It’s certainly very important for all of us that are associated to the printing industry to understand what marketers are thinking and talking about. Thus, I’d like to share some of my observations from DMA 2011. I hope that you find them helpful!

1. Marketers are absolutely in need of integrated solutions:

One theme that seemed to exist in many of the conference sessions was the need to break down silos and to integrate marketing efforts. As more and more marketers move to reach their customers and prospects through multiple channels, many of them have fallen into the trouble of storing and managing multiple databases. Those databases might store conflicting or simply varying bits of information about their contacts. This harms a marketer’s need to try to communicate with their audience in real-time. It also prevents a marketer from truly delivering one-to-one and relevant messages.

Thus, service providers (especially those that are committed to offering marketing services through multiple channels as opposed to only print, mail, or fulfillment) have a tremendous opportunity to promote and offer solutions of that nature to their customers to help them solve those challenges.

2. The Primary Discussion was Digital — But Print Still Has a Place in the Marketing Mix!:

I won’t lie – many of the discussions at DMA 2011 centered around online marketing and other digital marketing initiatives. But there were still a number of great case studies shared that involved print and direct mail components. Some of the main reasons why I heard marketers share why they still chose print as a channel included:

• It is tangible.
• It can be personalized.
• It can create a deeper emotional impact.
• It can be a very effective way to drive people to online content.

3. When it comes to social networks, businesses have a lot to learn:

Judging by the attendance of various sessions, many companies are still striving to learn how to effectively use social networks in the B-to-B space. Here were a few of the tips that I heard that I’d like to share:

• Twitter’s search features can be one of the most powerful websites for companies to utilize. It enables us to really listen to what’s on the minds of customers and prospects.
• Facebook’s dominance in the social networking space is truly astounding — thus, we most likely all need to invest more resources there. They have 800 million users! Nearly half of them log in each day.  30 billion pieces of content are shared there each month! Those numbers clearly dwarf the activity that other social networks can share. With that much volume, it’s certain that some of the content being shared and discussed has to do with companies and products. In order to capitalize on the opportunities there, business of all shapes and sizes must be on Facebook too.
• People love video. It’s true. Video is being used more and more by marketing agencies and other companies to tell their stories. I truly think that many service providers can utilize video to do the same thing

4. Mobile and QR Codes Were Huge… and Growing:

There were a ton of QR Codes at the conference. They were on posters, signs, collateral, and clothes. While that is a good sign to me when it comes to printing, I also noticed that most of the QR Codes were not used 100% properly.

• Primarily, most of them seemed to point to non-mobile websites. I truly think that there is a tremendous opportunity for service providers to grow their business by doing more than just providing or printing the QR Code; but rather, to also offer the building and hosting of the mobile website or mobile landing page.

Social networking is certainly one of my favorite passions. I truly believe that it can help print, mail, fulfillment, and marketing services providers in many different areas — including marketing, sales, customer support, and HR. However, many companies still primarily view channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn as ways to simply distribute press releases.

While there certainly is a place for using social networking channels for distributing news, they can absolutely help companies in other areas.

Here are 3 ways that your company may be able to find success through social networks:

• To Provide Customer Support:We have probably all done it by now. Maybe it was to an airline or a restaurant. Perhaps it was to a manufacturer or retail store. For one reason or another, the company treated us in a way that we didn’t appreciate. Thus, we turned to social networks such as Facebook or Twitter to express our complaint to others. While it might simply feel good to let out some steam, don’t we feel much better if the company does something to react to our public grievance?The same thing could be happening to your business right now. Someone could be displeased with a print job, the time it takes to get a call back from a sales rep, or the lack of information on your website. If those folks complain on social networks, you certainly may cringe. But at least you’ll have the opportunity to know about the complaint and then address it!

  How can you know if someone’s complaining about your business online? There are absolutely tools and services that can help you.  For example, you could use Google Alerts to set up notifications for your company name. You could use Twitter’s search feature. Or you could partner with a 3^rd-party.

  No matter what the case, social networks give you the ability to listen to what people are saying and then quickly take action to provide some sort of customer support to them.

  Of course, social networks also allow you to proactively provide customer support. Through your social networking accounts, you could provide links to how-to-guides that provide suggestions and best practices for ordering a print job. You could provide links to other resources and case studies that may inspire a customer or prospect to do more business with you.

  If your customers are on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, then you should absolutely be there to provide support when they need it.

