bischoff, the first mailing was a highly designed, personalized newsletter that went to 850 marketing decision makers and CEOs. The chance to be entered in a drawing for an Apple iPhone served as the incentive to fill out the information requested. “The response rate for this phase was 30 percent,” he reports. “The second phase was a mailing of 2,000 to agencies and designers, and we’re getting 50 responses per day.”

Like Mike Robben, Bischoff’s department is lean. Initially he was the sole employee in the division. Now, he has a press operator and is taking classes in Excel to learn data management. He says Litho Craft partners with a design firm and realizes that they have to get into mailing either through partnering or in-house. “We have also noticed that local mailing houses are getting into digital printing,” he says.

Cross-media services are the future for printing. Susan Kinney says bluntly, “If you don’t offer them, you’re getting killed. The key is workflow and making it easier for the customer.” PI