Since the advent of high speed color inkjet presses that approach the quality of offset, printers and data centers have begun struggling with the decision of integrating this new technology into their operation.

The decision to move print volume to high speed inkjet is complex and one that does not always have a clear ROI.  Since inkjet brings new and different ways of thinking about everything, you have to implement the system and related changes into your existing operation.

In small-to-midsize printers, this decision will impact nearly every facet of the organization’s processes, including the markets you pursue, how you estimate and price your product, production flow, quality, materials and warehousing, and personnel skills. In many cases, precise navigation these decisions can determine the very survival of the establishment.

But before you get to any of that, first you have to decide if the move to color or monochrome inkjet printing is right for you.  In some cases, modification of your current printing environment is all that is necessary to keep you competitive.  For instance, if you print offset now and have only long runs and little or no variable printing, switching to inkjet most likely will not provided any benefits.  Your efforts should probably be focused on tuning your current production processes.

If you have some of the factors that often make going to inkjet a decent return on investment, that is, you have short runs, need to print variable data, or are overprinting on preprinted material, actually calculating that ROI can be elusive.  Every business case that I have built has been has been completely unique.  Little of any previous analysis was usable. This is mostly because every shop I worked with has accounted for their usage and cost so differently, and each have their own business processes.  Because of that, a single model to capture all of the possible permutations would be so complex that it would lose its value as a template.

And each shop has a different starting point:  Some are all digital already, leveraging the best of the toner technologies, some are all offset, some print variable information on preprinted shells, some carry finished product and some don’t, and some need to meet incredibly tight SLAs.  Some are sheetfed and some are web shops.

Yes, there are common components that remain the same. This includes all the things you may normally think about:  Skilled prepress, press, and finishing labor; Press maintenance and cost of downtime; Plates chemicals and other consumables costs; Toner and click charges; Paper waste and energy costs.  You need to look at ink, paper cost differences, throughput and uptimes, waste, time to produce, cost of shells, and inventory obsolescence. I like to look at some things that you may not consider, like the efficiency gained by consolidating your longer runs to an offset press (if you use offset) and being able to capture business you could not reach in your current state. And if your customers are somewhat flexible, you can add to the business case by demonstrating the efficiencies that minor changes in format or color might give them a marketing advantage or you a cost advantage.

Although you probably have a great handle on your current costs, capturing which of those costs could be eliminated by inkjet, and most importantly, understanding what your new costs REALLY will be, is even more of a challenge. Often, the use of an outside expert could be a very valuable investment. They can help you understand exactly what your new costs will be as you transition to inkjet, model your production with real world data that will give you uptimes for both the printing and finishing environments, help you select and value the new kind of operator labor, and more.

Running a hospital or healthcare practice is already labor and capital intensive, highly regulated and impenetrably complex. The Affordable Care Act and the growing trend toward consumerism has added constant change to the list of industry challenges. While the ACA itself is the law of the land and implementation is moving forward, the foundational elements to be implemented are as firm as warm Jell-O. Change is the new normal:

• States may or may not expand their Medicaid programs;
• Health Insurance Exchanges (HIX) may be set up by states or by the Federal government in certain states, and the Federal HIX implementation structure is not fully defined;
• Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are being formed and tested in near real-time;
• Definitions of Essential Health Benefits (EHBs) can vary by state and guidance is required;
• The “standard” 8 pages format for the newly mandated Summary of Benefits & Coverage (SBC) can now be any length determined necessary by insurance companies (Note: the purpose of this new, somewhat redundant, document was to provide a standardized plan comparison for consumers.)

Provider’s biggest concern may be potential changes and interpretations surrounding “Necessary Care.” According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “care that did not show a proven health benefit, and where a less costly alternative was not used,” accounted for between $158 billion and $226 billion in 2011. Proposed regulation around necessary care shifts financial risk to doctors and hospitals and this, along with other regulations and stricter Medicare compliance requirements, will require investment in Electronic Health Records (EHR) and other major infrastructure upgrades that smaller providers are not equipped to fund.

The combination of independent providers’ flight from risk, a need to dramatically reduce costs and increased capital requirements is driving the next big source of change: Mergers and Acquisitions.