• For Finding Leads:This one may sound obvious, but I do not believe that companies are using social networks enough to actively find and connect with leads.One way that this can be done is to search Twitter for terms and phrases that may indicate that someone needs help with a print job. While you certainly could search for variations of the word “print”, you also could look at companies that are exhibiting at upcoming trade shows or hosting seminars. No doubt, they may have printing needs. Social networks may allow you to quickly connect with them.

  Also, LinkedIn offers plenty of opportunities for sales reps to engage with potential prospects across the verticals that they may sell to. If you take the initiative to join and contribute to the Groups that your target audience participates in, you may increase the chances that they’ll turn to you when they need your services.

• For Finding & Recruiting New Employees: When a printer is transforming their business to offer additional marketing services, they may recognize the need to find and invest in employees that may have slightly different skill-sets than they’ve looked for in the past. You may need someone that has website design skills, that can write prolifically, or that has a passion for social networking! One way to find these people is via social networks.It’s fairly easy to search for students or recent graduates from schools that traditionally produce people that are interested in the graphic arts and printing communities. Once you find them, you may be able to find out what other passions or talents they may have, and then you’ll have the opportunity to engage them in possible employment discussions.

These are just a few of the ways that companies could use social networking to improve their business. If you’ve had any success with these, I’d love to hear about it!

To learn more about my book, “Business Transformation: A New Path to Profit for the Printing Industry”, visit  my book’s website.

While working to achieve higher relevance  with customer communications can have effective results, aligning both business strategy and technology continues to be challenging. Walls need to be broken down between key departments like IT, marketing, public relations, and customer service to have uniform understanding of goals with customer communication, as well as to open up information sharing. At the same time, technology also needs to be aligned, integrated, and leveraged to meet customer communications goals, and needs to be user-friendly enough for business users to easily utilize it. Aligning the right business units with each other can ensure the right technologies are used for the right application and valuable information is driving those applications.

The customer communications technology landscape itself continues to evolve as companies continue to strive for better ways to execute on their communications strategies. Overall customer experience and engagement has become one of the pillars of the business technology IT stack, and communications is a big part of that. From call center management to CRM tools and content management systems, technology is being aligned to deliver consistent, relevant, and ultimately satisfying customer experiences.

This technology stack also includes tools that enable increasingly multi-channel output, including print, e-mail, text messages, and even Web presentation. We would traditionally categorize these tools as “document composition,” although over the past five years, many of these systems have greatly expanded in scope to manage and output communications across a variety of channels. In addition, as large, enterprise IT vendors have continued to help transform customer communications for their clients, they’ve needed to leverage document composition technology to manage the “last mile” of communications output to the customer.

Because of this need, we’ve seen a spate of acquisitions of document composition technology providers by enterprise-scale vendors:

• 2004: Pitney Bowes acquires Group1 Software
  
• 2008: EMC acquires Document Sciences
• 2008: Oracle acquires Skywire Software
• 2008: HP acquires Exstream Software
• 2009: FIS acquires Metavante
• 2010: OpenText acquires StreamServe

In general, these acquisitions serve as a way to support broader objectives of enabling businesses to execute customer communications in a more seamless way. Even those vendors that remain independent maintain partnerships with large-scale vendors and have worked to ensure that their technology can integrate with a wide variety of third-party systems.

Ultimately, it’s important to remember that no single technology is going to be able to enable communications that achieve the concept of “right person, right time, right medium”. Enterprise IT vendors have realized this, and have grabbed many key output technology players to integrate that component with other systems in a modular way. Businesses need to be thinking the same way: leverage the right technology where appropriate and make sure it aligns with an overarching customer communications strategy. Achieving relevance and value through delivering a great end-to-end customer experience is more attainable than ever, but it requires goal-driven business and technology alignment to realize.

Peter concludes that the marketing management tools and web analytics that measure revenue at various online touchpoints don’t reflect the contribution of offline activities like friends’ recommendations, using multiple computers when ordering, in-store purchasing, and so on. Add in such other influences as PR, print advertising, and social media and – clearly – “What drove the sale?” becomes an inscrutable question. At least for now. But maybe not for long.

Undaunted, Peter says “The measure of success of a marketing campaign is quite simply whether the incremental profit generated was greater than the incremental marketing spend (including salary costs for people working on the campaigns) during the defined time period.”

That makes some sense, but it really doesn’t work for direct marketers who have followed Lester Wunderman since 1967, testing, measuring, adjusting, testing, measuring… and so on.

