I’m used to looking at the case studies from digital press and personalization software suppliers for the marketing effectiveness of 1:1 printing, but as “green” continues to gather steam as a hot marketing angle, I’m starting to rethink how I position this information.

This morning, I repositioned a case study from AutoNation and DME that many in this industry may already be familiar with.

In this study, DME overhauled its 1:1 printing workflow to enable AutoNation to eliminate its need to inventory and warehouse pre-printed offset shells that were subsequently personalized using black-and-white overprinting. Using XMPie’s PersonalEffect software, DME changed its workflow so that each campaign is single project, even though each campaign involves multiple brands and dealers. The business rules for composing the individualized offers are programmed independent of the design. All elements become data-driven variable objects instead of static fields. Thus, instead of using pre-printed stock, AutoNation’s campaigns are now printed, as needed, using plain, unprinted paper. The results were impressive. Responses to its direct mail pieces went up 35%. Revenues were up 65%.

But in this environment — so hot for green — these may not end up being the most compelling results. Consider the “green” impact of this switch. AutoNation no longer must warehouse pre-printed stock for different dealerships and brands.

Consequently, it also saves …

• the carbon footprint and resources used to pre-print each set of shells
• the carbon footprint and cost of warehousing those shells
• the fuel costs of transporting them.

Click here for the permanent archive containing the full article.

A new report from the Netherlands based market research firm Strategy Partners explores the advance in automated document process management:

The report describes the research done by Strategy Partners within Europe among a large number of organizations to identify the needs in automation of the current (office and high volume) document production and distribution processes. It will look at the influence of multi-channel, Going Green and other business trends. The results of the research are translated to practical solutions which can be implemented by organizations and managed service providers.

The traditional Print and Mail activities are changing rapidly. Due to the economic environment, business goals, technical developments and the market developments the requirements in communicating with internal and external customers is changing. The need to be able to communicate via the electronic media channels is increasingly becoming popular. The processes in the print and mail department are not dedicated any longer to paper printing and distribution. The market research shows that 25 percent of the respondents want to add multi-channel distribution to the current paper driven processes within the next two year. To optimize the production processes there is an upcoming requirement for Lean Six Sigma techniques. The implementation of an Automated Document Factory is also selected by 25 percent of the respondents as a implementation project for within the next two years. The Automated Document Factory is still valid solution, although the modern ADF requires electronic distribution capability, optimization based on Lean Six Sigma and integrated with ERP, CRM and other business applications.

The report (190 pages) is unique within the Enterprise Content Management, Output Management market research and analysis space. The first part of the report describes the history, market trends en developments in Output Management. Based on the discussions and on-line survey results a set of innovative solutions are discussed. The nature of these solutions is the practical usage and the quantifiable business benefits. The first part is ended with a template project plan and planning as support for the implementation of the discussed innovative solutions. The second part of the report describes the vendors who can deliver the technical and/or software components needed for the implementation.

You can download results from a user survey conducted as part of the study here.

The full report can be purchased from Strategy Partners.

Everybody wants to “go green” these days, and the printing industry has a compelling story to tell. But I have to say, we’re doing a pretty crummy job at it. Do a search on “green printing” and see what comes up. You’d think that printing on recycled paper was all there was to it.

I’ve been writing for a blog called “Greening Print Marketing” on The Inspired Economist (http://inspiredeconomist.com/), which focuses on “green” issues in the corporate world. Just for fun, here’s a list of the posts I’ve written to date. Thought it might spark some ideas:

• Greening Print Marketing: Getting Serious About Greenhouse Gases
• Forest Stewardship Council Files Suit Against U.S. Government
• Greening Print Marketing: Does Sustainability Matter to Print Buyers?

(more…)

Last week Beyond-Print published an article on the results of a poll at Swiss print portal Mediaforum on adoption rates the deployment of Web-enabled print services for customers.

200 respondents answered the question “Should printers offer their customers web-to-print solutions?” with:

• 29%: Yes, as soon as possible
• 45%: Only if the customers express a need for it
• 2%: Wait to see how the market shapes up
• 11%: It is only appropriate for niche markets
• 1%: No, there’s no market for it
• 12%: What’s web-to-print?

71% are playing wait and see or have not considered implementing a Web-enabled workflow.

So what do you think? Take the poll below, and share your experiences with Web-enabled Print in the comments.

 Loading ...

If you answered yes, what was your deciding factor? And did choose an off the shelf product or service, or did build your system?

