Here are three of the latest disaster stories from members of LinkedIn’s Direct Marketing Association (Official) discussion group. You might want to put down your coffee before reading so you don’t burst out into laughter and spit it at the screen.

When I was just starting my DM career, the blank spots for personalization were inside parentheses and usually had copy that said (insert name) as a reference for production purposes. You guessed it! When the material was printed, all the personalization spots were printed exactly as the original boards, i.e. with a salutation that said: “Dear (insert name).” It was just a test, but nonetheless, we printed 50,000 pieces that had to be trashed.

One of my insurance client’s mailings to home/auto policyholders for renewals also included “Dear Deceased.”

We lasered 11,000 (of a 150,000 run) before someone noticed the bottom line of the address read “City, State, ZIP.”

These are a funny read, but I’m sure it wasn’t funny when these things actually happened. The good news for us is that we can learn from someone else’s disaster.

Has your client checked its name field and cleansed it for “deceased”? What proofing processes do you have in place to ensure that variable field markers are not printed as text? It seems impossible until it actually happens to you.

So how about you? Got any of your own disaster stories to share?

. . . Or maybe I should be saying Marketers Take Your Mark. Either way, I’m seeing example after example of why printed communications need to become increasingly nimble to stay relevant in the marketing mix. I was inspired by a recent post from Pat Allen of Rock the Boat Marketing (and by the Old Spice Guy video embedded in the post)

>

According to Pat, “the tilt toward real-time communicating exposes what we believe to be the greatest weakness in investment product communicating: Reacting after the fact and on a delay.” While she is looking at the asset management industry through a marketing lens – you could easily point that same lens at print service providers and in-house shops. “The Old Spice guy work is an excellent demonstration of an emerging communications competency: the preparing to improvise, the organizing to be able to react in the moment to external stimulus,” says Pat.

Old Spice Guy says “Now I’m on a boat. Look in your hand. Look back at me. Now I’m on a ship. Look at your man. Look back at me. I’m on a horse.” Can your communications shift that quickly – and look that good doing it? (Phew!)

There have been several posts recently about combining print and other digital marketing channels. Most frequently referenced is putting PURLs on direct mail. You know what? That’s already old hat. PURLs provide an additional channel for the recipient, which is good, but it is not necessarily preparing the marketer to be able to  react quickly to external stimulus from social media sites, breaking news or other market activity.

We need to enable our print campaigns to launch on a dime in support of trends gleaned from online activity. Of course, we will want to communicate with people who are already online through online means – but why not extend the learning to be able to launch the same great message to the customers we know don’t use our online channels? Or simply reinforce the online message with a tangible printed campaign?

Allen cites a social media presentation by Matthew Guiste, category manager for social media at Starbucks and successful revenue-generating programs that involved a rapid exchange of information, internally and externally. Starbucks identified mini-trends from activity on Facebook and Twitter and worked quickly to syndicate that content across multiple other social media outlets. They could also have launched a direct mail campaign – but sadly – with the response times of most organizations today – not fast enough to ride the wave of the current trend.

For direct mail (and transactional communications) to gain a broader piece of the “social media response” pie it will need to be faster and more collaborative with what is now a social media silo. If the collaboration and rapid publishing tools can be put in place – with workflows that link social media monitoring, analytics, content management, approval and production approvals – social media can be a great friend to digital printing rather than a competitor.

So, look at your social media channels. Look back at me. Look at your direct mail. Look back at me. Anything is possible. I’m on a plane (Seriously, I am.)