Market consolidation

The pace of consolidation is mind boggling: the annualized number of hospital acquisitions or mergers nearly doubled between 2009 and 2012. Plus, physicians are merging with health plans and hospitals, hospitals are merging with hospitals and long-term care providers, health insurers are investing in hospitals and physician practices. Not to mention non-provider consolidation in biotech and pharmaceutical manufacturers, disease management companies and all along the healthcare supply chain. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Robert Laszewski,  president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates referred to the M&A climate in healthcare as an arms race in which the players are merging into bigger entities in hopes of restraining their own costs and grabbing larger shares of the markets.

According to PWC’s Healthcare Executive Agenda consolidation is not a panacea and even small healthcare mergers carry a lot of risk. We’ve seen the same thing in the merger-prone print industry – nearly two-thirds of deals do not meet pre-merger expectations. This lack of stellar success is not likely to stem the tide of mergers; however, it does present many opportunities for print service providers and industry consultants to make these newly consolidated entities more successful. Here are a few thoughts:

• While individual providers and provider groups have low volumes of communications, larger merged-entities have volumes that are more attractive for outsourcing.
• Newly formed entities have redundant documents and systems that need to be unified or eliminated in order to gain the sought-after costs savings from the merger. Consultants and Outsourcers can help to meet those needs more quickly.
• The ability to consolidate volumes, processes and technology allows outsources to deliver immediate savings from house holding, postal optimization, white paper processing and electronic services such as electronic payment and presentment.

What needs to happen after a merger? Plenty of situations where service providers can add value:

• Determine brand strategy. Research demonstrates that capital markets respond more favorably to brand strategies that involve combining elements of the two companies than strategies that replace one entirely or leave both untouched. This requires an analysis of the strength of both companies.
• In parallel with re-branding considerations, a business communications audit needs to be performed to identify the people, processes and technology used for generating business documents. This audit should generate documentation on current processes and recommendations for leveraging the best practices within each firm, the combined volumes of the merged firms and eliminating redundancies.
• New branding (and likely new regulatory language) will need to be incorporated in the systems that are proposed to be maintained going forward. Efficient implementation will typically require an additional analysis and redesign step to create document standards and streamline implementation.

The newly merged company will likely also be evaluating their supply chain; eliminating vendors or “right-sizing” with vendors that fit their new status as a larger organization. The ability to support these firms with the analysis and streamlining processes makes it more likely that you will be considered for additional outsourcing opportunities rather than dropped from the vendor list.

While it would be prudent for these companies to go through a detailed pre-merger fit and synergy analysis from both a financial and a customer perspective – most often the customer and customer communications strategy is in that “warm Jell-O” mentioned earlier. The opportunity to help companies evaluate these issues pre-merger or immediately post-merger can be of huge benefit in achieving the hoped-for cost savings and also maintaining market share by communicating effectively with customers and making sure the bills get paid amidst the merger madness. Let’s call that preventative care.

The bottom line is that if constant change is the new normal for health care providers, there will be constant opportunities for companies who can help them deal with those changes.

Editor’s Note: Additional information on changes in the Health care industry is available from our sponsor, Canon Solutions America. See the PressGo! Industry Guide to Healthcare.

Elizabeth Gooding is the president of Gooding Communications Group and the editor of InsightForums.com helping clients in highly regulated industries—and the service providers they depend on— to optimize the designs, processes and production technology used for multi-channel communications.

I have just finished reading a very interesting case study in the December 2012 issue of Target Marketing magazine.

It’s for Red Tie Insurance Services, which revealed how it works all the angles to squeeze every drop out its rented lists. Although the company relies on cold calling as its initial point of contact, its approach would work for print and mail, as well.

Here is the nutshell:

1. Once or twice a month, Red Tie purchases a homeowners list based on ZIP Code radius.

2. It imports the list into its CRM system to glean all the phone numbers, address, and names associated with those homeowners.

3. It cold calls all homeowners on the list. For those it cannot contact by phone, it contacts by email if available.

4. Using its CRM system, Red Tie finds Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts for the leads it cannot contact by phone or email and invites them to connect through the company’s Facebook page.

Red Tie has a 22% conversion rate among prospects with whom it speaks, and outside lists comprise 65% of its marketing mix. I have a call in to the owner, Reginald Hawkins, to find out what percentage of those email contacts and social media invitations convert to actual phone calls. As soon as I hear back, I’ll update this post.

[Update: Hawkins indicates that his email contacts generate about a 3% conversion-to-phone call rate. Social media is marginal, but it's just an important "catch all." You never know what leads it will generate.]