Whenever new technology is introduced, adoption typically takes place in predictable phases—first in value-added high-margin niches. Once it gains a foothold, it eventually goes mainstream. Such is the case with digital printing technology. In every segment where digital printing technology has enjoyed success, there is a recurring theme: print producers want technology vendors to show them that
the new product can produce print quality that is equal to or surpasses the incumbent
technology.

The 8X loupe test

This practice, which can be called the “8x loupe” test, maintains that you must be able to replace the dominant, existing technology with something that delivers comparable performance and quality. In most cases, digital print technology vendors have done exactly that and have successfully met print quality criteria.

However, when you look at the offset-to-digital-migration, there are exceptions where digital has successfully ousted offset. Most notably, this has been when digital does not threaten core high volume market segments, where the focus is more on lowering production costs and improving productivity and less on quality or where there is a requirement for higher value personalization.

In these cases, the tradeoff clearly favors digital. Consequently, digital print has tended to thrive in environments and applications that require short runs, versioning, distribute-and-print, and printing of variable data intensive documents like direct mail, personalized collateral and invoices and statements.

However, digital printing technology vendors have thrown down the gauntlet, introducing digital technology that is more mature, delivers better quality and is advancing to the point where it can compete in the higher-volume territories of commercial offset printing.

Digital technology becomes a viable option for the newspaper industry

Given recent advances in digital technology, and changing requirements in the newspaper industry, it’s not surprising that the case is building for printing newspapers digitally. Océ, and other vendors have developed systems that are suitable for this very application. And, while digital printing platforms may not yet meet the productivity and cost requirements for producing large-circulation newspaper runs, there are significant opportunities in printing niche products and local and smaller circulation papers.

Certainly the newspaper industry faces significant challenges—dwindling readership and circulation, high costs, competition from alternate media like cable TV and the Internet. One way to address these issues is considering how digital printing technology can help newspapers generate new business and revenue streams. Digital technology offers unmatched flexibility for printing color on demand, without incurring the costs of additional plates, while enabling all content and advertising to be dynamic. What’s more, with digital technology, run length is less of an issue—print runs of one are as cost-effective as run lengths of 1,000.

Leveraging core strengths to create a new business model

Clearly, a perfect storm is gathering in the newspaper industry. The Internet has wrought havoc on publishers, weakening the underpinnings of the industry. Taking an “if-you-can’t beat-’em, join-em approach” many newspapers have successfully adopted Internet strategies and have been able to capture an increasing share of the Internet advertising spend. However, simply adding a web version of the paper isn’t enough to staunch the bleeding or halt the erosion in circulation and advertising.

Still, there is reason to be optimistic. Core strengths, like local knowledge, rich content, market research, advertising and distribution are significant competitive differentiators that newspapers can use to compete against other forms of media. However, publishers must find new ground: they must simultaneously embrace change and work to leverage these strengths while fundamentally transforming their businesses.

Surviving this period of transition requires developing strategies that move away from the broad-reach circulations dictated by underutilized fixed assets. Instead, newspapers must move towards desirable and relevant content products that deliver significantly higher performance to advertisers (higher margin as well). Obviously, this won’t happen overnight and most publishers won’t concede their broad-reach positions. However, at some time in the future, there will be an inflection point where broad-reach, highly rich and relevant content meets high-performance advertising. This is already occurring with electronic communications and will evolve in print as well.

Innovating new business models and working collaboratively with customers is a key element of the Océ business ethos. Our strengths in high-volume automated print manufacturing, expertise in data-intensive applications, and a fiercely customer-first culture, position us to partner with the newspaper industry to facilitate this transformation. In fact, Océ has been engaged with the newspaper industry all the way back to the turn of this century with the development of the Océ Digital Newspaper Network. Today, we are actively engaged in dialogues with major newspaper publishers to help them overcome the challenges they face, to explore new business models and opportunities by leveraging technology to change the way they do business. We look forward to continuing this path of innovation and transformation as today’s newspapers evolve into tomorrow’s highly personalized information delivery media.

WhatTheyThink, the leading online media organization serving the printing and publishing industry, announces the immediate availability of Inkjet Printing Primer: An Overview of Inkjet Printing in the Commercial Printing Industry. This 56-page report provides an easy-to-read rundown of current state of inkjet printing systems for wide-format graphics, digital commercial printing, and proofing in the U.S. commercial printing industry. The report provides a clear explanation of the various inkjet technologies—piezo, thermal, continuous—a “cast of characters” or a list of the manufacturers and systems currently on the market, a look at the applications (packaging, variable-data printing, transactional printing, industrial printing) for which inkjet systems are being developed, and conclusions and recommendations. The report also looks ahead to technologies and systems currently in development, such as MEMS-based inkjet printing systems.