PBO’s most recent closed poll (7/13/2010) is on the issue of monochrome digital printing. How is it being used? The results are interesting. Here’s what poll respondents said:

a) Black-and-white is dead. We’ll never go back now that we print in color (12%)

b) We’ve stayed with monochrome but have added a transpromotional touch to our statements with personal and relevant messaging that helps to cross-sell our products and services (18%)

c) We integrate monochromatic design themes occasionally to reduce printing costs (24%)

d) We use monochrome print and divert print cost savings to fund online elements that support campaigns such as email, mobile messaging and personalized URLs (6%)

e) Our print jobs are a mix of color and monochrome and our printer utilizes “job splitting” (printing color pages on color printers and B/W pages on B/W printers) to help keep costs down (41%)

The number that jumped out at me is the 18% of poll respondents who say they are integrating variable messaging into their black-and-white documents. When we think of selling 1:1 printing, we normally think about the need to go around print buyers, whose job is to hold the line on price. But this poll suggests that print buyers are increasingly tasked with understanding value and marketing content than they used to be.

Also standing out is the 12% who said that they’d permanently switched from black-and-white to color. Again, we normally think of print buyers as holding the line on price. Although the cost-efficiencies of color have come down greatly, black-and-white still costs less. Again, the print buyers in this poll are showing preference for value over price.

This isn’t yesterday’s print buyer.  Got any stories to tell?

I think both points are true. Except for the manufacturers that have put two machines in tandem allowing the first to print on one side and the second to print on the second side there has not really been an increase in productivity in the sheetfed toner-based devices for a few years. But let’s keep this straight – the productivity concern is really two issues, size and speed. Let’s just focus on format size for this discussion.

As they ask in the Godzilla movies, “Does Size Matter?” For larger sized applications it does – for smaller sizes it may not. The reason it may not is because increasing the speed with a tandem based configuration can help with applications that fit. (Except when a larger device can print it multiple times up on a sheet and be faster or more cost effective.)

But if that last international show showed us anything about format size it appears that size limitation is more of a toner issue than an inkjet issue. If you remember, one of the manufacturers announced that they would bring a 32” inkjet press and then showed up with a 36” press. As a result, we are learning that the inkjet heads are grouped into specific widths and can be added or subtracted and the toughest challenge is to the paper handling function. However, there are rumors that there is a width barrier for the toner-based devices due to the electrophotographic nature or ability to hold a charge across a sheet.

What does all this mean? Clearly this is speculation but it could mean that understanding your application mix based on size may become a more important consideration in the future when deciding which digital print technology best suits your needs. Of course quality and equipment cost is important too, and there are critical differences with these technologies, but lets take quality and cost off the table for this conversation and see what happens.

One more disclaimer. Admittedly at this point in time what I am about to suggest is more of a bizarre idea, but if quality, cost and speed were comparable and you could buy either a electrophotographic 2 up press or an inkjet 4 up press for $500,000, which would you buy?

Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.

You want a window into the human mind? Look at some direct mail pieces. How people respond to them — or don’t — can tell you plenty. That’s because direct mail is all about psychology. It’s understanding what makes people behave the way they do.

Take outer envelopes. What will make someone open one? The smallest of details can tip the balance. Is there a return address? Is it accompanied by someone’s name? Is that name pre-printed? Or was it “added on” just before going out? Then there’s your color choice. Paper stock. Postage type. Type font. All this before the headline and visual (if you even have them) register.

When you think about it, the odds are hugely against us. Everyday, people are bombarded with more and more advertising messages. Then they come home from a long day’s work, stand over the wastepaper basket, and sort their mail. We have mere seconds to deploy enough knowledge about human nature to get our packages opened.

And yet, everyday great new direct mail pieces emerge. Some of the best work in the industry is being done today. Our targeting methods are more efficient. Our options are greater. And our creative people are more talented. But the big difference, in my opinion, is that we know more about what makes people tick today than we ever have. And that’s key. Because in order to capture your prey, you first have to think like them.

Social scientists and behavioral economists have shown that human beings have developed certain automatic or reflexive behaviors. They’ve identified:

1. Compliance triggers
2. Loss aversion
3. The principle of reciprocity
4. Social proof
5. The pull of the magnetic middle

And numerous other influencers to human behavior. Take what they’ve learned and apply it, where appropriate, to your programs and communications—which helps make your customers and prospects more likely to do what you’re asking them to. Want to learn more? Register for my August 4 webinar (Why people do what they do - an how marketers can use it to their advantage) and find out how to harness human behavior triggers in your direct marketing efforts.