For clients who serve business and professional services providers who target homeowners, renters, new movers, and similar audiences, a  similar approach could be used with print, as well. Instead of cold calling, use personalized print as the first contact.  If possible, prime the pump with personalized email or use email to follow up (“Did you receive our postcard?”). Connect with nonrespondents using social media. It’s a simple repeatable approach that has paid off for this marketer.

As a side note, if you go to Red Tie’s Facebook page, it’s interesting that they have a huge QR Code in the upper righthand corner that says, “Scan Me!” The code takes you to a mobile version of its site. We might say, “Why would someone scan a QR Code to go to the mobile site when they are sitting at a computer right then and there?” The answer is, I don’t know, but what I know is that people do it — all the time.

As with the coming of every new year, we all look forward with anticipation of what the new year will bring. For marketing service providers, 2013 seems like it could be an exceptionally exciting year with new advances in technology and the ever growing integration of marketing communications across multiple platforms.

It’s not uncommon to see various blog posts predicting what will be big in 2013. But in my opinion, one of the best compilations of forthcoming trends was blogged by Matt Graham on the SourceLink blog. While I cannot take credit for any of these thoughts, I was so interested by all of the posts that I thought it best to share his insights instead of creating my own (with permission from SourceLink, of course). It is my guess that these trends will resonate especially with print and marketing services providers. These trends will not only challenge marketers, but will provide new opportunities to incorporate some creativity and take advantage of marketing channels, variable data, and emerging technology. So here are the trends, according to Matt Graham, to be on the lookout for and to take advantage of in 2013!

1. Display becomes addressable - New targeting tools allow for online display targeting that is closer to direct mail.
2. Direct marketing becomes conversation – Direct marketing is no longer one-way advertising but now must be able to respond to interested consumers and support two-way conversation.
3. Smartphones and tablets pass PCs – As more and more people begin to own and use tablets and PCs to access online information, websites and mobile content will become optimized for various screen sizes to increase the viewing experience.
4. Social becomes measurable – This is a big advantage for any Social Media Manager! New tools allow for a better measurement of ROI from social media marketing.
5. Hyperpersonalization: the use of big data – The options here are overwhelming when you consider the amount of data being collected and the number of channels available for communication.
6. Digital Mailboxes take root – the digital mailbox replaces email in-boxes while direct marketing and advertising quickly follow suit.
7. Channel convergence becomes real – Marketing channel crossover continues and increases as users expect to have seamless conversations across multiple platforms.
8. Digital couponing and payments sway consumer decisions – Direct marketing allows for marketers to target coupons to relevant prospects and stimulate purchase decisions.
9. Direct mail survives, but not standalone – Direct mail will still be utilized. However, volume and expenditures will continue to decrease as integration of direct mail and online initiatives becomes more prevalent.
10. Big Data – Big Data is everywhere and the topic of many a white paper in 2012. The trend increases in 2013 as marketers learn how to organize and capitalize from data.

If you clicked through to all of the articles, this is certainly more than enough reading to get you excited for 2013! May the new year bring you success… Happy Marketing!

It’s fair to say that the business model for health insurance is in the process of being completely redefined by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or ACA). Health insurers can expect to spend the bulk of 2013 getting ready for the new post-ACA marketplace. How far reaching are these changes? Well, they impact critical factors like:

• Who insurers can sell to: individuals in addition to groups.
• Who insurers must sell to: no ability to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.
• Where they sell their products: new Health Insurance Exchanges (HIE) in addition to the usual channels plus new retail branches.
• How they can sell their products: products offered through exchanges must conform to one of 5 standardized options.
• How they can price their products: they must devote 80% (in some cases 85%) of premiums to actual customer medical expenses leaving only 15% to 20% for all administration and overhead.

In addition to the changes that are mandated by the plan, there are many changes that just naturally flow from adapting to a consumer-driven market. In 2011 approximately 50 million people – or about 16% of the US population – had no health insurance coverage or eligibility for government sponsored health programs. In 2014 approximately 60% of that population is expected to purchase private health insurance coverage – that’s about 30 million new customers. In addition, another 17 million customers may come on the books as states expand Medicaid eligibility to more low-income Americans since most states contract Medicaid coverage to private insurers.