The list price for the report is $195. If you sign up for the Digital Nirvana newsletter before next Tuesday you can save $25. After signing up you will receive a welcome email with instructions on how to get the discount.

If you already subscribe to the newsletter, next Tuesday’s edition will have instructions included too.

Sign up for the Digital Nirvana newsletter

Is digital printing a production technology? Or a marketing strategy? “Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models,” part of Heidi Tolliver-Nigro’s Marketer’s Primer Series, argues for the latter. It presents digital production not as technology in the domain of print buyers and production managers but as the foundation of a comprehensive strategy for changing the way marketers look at document management and marketing.

This report is broken down into five sections.

Section 1: What digital printing is, along with its benefits and drawbacks from a marketing perspective. Examines traditional “sticking points,” including binding and finishing and the availability of substrates. How these characteristics drive key marketing applications.

Section 2: A closer look at each of these applications. Each discussion includes a series of short case studies in each of eight marketing classifications that provide key insights into how these applications are used in the real world.

Section 3: New ways of evaluating cost critical to digital printing success, including cost per piece, cost per lead, and ROI. Hypotheticals are used to drive the points home.

Section 4: Five “critical success factors” that enable marketers to take maximum advantage of digital printing technology. Includes key insights into helping marketers choose the right service provider.

Section 5: Final conclusions and additional resources as a next step.

The goal of the report is for marketers to be left with the understanding that the importance of digital printing has nothing to do with the technology—its costs, its output capabilities, or the applications it can produce, although many of them are discussed. It’s about transforming how they think about marketing.

The important thing is not digital printing technology itself, but the way it can be combined with other technologies (particularly databases, email, wireless, and the Internet) to create broader solutions that make a real difference in how business market their products, as well as how they communicate with customers on a short-term and long-term basis and present their brands.

The information is presented both from the perspective of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as large corporate marketers.

Single-user versions of the report can be purchased from the What They Think store, as well as from the Digital Printing Reports website. Licensed versions for internal and external distribution can be purchased from Research and Markets and Market Research, as well as from the Digital Printing Reports website.

“Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models” is part of Heidi Tolliver-Nigro’s Marketer’s Primer Series, which also includes “1:1 (Personalized) Printing: Boosting Profits Through Relevance” and “Web-to-Print: Transforming Document Management and Marketing Models.” All three primers are designed both as authoritative primers for marketers and as internal training tools for printers.

Here in Florida hurricane season runs from June 1st to December 1st. While it is a predictable event there’s a limit to what one can do to prepare for it. But no matter what storms cross this big peninsular state, none compare to the current turmoil in the financial sector.

There’s little doubt the situation in the financial and insurance markets will affect our industry at many levels, from day-to-day operations, to expansion opportunities to offering new products and services. Finding and maintaining the appropriate balance is difficult, but one way to manage through this storm brings to mind a term I’ve mentioned before. Today, it can provide a way of seizing opportunity from the jaws of economic fear and financial uncertainty.

It’s convergence. I’ve talked about it many times. It is the idea that different types of documents can be produced on the same type of digital press, but it also that there are ways of making educational, marketing, transactional and other customer-facing information more relevant, valuable and compelling to the recipient.

Thinking Convergently
Finding ways of embracing convergence can enable quicker and simpler approaches to leveraging the technologies you have today and to doing more with less. What I mean by that is adopting existing printing and IT systems not only for more types of documents but also bringing more value to the documents being printed.

Consider corporate printers, by which I mean in-plants and data centers, for which the average utilization rate is about 25%. To augment the overhead associated with this low utilization, some banks, for instance, have gone beyond encouraging customers to accept electronic statements in lieu of hardcopy, and are now looking for ways to charge their customers for the printed version. I have trouble understanding this because the cost of monthly statements is so minimal compared to everything else a bank has on its plate that it is akin to some airlines’ practice of charging for Cokes and bags of peanuts. What it does point to, however, is the opportunity to change the game by looking differently at the entire statement production process –and doing a little convergence.