Though they didn’t admit it for years, all this weighing must have made quite an impression on TV, radio, newspaper, billboard, and print advertising folks, because — somewhere on the way to the scales — a strange thing happened. Every channel began to quietly calculate how it, too, could measure.

As extensions of traditional direct marketing, email, p-URLs, landing pages, and all other online media were naturals of course. But the guys with the scales also began to find measurable profits in infomercials, radio, publishing, television, mobile marketing, and even social media.

In fact, even though apologists had let PR and media advertising off the ROI hook for years, the first arrows shot at social media’s launch charged that nobody could measure its results.

So, is it possible to calculate ROI across multiple channels? It is. Increasingly, it is because direct marketing suggests we can.

p.s. The notion that direct mail is the only measurable non-electronic marketing media still makes it stand out in the crowd.

However, environmental performance is dependent on individual companies and the regions where operations are located. The strictest level of environmental enforcement is typically seen in developed nations and the least strict in developing nations. The same goes for use of B-A-T. For example, large multi-national companies may have relatively modern mill operations throughout the world whereas small or medium sized pulp and paper producers based in developing countries may still be running old technology and be faced with less regulation. One thing is clear: there has been a more significant focus on the sustainability of paper products in recent years. More paper buyers are now evaluating the environmental and social responsibility of their paper suppliers to minimize risks and develop business relationships with producers who are engaged in sustainability.

Below are some basic tips that help define “sustainable paper” based on procurement policies I have had the opportunity to review and key guidance documents such as the WBCSD / WRI Guide on Sustainable Procurement of Wood and Paper-based Products.

 1. Reduce impacts over the life cycle of paper.  

Paper has environmental impacts at all stages of its life cycle: raw material procurement including forest management, manufacturing of pulp and paper, paper distribution, transportation, recovery and disposal. The goal of sustainable production should be to lower the environmental impact, or the overall environmental footprint, of paper products over their life cycle. Reporting tools such as EPAT , Paper Profile , and the WWF Paper Scorecard  assess product performance across a wide range of indicators such as percentage of certified fibre from sustainable managed forests, recycled fibre use, water and energy use, emissions to air and water, solid waste to landfill, greenhouse gas emissions, social responsibility, certifications and reporting.

 2. Show regulatory compliance.

Most people expect companies to be in full compliance with environmental regulations. When problems happen, pulp and paper producers should show how they reacted and how they will prevent re-occurrence. Openness and transparency maintains credibility and good business relationships.

3. Promote sustainable forest management and biodiversity.

One way to prove sustainable forest management is for pulp and paper producers to certify forest land and their fiber tracing system using standards such as PEFC , SFI, and FSC . Additional initiatives can include the implementation of a biodiversity strategy or having policies against forest conversion and old-growth forest protection, to name a few. When paper products are labelled with the PEFC, SFI or FSC logos it is a sign of responsible forest management.

4. Recycle and use recycled fiber sustainably.

Recycling paper is very good practice, but sustainable use of recycled fibre means using it at the right locations and in the right paper grades based on economic and environmental considerations. In general, it makes more sense to use recycled fiber in lower end grades such as cartonboard and paperboard products (ex: packaging) than in graphic papers like magazine and catalog grades. Today, over 80% of recovered paper globally is used in packaging grades because the manufacture of these grades does not typically involve de-inking and / or bleaching (i.e. less cost and environmental impacts). Newsprint and tissue paper is also a large user of recycled fiber.

Other factors to consider are transportation distance of the recovered paper (i.e. usually near areas of large population density) and paper quality needs. In many cases, wood fiber may be a more sustainable choice providing a better balance between economic and environmental considerations. In the papermaking process, wood fiber can be recycled an estimated 4 to 7 times, after which the fiber breaks down and becomes waste. In other words, recovered paper is not an infinite source of raw material. To make the global fiber cycle work, a continual input of 35 to 65% of fresh wood fiber is needed depending on the grade of paper manufactured. If no wood fibre were used then degradation through recycling would result in the world running out of paper in within a period 6 to 18 months depending on the paper grade. Visit PaperLifecycle.org to read more on this topic.

Whether you purchase wood based or recycled paper, engagement in recycling of all paper products should be part of your life and your business. Stay tuned for “Part 2″ next week where I present the remaining tips on identifying sustainable paper.