Insurers are trying to turn their marketing and sales organizations into retail operations to tap the consumer market. Like retailers, they are trying to leverage data on their customer base to drive effective marketing and communications programs. Since, other than marketing Medicare supplement programs, most insurers have had little or no consumer marketing experience they need help in this area. Compounding the problem, according to PWC, this new insurance market is made up of consumers who are likely to be less educated and many will need material in a language other than English.

Since many of these new insurance consumers have never enrolled in a health plan before, they are likely to shop for health insurance they way that they would shop for any other major purchase like a home appliance or a car – by seeking out a familiar brand. To become top of mind before these people enter the market, insurers are investing in a wide array of advertising: TV, radio, web, print and billboards to build awareness. Direct mail, email and mobile marketing will only increase as new products become available and market data is refined.

But the retail transformation goes beyond branding, insurers are opening branches where consumers can learn about insurance options and buy on the spot. In May, Horizon BCBS announced that they would be opening a new retail center in New Jersey and Blue Shield of California recently opened a “Blue Shield Store” inside of Lucky’s Supermarket in San Francisco. These are two of several retail store-fronts in 5 or 6 states with more to come in 2013.

These retail operations will naturally need to be staffed with knowledgeable people and supported with kiosks and other technology but, they will also need printed collateral, the ability to order and manage collateral across locations and the kind of seasonal and tailored signage seen in the best branch banks and retail stores.

Back in June, I posted about a Forrester/Silverpop study that shows a rise in marketing automation, including trigger-based marketing. Among the data used to construct triggers, according to the study, were transaction history, order and response history, social media activity or comments, and account activity and balance.

The latest study from Epsilon, its Q3 2012 Email Trends and Benchmarks study, adds to this picture. Marketers’ use of emails triggered from welcome, thank you, or abandoned shopping cart pages rose 10.3% to 2.6% of total email volume in Q3 2012 compared with the year-ago quarter. Triggered open rates performed at 75.1% higher than “business as usual” (BAU) emails in Q312.

These and similar trigger data provide important lessons for the digital print industry. Primary among them: Triggered email doesn’t work because it is email. It works because it is triggered — it offers really, really good timing based on something the consumer himself or herself does. That kind of relevance works for print, too.

The more we see data showing the value of triggers for email, the more it should motivate us to do the same for print. This might mean sending an extra 25% off on the recipient’s birthday. Incentives and promotions to renew subscriptions, leases, or licenses right before the renewal date. Or “we miss you” communications and discounts offered to customers who haven’t ordered from you past a certain date.

There are lots of triggers that you (and your customers) can use to generate high-impact direct mail. Or email if you’re doing multichannel marketing. That, of course, means having the data to construct the triggers. So if you haven’t been able to convince your customers to append their databases or turn their mailing lists into marketing databases, maybe triggers are your “in”!

In this industry, we’ve been talking for a long time about multi-channel marketing and pairing print with email as part of a larger, more comprehensive marketing strategy. With the rise of mobile, this multi-channel strategy has become more complicated, and now there is new data to add to the mix.

Once again, it’s about mobile. More and more emails are being opened on mobile devices (both on mobile phones and tablets)—so much so that the need to accommodate the unique needs of mobile devices is becoming impossible to ignore.

For example, just this past weekend, MediaPost reported that an analysis of 2.8 million emails, Knotice found that during the heavy shopping period around Thanksgiving (November 20-26, 2012), 45% of emails sent by retailers were opened on mobile devices. That was a 50% jump from the same period in 2011.

Knotice also found emails opened via tablets doubled compared to the same period last year.

I have a 2012 infographic from Litmus that reports similar results. According to its analysis of more than 1 billion email opens, more email is now read on mobile (36%) than on a desktop (33%) or Webmail (31%). In addition, it found that opens on mobile devices increased 80% over the first half of 2012. More than 80% of opens were on an iPhone or iPad.

[Update: I just saw another set of data this morning. As reported in Online Media Daily, Return Path found consumers are significantly more likely to open email on mobile devices (37%) than through Webmail using a browser (30%). This is right in line with the data reported by Litmus.]

Reading email on a mobile phone is not the same as reading it on a desktop. So as the percentage of email being read on mobile phones increases, if you’re offering email marketing as part of a multi-channel marketing strategy and aren’t accommodating the unique needs of mobile, it’s time to start.  This means shorter subject lines. Simpler pitches (for multi-tasking users). Even clearer KISS (keep it simple, stupid) calls to action.