Megaspirea, a French firm, introduced what they called “Dynamic Envelope Creation” via the Mailliner 100 at IPEX way back in 2006. Dynamic Envelope Creation was hailed as a holistic process for making a complete mail piece (envelope plus content) out of a single print stream. Variable images and messages could be printed directly on the envelope itself. Despite a strategic relationship with Pitney Bowes and Emtex that should have given the company a lot of reach in the US market – the technology never really took off.

You would think that the ability to dynamically market on the outside of the envelope would be marketing catnip – but in fact, many direct mail marketers feel that the white envelope approach is more effective than jazzy graphics on the outside of the envelope. Transaction mailers today, are still not well integrated with marketing departments (whether in plant or service providers) and therefore envelope marketing is a tough sell to this group.

DST Output (www.dstoutput.com) recently announced an envelope marketing solution that, despite the demise of past market entrants, I believe has a real chance of success. Why? Because the solution is as appealing – or potentially even more appealing- from an operations and efficiency standpoint as it is from a marketing standpoint. Like white paper, full color printing in general – operational efficiencies from wrap envelopes are creating the business case for more effective marketing. First let me explain the solution.

DST’s Wrap Envelope technology is a no-touch process for printing, wrapping and finishing high-volume, First-Class Mail packages in a high-speed production environment. Wrap extends major mailers’ customer marketing efforts with dynamic messaging that can be applied to the front, back and inside of the envelope. This means that the solution provides an envelope marketing opportunity for transaction mail like statements and bills, but also can double as a stand-alone self-mailer.

DST Output’s Wrap Envelopes are printed duplex on continuous plain roll-stock paper, and then literally wrap around multiple pages of statements, bills, inserts and reply/remit envelopes. The process enables mailers to embellish the interior as well as the exterior of the envelope with marketing messaging and promotional content, such as coupons, event information or other customer marketing materials – and can include customer data on the interior to create the self mailer – or additional personalized offer.

There are other operational benefits as well:

1. Placing messaging on the envelope can minimize postal weight by reducing the insert count and replace separate mailings and direct mail.
2. Wrap Envelopes can serve as a self-mailer for privacy statements, regulatory notices or e-statement bounce notifications minimizing the cost of these mailings.
3. The windowless Wrap enhances security and privacy with no see-through areas.
4. No window also makes it fully recyclable (no cellophane) and therefore more sustainable.
5. There is no need to pre-order and warehouse envelopes reducing storage, commercial print and procurement costs as well as improving cash flow.

The Wrap Envelope is a compelling solution for one-page statements or bills – with or without a remit envelope. From a quality perspective, Wrap utilizes an integrated no-touch manufacturing process that tracks each and every mail piece during production to verify that the total package is complete and accurate. If an error is detected, the process automatically remakes the entire mail package.

So, no-touch quality control, cost savings, improved privacy and sustainability and – oh, by the way – completely dynamic messaging inside and out. I think that’s pretty innovative. (Take a look at the examples below.) If DST was selling this as a hardware solution, I think it would be a big success. For now, only DST outsourcing customers can take advantage of the technology and it will be interesting to see whether it is adopted for the marketing features, the operational features or both. How would you use it if you could?

(Click on pictures to see larger view)

Wrap Envelope (front) with logo and text message

Example of Wrap Envelope (front) with Dynamic Graphic

Wrap example with Dynamic Messaging on Back of Envelope

Wrap envelope with Dynamic Graphics and Messages Inside

"Outside In" Wrap Campaign

.

.

.

.