For example, the majority of bank statements produced in data-centers and in-plants have other information enclosed. These are usually offers for and information about new services, customized savings programs, credit cards, lines of credit, loan programs, all kinds of things. All are generic and if your household is like most, they are ignored and thrown away, which costs the bank money. But suppose the extra pages were part of a TransPromo solution, targeted to individual customers and printed by the in-house print shop or data center. TransPromo is really just a form of convergence, and in this case it means increased press utilization and reduced outside print costs. That sounds like win-win to me. Here’s why.

A recent study of 536 consumers by Print Industries Market Information and Research Organization (PRIMIR) explored 30 types of bills and statements across finance, utility, insurance and medical industries. It found that on average, 92 percent of statements and bills are opened and read, and 22 percent are read more than once. Another study, this one by INTERQUEST, indicates consumers spend an average of 5.6 minutes looking at bank and credit card statements they receive through the mail. With that kind of attention paid to these documents, they seem like a pretty good place to put some relevant information.

Of course some managers or executives will still object, saying doing this is too complicated. So two points come to mind. First is that one of the ideals of TransPromo is to incorporate marketing or informational messages into the actual statement. The difficulty, though, is that this frequently requires redesigning the statement, a costly and time-consuming process. Instead, having targeted, relevant TransPromo messages that “ride along” with the statement pages avoids the redesign process yet lets the targeted messages reach valued customers. You already have the customer’s name and account number on each page of the statement. Adding it to a page with marketing or other information –basic personalization– should not be a show-stopper.

Second, there is a lot of talk these days about how TransPromo documents must be full color. I agree that full color adds impact, but relevant information and effective offers can be delivered using the same monochrome or highlight color devices you’ve been using for the past few years. Don’t let lack of a full-color print engine be a limitation. Use the technology you have at hand to its fullest advantage. This will not only increase your present effectiveness, but prepare you for making a transition to more complex TransPromo documents, perhaps using full-color, in the future.

For any corporate print operations, additional opportunities to increase utilization include marketing materials, training documents, internal reports, and countless other documents that could be printed in-house instead of by an outside supplier. In many cases it is a matter of gaining an understanding of all a company’s printing requirements and looking for the potential points of convergence between documents and available equipment. Or, it may be that shifting enough work in-house can justify the investment in a more capable press, perhaps one that can print full-color documents.

In unsettled times, corporate printers must truly understand all their firm’s document production needs and be poised to seize opportunities, look for ways to implement new ideas and do the most you can with the resources you have at hand. The storms we are seeing will pass and by leveraging technology and thinking convergently, you can survive and even thrive.

My colleagues at InfoTrends have been extremely busy over the past few months conducting an extensive study on the North American TransPromo market. InfoTrends Group Director Barb Pellow, Associate Consultant Cary Sherburne, and fellow Senior Research Analyst Matt Swain have put together “Trans Meets Promo… Is It More Than Market Hype?” Some of the study results were previewed at our annual TransPromo Summit in New York City last month.

The study builds upon prior InfoTrends research on the future of mail and transaction documents, as well as the future of commercial printing, and also includes comprehensive survey data on the TransPromo market from consumers, document owners, direct marketers, and print service providers. From the press release:

While the North American market for TransPromo communications printed in full digital color stood at 1.7 billion impressions in 2007, InfoTrends projects this number to reach an astounding 12.8 billion by 2012, for a CAGR of 68%. Also compelling is the fact that 63% of document owners surveyed stated that they currently add marketing messages to statements or are planning to within the next 36 months.

This growth is not surprising.  TransPromo provides a cost-effective way to communicate educational and promotional messages to customers. TransPromo documents leverage opt-in relationships and incorporate relevant and compelling promotional or educational messages in the white space of transactional documents. By leveraging TransPromo communications, document owners can reduce the number of mailings that must be sent, which translates to substantial savings in terms of postage and printing costs.

Just as document owners continue to embrace the TransPromo opportunity, an increasing number of print service providers are implementing TransPromo in their offerings. One factor that is catalyzing this change is the availability of affordable high-speed inkjet devices with lower running costs. For print service providers with 20+ employees, nearly 60% are considering the purchase of one or more of these devices within the next two years, with 14% stating that they would consider such a purchase within the year. In addition, software providers are starting to introduce easier to use solutions that are enabling mid-market print service providers to add this valuable offering to their portfolios.

The study is rich in fresh information about the TransPromo market, but also significantly covers the direct mail market. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some of the results of our study to spark more discussion on these growing markets. In the meantime, if you’re interested in purchasing the full study results, please contact Matt Swain at 781-616-2100 ext. 204, or via email: .

Bryan Yeager is a Senior Research Analyst in the Production Workflow and Customized Communications Services group at .