You should be helping your multi-channel marketing customers do those things anyway, of course. But as the the email market continues to fracture, and as print is increasingly tied to the success of integrated multi-channel marketing programs, understanding not just the needs of email marketing but mobile phones and tablets is becoming just another part of marketing and selling print.

What a trip down memory lane! I started tracking and writing about QR codes back in 2010 when I released my first edition of QR Codes: What You Need to Know. This week I finished the first truly major update with all-new data, fresh perspectives, and a host of new examples and case studies.  There is  no paragraph that is untouched.

What are the major changes I’ve seen in the past three years?

1. Smartphone penetration is over 50%.  When I started, smartphone penetration was around 20%. There is a big difference between the mobile marketing environment in a world in which there is 20% smartphone penetration and one in which it is 50%+.

2. One-third of consumers are now mobile-only. When one-third of your audience doesn’t have a landline, you (and your customers) sure better have a mobile strategy. If you don’t, I guess that’s okay. I’m sure your competitors won’t mind.

3. QR codes are on everything.  I used to have to search for QR codes and got excited when I found one. Now, from packaging to movie posters to watermelons, QR codes have become ubiquitous. They have fundamentally become part of the fabric of our culture.

4. Case studies are covering every aspect of the marketing landscape.  When I first started covering this topic, case studies and great examples were not the easiest to come by.  This time, there were so many great examples, with response rates, download volumes, number of scans, and other data provided, that I had to hold back to avoid ballooning the report.

Nay-sayers can “nay, nay” all they want, but QR codes have become as accepted as any other response mechanism in use today.  Sure, 80% of today’s consumer population hasn’t scanned a QR code (yet), but you know what? I haven’t called an 800 number or sent in a business reply card in years. I’d guess that many younger consumers haven’t either.

Click here to see more on the report.

Every year, technology allows companies to make more responsible decisions about the environment, and with each passing year, awareness amongst business owners and consumers seems to be rising. The American Forest and Paper Association reported that paper recovery from 2011 was up to 66.8%, which is over twice the conservation compared to 1990. Energy usage is down, Greenhouse gases are down, and all indications show that these trends will continue. What is at the core of these significant industry shifts?

Organizations are taking steps to reduce environmental impact and can make smart decisions about the supplies they do use. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international not-for-profit organization designed to reduce environmental impact. Organizations displaying the FSC logo guarantee that the product comes from responsible sources—environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable.

Additionally, modern print equipment, especially printers with “waste-free” systems and roll-to-roll printing (that starts printing the first page as soon as the roll begins) produce amazing image quality and reduce waste. Digital printing, by nature, is significantly more waste-efficient, as the chemicals and proofing associated with offset printing are reduced.

The video above illustrates the fluid process of quality management with sophisticated digital print machinery, where the documents can also come to a complete stop and restart, without any white pages in between, mid-run without having to restart the process or check and discard proofed documents.

“Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” was a mantra that was stressed to me at an early age, and responsible printers are doing just that. Printers nationwide can rejoice in the fact that a combination of environmental responsibility and advances in technology are making a difference in the preservation of our natural resources.

As an FSC-certified company, we are not only cognizant of environmental impact, but we are also investing in technology, like the Océ ColorStream® 3500, that emphasizes the importance of waste reduction and how it impacts the sustainability of our environment.

I’ve been thinking about response rates, and you know what? I’m starting to wonder why we use them. They are in every case study. Every Webinar. Every presentation slide. Yet they don’t really tell us much of anything.

Response rates simply tell us whether the basic marketing elements of the piece are compelling enough to get people to take an initial first step. The respondent makes a phone call. They scan a QR Code. They log into a personalized URL.

If they do, great! But you can have an 80% response rate and the campaign can be a money-loser. Why? Because simply taking the initial action doesn’t necessarily translate into a purchase. If they make the call, scan the code, or log in but don’t actually make a purchase, sign up for the loyalty card, or take the other desired action, the response rate didn’t do you much good at all. That’s why we need to know conversion rates.

At the same time, you can have a high conversion rate but the campaign still loses money. Why? What is the cost to develop and execute the campaign? How much did it generate? If it costs $2.00 each to send the postcard, but each postcard only generated $1.80 in revenue, you’re going to lose money no matter how high your response rate and conversion rates are. That’s why we look at metrics like dollars per sale and ROI.