Phil Riebel is a senior sustainability advisor to the forest, paper and print sector. He has 23 years of international experience in the sector including senior management positions in industry and consulting. Phil also owns and manages 200 acres of sustainable forest. He can be reached at philriebel@bellaliant.net

For $199 a year, Pitch says a business can go green, go mobile, and “stay in touch.” It can create “electronic brochures, flyers, messages, schedules, electronic business cards, and more.”

I checked it out. The enterprise is “a property of” a real estate investment company which specializes in lease-to-own real estate and also appears to be affiliated with a now-defunct appraisal company.

In 2011, promises will be coming out of the woodwork to “help” businesses get green, mobile, and marketed. For serious marketers, this can only underscore the value of experience.

For one thing, eco-conscious direct marketers are already stomping the carbon footprint. Meanwhile, “paperless” is by no means a sure sell. Both consumers and the government are increasingly suspicious of “greenwashers,” so the pros are keeping it real.

Mobile marketing remains tricky. Privacy Rights Clearinghouse says smart phone users are leery of marketing outreach to their devices and lawsuits are on the rise.

And then there’s direct mail. According to The DMA and other industry observers, in 2010 direct mail advanced as a trusted marketing medium.

That’s why, for now and in the foreseeable future, direct mail — along with all other serious opt-in direct marketing — will be the best channel standing.

Not really. There are always different configurations for folding paper that can get a very large amount of information into a compact size. When designing for folded materials, what is most important is to focus on the organization and reveal of the content so that it does not confuse the recipient, and the placement of critical marketing messages. I always suggest that you mock up your layout and hand it to a few people to make sure the message is properly communicated. If your small test group doesn’t get it, your mailing audience won’t get it, either, and you should rework your layout and test again.

What are the most effective machinable folds for direct mail?

The key to successful machine production for direct mail is closed edges. Perfect example – the accordion fold is notoriously problematic for both self-mailing and for auto-inserting. The trouble is caused by the format—accordions don’t have a closed edge. The open sides make it very difficult, if not impossible, to auto insert, and if it’s self-mailing it’ll need four tabs to seal both sides. Expensive and unattractive. However, if you choose a wrapped accordion (see illustration), you get the accordion experience you’re looking for with its pull-out panels, but you also get a closed edge, which changes the tab requirement and offers a closed edge for inserting. So, sometimes you can get what you want with a little creativity.

How important is machinability for direct mail?

I’ll answer a question with a question: How important is it that you don’t throw money away? I see it all the time—a really great design built in a format that instantly adds a .20 per piece non-machinable surcharge to the mailing budget. Why???? I have samples in my collection that miss USPS aspect ratio by 1/8 inch. It’s silly. What a mindless and costly mistake. In my opinion, there are two things to consider when talking about machine production—machinability of the fold and machinability for mailing. Unless you don’t care at all about the budget, ideally, you should aim for a maximum of one of the two options, but never both. For example, if you’re printing a fairly short run, you may choose a unique folding style that has to be hand folded, but you should try to produce it in a format that is within USPS aspect ratio. Or, similar scenario, design a machinable fold in a square format if you must, however, your most efficient solution will always be machinable fold in a machinable mail format.

Editors Note:  You can find more ideas from Trish at the foldfactory 3-D sample library and watch short videos of hundreds of folding ideas that will be sure to add some variety to the everyday. 

But it also has been keeping up with the advancing technologies in printing and imaging today. With today’s digital presses paper makers need to work hand in hand and enhance the sheet to work and be qualified on the many machines out there in the market place. Paper like any product has many different variables that go into the making of a sheet.

Because toner and inkjet behave differently than ink, they usually require special papers. Some paper manufacturers offer grades for both digital and offset litho, so that jobs can include sheets printed by both processes. Take Inkjet for example. Inkjet printing is was originally designed mainly for home, home office, and small business use, but is becoming increasingly common for commercial applications. For best results on inkjet printers, use papers specifically designed for digital inkjet technology—with optimized smoothness, sizing, sheet formation, special coating, or enhanced brightness. Inks for drop-on-demand inkjet printing are pigment-based rather than dye-based. This means they are water-soluble and therefore less permanent than inks used in offset printing or toners used in laser printing (electrophotography). Non-water-soluble, lightfast inks are now available for industrial use. Combined with fade-resistant papers, they enhance photo longevity and color fastness. Some printers feature a custom color match (Pantone Matching System – PMS) for high-resolution jobs. Printers can also provide a color chart to designers. 

