How many digital printers think about marketing digital printing as green printing? Not just from a technology standpoint but also from an applications standpoint?

When you switch to database marketing — reducing your mailing by 90% by culling out only the top 10% of your database to personalize and mail to — you are also GREENING your print marketing at the same time! When you personalize a booklet, reducing a static 72-page booklet to a 16-page personalized one, you are greening your projects at the same time. Think about how much you help your clients lower their environmental footprints in terms of paper, ink, energy use, transportation . . . and the list goes on.

I just released a report titled “Greening Print Marketing: A Practical Guide” that has an entire section devoted to how digital print applications “green” print marketing. We’re used to looking at the case studies in terms of how they affect the bottom line (and rightly so), but many of those same applications have a green angle. Every time you cut costs through efficiency, targeting, and personalization, you save your carbon footprint, too.

I’m also fascinated by just how poor a carbon footprint e-media has. The more I learn about it, the greener print looks.

The digital printing industry really has an environmental story to tell. I wonder how well we’re telling it?

Digital printers these days are being pressured to “go green,” which typically starts with adding PCW (postconsumer waste) content into paper. But is PCW really all that it’s cracked up to be?

I recently did some investigating into this question and got some surprising answers. In fact, there is a legitimate argument for the fact that PCW might have a less positive impact the environment than preconsumer waste.
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If you had to answer the question, “What are the best practices in 1:1 printing?” what would you say? I have to answer this question every three or four months when I update “1:1 (Personalized) Printing: Boosting Profits Through Relevance,” a primer and educational tool for printers and their sales teams.

This time around (December 2009 update), I made some significant additions and expansions.

QR codes: I added QR codes into the list of channels and media strategies that should be incorporated into 1:1 campaigns. Not that every campaign should have one, of course. It depends on the target audience. Especially for clients targeting 15- to 35-year-olds and the mobile professional culture, QR codes should absolutely be in the mix.

Expanded focus on multiple media: Increasingly, successful 1:1 campaigns do not work alone. They are working in tight integration with other media, using the same branding, messaging, and business rules. A campaign might use email to promote an upcoming print offer, for example. Then it might use email or SMS text messaging to nudge non-responders or confirm registrations, orders, or other actions the respondent might have taken.

Use of multiple response mechanisms: Too often, marketers provide only a single response mechanism for their offers. Yet, case studies increasingly prove out that having a mix of response mechanisms (print, general URL, phone, personalized URL) can increase response. You have to allow people to respond using the media with which they are the most comfortable.

If you look carefully at the recent case studies, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s neat when you see this stuff actually being implemented — and it works!

I’ve been writing on QR codes lately (two-dimensional barcodes that can be snapped with a mobile phone camera or other scanning device and automatically take the viewer to a website with marketing or other content), but it’s rare that I see one in real life.

Last night, I was at a restaurant and wished there was a QR code and didn’t see one. It would have been nice to be able to compare menu choices on nutritional content. Which had higher fat content? The filet mignon or the chicken smothered in ham and asparagus? You’d think it would be the filet, of course, but with all the butter in the chicken dish, I wasn’t sure.

It was a nice Italian place, the kind that doesn’t post its nutritional content on the walls. With its upscale clientele, it would have been a perfect location to use QR codes to take patrons to a nutritional guide if they’d wanted to.

It just a reminder that there are places for QR codes all around us. Are you taking advantage of them?

As printers increasingly see themselves as marketing services providers, they are proactively developing marketing and business development expertise that is a benefit to their customers. Unfortunately, there is one aspect of good marketing that is too often overlooked — copy editing.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve winced when looking at sample marketing campaigns or — equally distressing — these printers’ websites. There are spelling errors, grammar mistakes, obvious typos, and gross errors in capitalization and style. Perhaps to the printer, the copy looks fine. But to anyone who knows basic editorial rules, it looks like the company has no idea what it’s doing.
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Have you noticed? The best practices for personalized URLs are becoming more sophisticated. You may not always see those best practices listed, but they are being reflected more and more often in industry case studies. It’s really neat to see the evolution.