Here’s a look at some of the common metrics used in evaluating campaign success today:

• Response rate
• Conversation rate
• Cost per sale
• Revenue per sale
• Return on investment
• Lifetime customer value

There are additional metrics for online campaigns, such as open rate, click-through rate, form fill rate, and more.

Do you know which marketing metrics are most effective? Do you talk to your clients about using the right metrics to evaluate the true success of their campaigns? (For info on a brandable white paper on this topic, click here.) If not, this is a conversation you should start having . . . because knowing the response rate isn’t enough.

I ran across a case study the other day that I just love. It was posted in a LinkedIn discussion group by Peter Britton of The Write Answers (Vancouver, Canada). It went something like this:

The client sold Canadian souvenirs to Japanese people (in Japan.)  It had 110,000 customers. Average order was $150.

Britton was at the airport and saw a busload of Japanese tourists heading home and each had what he called “at least two boxes of smoked salmon” (considered to be a delicacy there).  Seeing an opportunity for the client, Britton had its IT guy pull the top 1,000 customers (those who bought the most often and spent most money).

Britton created a mailer that included 8 oz. of smoked salmon, a “thanks for being a loyal customer letter,” and an offer for some Canadian art (priced at $1,500 to $2,500). Cost was $20 per package.

The client  mailed to all 1,000 people in groups of 200—best to worst.  Response rates ranged from 25% (best 200) to 12% (last 200). Total average orders was $2,000.

When summarizing the reason for the success of this campaign, the original poster cited them as follows:

• Being selective/targeted in your audience
• Using local knowledge to identify a relevant promotional gift suited to the client’s particular market
• Executing a very considered campaign in manageable chunks so when the inquiries come back in, the client can continue to make the customer feel valued with an instant response as opposed to drowning in a swamp of inquiries and leaving turn these warm leads to turn cold.
• Making the businesses top customers feel valued with a desirable gift and exclusive offer only available to them.

But Britton himself was more succinct. He said, “What made it successful was we mailed it. Too many people are afraid to ‘just do it’ and think a $20 per piece package is too expensive.  At the end of the day [to quote Wayne Gretzgy], you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

I have been reading about the future of online search as going beyond key words and into the world of search intent. In other words, “What did you mean by that?” I think it has significant implications for the future of 1:1 printing, as well.

For better or worse, online advertisers are starting to serve up ads, not just based on the terms we search on, but on all of our past behavior online so they can guess what we are trying to do with the information. For example, did I search on Southern spices because I am a 15-year-old researching a school project or because I am 40-something trying a new style of cooking? Was it a random search or have I made this same search or similar searches multiple times (higher level of intent).

To attempt to determine consumer intent, companies like Adchemy are using a variety of techniques (Adchemy calls them Intent Maps) that include search, click-throughs, likes, and other online behaviors. In Adchemy’s case, it uses 430 of them.

This is raising the bar for 1:1 printing. On one hand, it’s a good thing for the market because the more consumers demand relevance in marketing communications, the more they will respond to personalized print communications, too . . . if they are done well. On the other hand, the more sophisticated online targeting becomes, the more clunky or amateur print personalization stands out.

I have now finished writing Pira’s The Future of Variable Data Printing to 2017 and the data continue to rumble around in my head. I look at the numbers for direct mail in the United States (the report contains global data, as well as individual countries and regions), and granted, the decline in direct mail is for analog (down -4.8% CAGR between 2012-2017), but while the forecast for the data for digital printing / overprinting (where the VDP volumes are) is rising, it’s only up .4% CAGR.

If personalization were going to be the savior of the printing industry, the forecast would be higher. Personalization is going to be critical for printers to survive in today’s world of electronic marketing and communications, but personalization alone isn’t going to be its savior.

Personalization will protect the volumes of print, but it has to be personalization that is done well. It has to be done with a high level of sophistication that competes in terms of relevance and helpfulness with the kind of targeting that consumers are experiencing online. That level of personalization increasingly requires data mining, customer profiling, and other data techniques that are foreign to the average printer.

What does this mean for individual printers trying to keep their pipelines full? It means that if you’re going to hitch your wagon to 1:1 / personalized printing, you need to find your niche and do it really, really well. But also look to other ways that personalization benefits your customers, such as process improvement, production flexibility, and cost savings, and for more mundane applications like serialized labels and tags.

1:1 printing doesn’t have to be marketing sexy to bring (or protect) print volume. That’s going to be a critical message for digital print providers going into the future.