For Digital laser methods; Static electricity is how toner-based printers work, so humidity control is important. Some digital presses have built-in temperature and humidity control systems, but except for a few models, you will need a humidity-controlled environment. Higher temperatures increase the likelihood of humidity-related problems, including curling, blistering, cracking, etc. The higher the speed, the more heat generated. Proper paper conditioning prior to and during printing are important. Ideal conditions are 45% humidity and 75ºF (24ºC).

Specifically designed digital laser printing papers provide the best performance. Better “runnability” and end results are obtained with ultra-smooth surfaces and high brightness. Because the color range is limited compared to offset printing, laser digital printing is not recommended for color-crucial jobs (i.e. paint or fabric swatches).

Choosing the right media and then the right printing technology pared with the right paper can be tricky but a good printer and paper supplier can help. Trust them to help you get your message across!

The emphasis on publishing was not what I expected from On Demand; cross media communication, yes, but publishing? The Corporate sponsorship of the different tracks was also a surprise. In past On Demand conferences, the sessions provided opportunities to understand how technology, suppliers, and customers came together to solve Business Communication issues. I wondered what drove this to change from what seemed to be a very useful and well attended format. There was no communication beforehand that the title, format, just about everything had changed. Where do I go now to get information on postal issues like IMB, and on fulfillment or distribution or the many other business communications topics that On Demand was known for?

Finally after looking a couple more times and reading more of the marketing materials I concluded this was the only conference at the ON DEMAND Expo this year. Based on my positive past experience and a bit of curiosity I decided to go ahead and register for the Publishing Xchange Conference. We will have to wait until March to see if that was a smart thing to do. I am still struggling however with how Business Communications (Direct Marketing and Critical Customer Documents) are Publishing. It appears that service providers, suppliers and clients representing a broad spectrum of offerings are being driven together under Publishing, Why?

Have you seen the television show “V”, where lizard aliens look human until they are wounded and you can see the lizard underneath? It appears On Demand has suffered a similar fate. Someone put an On Demand shell over a publishing conference. What’s the message here? When they talk about business transformation and industry restructuring on the On Demand home page, do they mean all of us in Direct Marketing and Critical Customer Communications should throw in the towel and try Publishing? Is it “invasion of the conference snatchers?” Or maybe it’s a Borg plot and “resistance is futile.”

Have aliens taken over ON DEMAND? Should I be afraid?

Social media on a phone has become such a convenience that now it will no longer take up time to skim through your newsfeed at work, post pictures you have taken days ago or other time-consuming tasks. A smart phone now makes it possible to be interactive with your fans simply by pressing a few buttons whenever you have a few seconds to spare. When you are at an event, you can check-in to FourSquare, along with adding tips about your location and to see who else has checked in there that day. This will also simultaneously promote that event because now anyone who is following you will see you are attending and it may spike interest for them to attend. If we continue with this example of attending an event, you can also take photos and video using your smart phone’s camera. Smart phones make it possible to immediately post this content to anything, such as E-mail, text-messaging, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr- you name it! You can then add a description of the picture or video you posted. This will allow you to feature live content from anywhere you are, which makes the amount of promotional possibilities skyrocket.

We all know that a big reason for people gathering at business events is to network. Social media takes networking one step further by allowing you to interact with new contacts on a casual day-to-day basis after meeting them. This is made possible by sites like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Don’t exchange business cards that may get lost, discarded or added to a mile-long Excel spreadsheet of contacts. Instead, digitally connect with the people you meet through social media using your phone. It is a fresh, interactive way of staying in touch. Being able to ask, “Are you on Facebook or LinkedIn?” and then friend them using your smart phone makes networking easy and fun. Connecting with contacts through social media will allow you to exchange information in the future, see who their contacts are, gain a better knowledge of their work experience, learn what future events they are going to and more.

Cell phones are no longer just for calling and texting.  They now offer the ability for people to share their experiences with others through photos, videos, announcements, links and more. Smart phones are helping people become more connected in incredible ways, and this is just the beginning. If you have a smart phone but are still hesitant about stepping into the world of social media, jump in now. It is easy to learn and use and you would be blown away with what your smart phone is capable of doing!

Editors Note: Heidi Tolliver-Nigro posted on February 6 about SmartPhones and Phonebooks and the generational gap. John’s post is a timely reminder that we need to become users of the channel so that we can better understand how to support the channel for our customers.