Depending on its size, this increase could have a profound effect on many mailers –and their customers. A bank mailing out a million statements every month is spending over $350,000 a month on postage, so any CFO worth his country club membership is going to be looking at that as place of potential cost reductions. In fact, many if not most, banks, utilities and credit card companies are already encouraging customers to shift to electronic statements. Some banks are making electronic statements the default choice for new accounts and charging a fee if the new customer wants to get theirs in the mail. While it would be a marketing and public relations disaster to force all customers to shift to electronic delivery, I think institutions are likely to begin charging people who prefer receiving hard copies, especially given the state of banking these days. That’s one approach.

The other is to make a statement more useful as a customer touch-point and increase its relevancy to the customer beyond being merely a bill. The knee-jerk reaction is TransPromo, the idea of putting marketing offers on bills. This seems, at least for now, to work best in relatively limited ways, but give it time. The real estate on a statement, though, is every bit as effective for informing and educating customers about products and services, providing advice and information, announce changes in policies, and generally building relationships. Every organization that sends out bills and statements has plenty of other information to communicate and that monthly envelope that’s sure to be opened is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of reaching every customer. The cost of printing and sending out the statement is still there, but when it does more than just being a transactional document it can be money well spent.

There are a lot of layers to this and there is very definitely no one-size-fits-all solution. How do you see postage costs affecting the transactional market? How do you think statements can be used to be more than just a revenue collection medium? Mailers are all looking for answers, and more than a few of them read this blog. Let’s talk!

The first was the declaration by a German patent court that a key Vistaprint patent was invalid. For several years, Vistaprint has been filing lawsuits against European web-to-print providers based on the European patent, and several companies had gotten out of the business or made financial settlements with Vistaprint. But one of them, Unitedprint, decided to fight the suit in patent court, and it has now prevailed. The court ruled the patent invalid because the technology involved had already been in general use when it was granted. This means that a dark cloud hanging over the market has been removed, and companies (both system vendors and printers) will be less hesitant about getting involved with web-to-print systems.

The second event was the acquisition of the web-to-print software developer diron, one of the leaders in the European market, by CeWe Color, Europe’s largest photofinisher. This will give diron access to CeWe Color’s huge financial resources, and it could help diron become a major international player in the web-to-print market.

You can find more details on both news items at www.beyond-print.net.

Marketers trying to reach the elusive 25- to 44-year-old Generation X segment, which is at the peak of its buying power, face several key obstacles, including splintered media consumption, a greater diversity in “lifestyles,” more penny-pinching habits than Baby Boomers and an aversion to traditional ads, eMarketer has found. Potential avenues of success include ads on social networks, boosting mobile marketing efforts and making online shopping more user-friendly.

For printers, this means that their customers may be finding traditional print marketing methods to be increasingly ineffective, and if those customers are not tracking their marketing channels, they may or may not know why.

Consequently, if marketers see an overall decline in responsiveness to print, they may assume that this decline is a general decline when, in fact, it may be due declines in certain demographics such as this one.

This potential “generation confusion” should be a great concern to printers. As marketers mix up their channel priorities, printers risk losing print jobs to electronic media when not all of this migration is warranted. In some cases, marketers may be better served by switching to electronic media. In others, it may be counter-productive.

Printers need to make sure they understand the dynamics of generational media. Not only as they continue to tweak their marketing services offerings, but also to protect themselves against unnecessary attrition from print. To do this, they need to understand which demographic segments respond most powerfully to which media. Then, they need to begin (or continue) to position themselves to provide (or protect) offerings that best serve each demographic segment.

Pundits have been saying for quite some time that printers need to better understand their customer’s customer, but now the drivers are changing. It used to be that understanding the end user would help printers sell various print applications. Now it may help them protect themselves from losing them.

I suppose there are those who will think this is marvelous, and who will enjoy the instant gratification of buying a book online and being able to enjoy it immediately, but I think it really changes the experience of reading and overcomplicates what is really a simple process. Books are totally portable, can be read anywhere there is a reasonable light source, and don’t depend on batteries (unless you read by flashlight). Books can be passed along to friends and family, and when placed in a bookcase are a monument to the curiosity and interests of the reader. Then there is the tactility of a book, the turning of the pages, and yes, the lack of technology required to simply read. Many of us already spend more time than we’d like staring at a computer screen and I question how many will want to do their personal reading –which is often a time of escape from the day-to-day– just a click away from the distractions of emails and the internet.

Some years back Frank Romano famously pointed out that printed books will survive because of the Three Bs: Bedroom, Bathroom and Beach. He wasn’t wrong then and his insight holds true today.

Cary Sherburne’s Shifting Sands article at WhatTheyThink by Cary Sherburne provides more food for thought on the equipment shift at the show:

For a few more off-the-cuff stats, of the six front-row booths, which arguably are the prime real estate, four are digital companies (Canon, EFI, Kodak and Océ) and they consumed 74% of the front-row space. That being said, Heidelberg still had the largest booth, at 20,700 square feet. But HP, a couple rows back, was close at 17,600 square feet. Those were the two largest booths on the floor. A quick, non-scientific analysis reveals, in fact, that conventional offset press manufacturers took about 63,500 square feet of space, while digital press manufacturers occupied 77,200 square feet (55%) of space. It would be interesting to go back historically to find out when the tipping point actually occurred, where digital press manufacturers first took more space than offset press manufacturers. Perhaps 2008 was the year.

The lack of offset presses might be simple economics: it costs a lot to bring a press to Chicago. However it also costs a lot to put a digital press on the floor (HP didn’t have their new web press at the show).

David Renouf of Newsworld says: “On the back of our contract with Associated Newspapers and with the increasing levels of interest we continue to receive from publishers, we are delighted to be partnering with AlphaGraphics, a best-in-class organisation offering second- to-none levels of quality and service. Similarly, we have taken the necessary steps to invest in the appropriate technology to ensure the requirements of our existing and future clients can be met.”

David Kovacs of AlphaGraphics added: “Newsworld and AlphaGraphics could not be a better match for this partnership. We are both focused on leading the market by servicing client’s needs with technology and customer focused solutions. I am sure others will be watching with anticipation to see where we are able to take this venture. Marrying Newsworld’s vision and experience with our operational excellence was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

As Renouf noted in his comment, Newsworld signed a four-year contract earlier this year with Associated Newspapers Ltd. to print copies of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday in New York.

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.

If you are interested in the EDSF Research Grant Program visit the EDSF’s Website and download a Research Grant Application Packet. While you’re at the site, check out the current research and a list of past academic research white papers.

The grant application deadline for this year is November 25, 2008.

If you know a student studying within the document management and graphic communications industry make sure they know about this program.