It struck me because, earlier this week, I released an update to “Personalized URLs: Beyond the Hype,” a primer and training and educational tool for printers and marketers.  In the best practices section, I had previously separated out the best practices into two categories: those commonly seen in industry case studies and those not yet commonly seen but practiced by some of the industry’s leading practitioners. During the process of updating the report, however, it struck me the extent to which the two are converging. In fact, in the October 2009 update I removed the distinction between the two classifications.
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EcoAlign, a strategic marketing firm specializing in green issues, has released a report that shows that, while consumers care about green issues, they don’t understand much of the basic terminology or make clear distinctions between terms. So when we talk “green” to our customers, do they understand what we’re talking about?

Although the report, “Green Gap Redux: Green Words Gone Wrong,” is focused largely at the energy industry, it has important implications for all companies marketing “green.” With printing — digital printing, in particular — really focused on its green benefits, it ought to be listening closely.
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Recently, I asked a client what they liked best about the Marketer’s Primer Series (educational and training reports on digital, 1:1, personalized URLs, and Web-to-print). He said that it was the fact that all of the information was pulled together in cohesive fashion. Much of the information exists scattered here and there in different locations, he said, but having it all in a single place had a lot of value.

Ah, the holistic approach. I ran across is on the Personalized URLs for Direct Marketers LinkedIn discussion board today, too. Someone asked members to describe a personalized URL campaign that really worked and why. I responded that the campaigns that work best are those that don’t rely on the personalized URLs, themselves, so sell the campaign. The most powerful campaigns are those that have great creative, a powerful message, a good list, and an appropriate incentive. Oh, yes, and for which personalized URLs are the right response mechanism in the first place.

We’re seeing this more and more. In order to be successful with any of today’s hot applications like 1:1 printing, personalized URLs, and Web-to-print, you have to be willing to step back from them. You have to be willing to look at them within their larger marketing environment,  including as part of a larger multi-channel marketing initiative.

Speaking of holistic approaches, that includes within your own company, too. These applications should not be sequestered within your salesforce. Your marketing efforts will work best when the company itself is thinks through the lens of digital, 1:1, personalized URLs, and Web-to-print from the ownership to the CSRs. Sure, your CSRs don’t need to be able to analyze a spreadsheet, but they should have at least a basic understanding of the benefits and mechanics of these applications because, in many cases, they are your primary contact with your customers.

Digital, 1:1, personalized URLs, and Web-to-print are terrific tools, but in themselves, they are simply small pieces within a larger marketing and production puzzle. If you look at them too narrowly, as siloed applications without considering the larger context, your success (and profits) will be limited. So step back and view the larger picture. Because the holistic approach isn’t just for medicine and natural food stores anymore.

For those interested in the holistic approach to digital printing, I just updated “Digital Printing: Transforming Business & Marketing Models” to reflect the latest market conditions, including news from Print 09. This October 2009 cover date is the first update since May 2009.

I am working on a column and needed to look up the location of one of the companies mentioned. I looked all over the site and couldn’t find the location, just a phone number with an area code I didn’t recognize.

I needed the company’s location, so when all else fails, click on the “contact us” link, right? So I did — and I shrunk back immediately. The entire page was nothing but a giant form requiring me to fill out all of my contact information before I could send them an email.

It was an awful experience. It was as if they put up their hand in front of my face, saying, “Stop. No interruptions, please. Just let us know you’re there and we’ll contact you at our convenience.”

The company is lucky I’m an analyst and not a prospect. If I’d been a prospect, the message I would have taken away is, “We have enough business, thank you. You’re really not that important to us.”

What does your company’s contact page look like? Does it make contacting your company seem inviting and welcome? Or — like this company — does it make the visitor feel like an unwelcome intrusion?

I’ve been saying for awhile that the printing industry has a strong story to tell on the issue of sustainability, and certainly, there are those who are out there shouting some of the industry’s great data from the rooftops (great Print CEO post on the “not so greenness” of door-to-door canvasing, Richard Romano!)

But what I love even more than great data is companies that walk the walk. I love when I accidentally run across something that shows me that a company is not just talking sustainability but walking it.

This morning, I went on the EPA’s Green Power Partners website to look at the country’s biggest users of green power (wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, and others). You know who was in the Top 10? Mohawk Fine Papers — a paper company!

Yes, the big, bad print industry is proven to be at the top of sustainability again. It’s funny how that keeps happening, isn’t it?

Check it out!