 That the days of producing 20,000 of the same message, checking addresses for the longest record, sprinkling a few seeds into the list, reviewing one piece for quality and pushing the send button are numbered is a prognostication we’ve all accepted. For over a decade vendors have been extolling the virtues of variable data and one-to-one marketing with demos that often seem as miraculous as a Las Vegas magic show. And yet, the old one-size-fits-all direct marketing lives on in spite of the increasingly obvious shortcomings. The majority of the effort to sell marketers on variable data marketing has been focused on gimmicky creatives that spell a prospect’s name in shells to advertise a beach resort travel package.

 The exercise of bridging the gap between a flashy demo and putting a process in place that gives the marketer confidence that Joe didn’t receive Jane’s creative, or that the VIP pricing wasn’t pushed to the entire list, is rarely discussed.  Such questions as those below are rarely included in demos and many service providers end up wrestling with these as they move from demo to deployment:

1. How should information be gathered and managed?
2. How does a marketer proof variable data marketing?
3. What needs to be done to validate information?

 It’s often at this juncture between the flash and the process that variable data marketing fails or succeeds. Not surprisingly, it’s also where the most innovation is required and the hard work has to be done if variable data marketing is to become a trusted tool for majority of direct marketers.

While the Century Gothic font is proven to use less ink (or toner) than Arial and several other fonts, it is also wider and therefore can take more paper, thereby undercutting any savings. The story also referenced (incorrectly) that Century Gothic is more efficient than using an Ecofont. The folks in Green Bay apparently weren’t aware that Ecofont makes a variety of typefaces. Naturally, Ecofont was immediately on the wires with a rebuttal “Why Ecofont saves more money than Century Gothic.”  

Ecofont www.ecofont.com purports to save up to 25% on ink or toner without a loss of legibility. According to the literature, the Ecofont software works with your existing fonts and “during printing Ecofont ‘shoots’ holes into the letters that you have typed.” It is  intended for PCs and workstations versus production printing – but there may be production parallels.

Printer.com decided to take the analysis a bit further and test 9 different fonts for their respective ink and toner usage. The most efficient font cost 30% less than Arial in supplies costs and the least efficient cost 10% more than Arial. That’s a potential 40% swing in cost based on font selection.

Many of us are subject to the constraints of corporate brand identity standards and can’t randomly change the fonts we use, but where there are a variety of fonts to choose from it would be worthwhile to conduct your own tests on relative ink / toner usage. Where brand standards are not an issue, printers would do well to have font efficiency guidelines available as a benefit to their clients – particularly if printing on toner devices. In addition, corporations trying to push electronic adoption should consider investing in Ecofonts for your customers so that they can save money when they print information out at home. Perhaps this can be your next incentive for those who sign up for e-statements or other e-presentment. They might even thank you.

Lost in the dialogue about Marketing Services Providers (MSPs) is the transition from general commercial print to specialization, from ad hoc jobs to programs. While Kelly Press is a transformation success story, I wouldn’t call them an MSP- rather they became a specialized publisher, developed focused services for specific verticals (radio stations, college sports, etc.) and even purchased the rights to the Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association for a period of time. Their diversification of services and focus on specific verticals has helped to drive print … and more specifically digital print.

I particularly like the final quote in the story. “For a while we’ve recognized that print is dying,” said Colin See. “So to just try to sell more printed stuff wasn’t a good long-term solution. But to try to incorporate print into what the world is becoming makes sense.”

So, when we hear terms like MSP or business communications service providers – let’s keep in mind that often the challenge is simply to move to strategically packaged services as Kelly Press did. In most of these cases, print is a core service and actually enhances the total offering.

This type of transformation story is playing out in many segments of the printing industry. For example, there is a heated discussion about the role of transaction documents incorporating marketing messages and whether this is a threat to direct mailers. The underlying discussion has focused on who has the capabilities to manage data and provide complex services to help address new applications. Managing data is often cited as the key to becoming a Marketing Services Provider. My question to the Digital Nirvana community is this:

Is “Marketing Services Provider” the right term for what today’s printers should aspire to be?