When we talk about how digital print fits into today’s marketing trends, we often talk about multi-channel marketing. Increasingly, 1:1 printing doesn’t stand alone. It works in concert with other channels like email, social media, QR Codes, social media, and opt-in text messaging.

But just how many channels are we talking about? Is one channel enough? How about two? Or do you need three? It depends, perhaps, on how easy you make it for your customers to deploy them.

MindFire has been tracking growth in the use of multi-channel elements by its customers’ end users (marketers) and its data show just how quickly a marketer’s multi-channel programs can expand when the addition of channels is simplified.

In 2009, Marymount University, which uses the MindFire platform, began using a multi-channel strategy. Over the next two years, it rapidly expanded its number of channels used. Because it tracked and monitored each channel, it knew where its efforts were most effective.

Over time, it increased its total number of mailers by 15.5%, increased its email component to nearly 100%, increased its graphics versioning from one version to six, and added SMS text reminders, personalized QR Codes, and mobile-optimization.

What kind of things did Marymount learn? In its 11 cross-media campaigns with PURLs between February 2011 – April 2012, it found that . . .

• 10% of people responded after the direct mail launch but before the first email
• 69% of people who responded did so only after receiving the first email follow-up
• Multi-channel prospects are 4.5x more responsive than single-channel responders — 1.32% average single single-channel response rate vs. 5.87% average multi-channel response rate.

These are powerful insights.

You don’t get results like these by looking at sales figures at the end of a campaign or end of a season. You get results like these by monitoring each channel individually, then wrapping those lessons around to the next campaign. It’s added time, but as Marymount University clearly discovered, it’s worth it.

These days, the talk is all about 100% digital on plain white stock. Eliminate inventory. Streamline processes. Improve workflow. Speed time to market. Today’s digital production capabilities provide production flexibility never before possible—and having all this flexibility is great.

But in light of the focus on eliminating overprint and moving to 100% digital workflows, what’s funny is that on a worldwide basis, digital overprint is forecast to be on the rise. According to Pira’s “Future of Variable Data Printing to 2017,” digital overprinting is forecast to rise 1.5% over the next five years. Surprise!

Granted, digital overprinting is forecast to decline slightly in more mature markets like the United States, but that decline is slowing from the 2007–2012 period. (Not all of that volume will be from variable overprint. There is still plenty of static overprinting being done, as well.)

Plain paper production does offer cost-efficiencies in certain markets, and it’s something that needs to be considered in an overall investment strategy. But in all the hype over new products, new technologies, new workflows at Graph Expo, let’s not forget that there are still great cost-efficiencies and value in traditional workflow, as well.

Plain paper may get all the hype right now, but there are still plenty of printers running mixed/hybrid workflows and taking them all the way to the bank.  Digital overprinting is less sexy, but let’s not forget it’s where the volume is . . . at least for now.

When we talk about the future of digital printing, we talk about variable data and how the future of print marketing is in 1:1 / personalized printing. But does that mean that volumes of data-driven printing are growing? Or if they are, that marketing applications are driving the growth? Not necessarily.

On October 31, Pira is releasing a report “The Future of Variable Data Printing to 2017” that I am currently finishing writing. In it, there are some sobering statistics.  I’m not sure at this point what numbers I can release, so I’ll just speak in generalities for now.

Globally, VDP is forecast to rise only incrementally between 2012-17. In the areas of promotion and marketing, it’s forecast to be down incrementally — something that flies in the face of conventional wisdom.

In this industry, we talk about the value of ROI, real-time tracking, monitoring, metrics, and measurement, personalization and relevance, and so on, as driving growth in the markets. To a certain extent, that’s true. It drives a shift in the ratio between static and personalized printing in some markets. But this isn’t a blanket statement we can make.

VDP is also used for pure production efficiency and serialization, which is something we don’t talk about much but which, according to these global Pira numbers, is a much larger factor in overall market growth than VDP for marketing and promotion.

For a long time, there has been a disconnect between the promise and reality when it comes to the opportunities in VDP for the average printer. The more I fully absorb these Pira statistics, the more I see why. VDP offers growth potential, but it’s in pockets. It’s in certain applications, in certain geographies, and using certain production processes. If you have the right application but wrong process, if you have the right process but wrong geography, it’s no wonder it’s such a tough row to hoe.