As we all know, variable data printing technology is a technology that can win profits. However, due to various reasons, although the installed capacity of digital presses worldwide has been steadily increasing since the early 1990s, variable data printing currently accounts for only a small part of the digital printing market.

Senior industry expert Professor Romano of the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States pointed out that marketers need more in-depth training in direct mail. For printers, the less customers know about variable data, the longer it takes for you to get business. The feature of variable data printing is that it can process databases and arrange the data according to the corresponding purposes. This feature can meet the needs of many printed materials.

In order to enable more people to understand the benefits of variable data printing to enterprises and promote the use of variable data printing, “U.S. Printer” magazine interviewed five companies engaged in variable data printing to let readers come together. Share their successful experiences.

Case I: Pursue Win-Win

The Microdynamics Group has been established for 30 years and has been engaged in variable data printing for more than 20 years. Today, its core business is invoices and reports. Thomas Harter Jr., the company’s vice president of sales, said: “A lot of companies welcome us with open arms. Generally, young people working in computers at these companies are unwilling to do printing jobs. They are very willing to hand us the printing business. We pursue a win-win situation. ."
The Microdynamics Group's customers are mostly Fortune 500 companies. The Microdynamics Group's sales staff contact customers directly. Some of these companies also introduce their partners to the Microdynamics Group to bring in new customers. Harter said: The company's printed transaction bills are mainly pension bills. These customers are repeat customers and require daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly printing.

The Microdynamics Group has a total of 100 regular employees, of whom 10 are engaged in development work. They store and process customer data. The version of the file is based on Exstream Software Dialogue and Composer Data Preparation and Microdynamics' own system. Ten Xerox digital presses and three Océ PageStream digital presses were used for printing. The bar code technology and Microdynamics' own control technology ensured that the printed matter was 100% complete. Of the 400,000 prints, only two or three copies needed to be reprinted.

Microdynamics also obtained a variable data printing order from a financial institution in New York. The project has 1 million pages of data, and it is necessary to redesign prints and identify transaction bills. This job is printed once a month, and each advert will also have different advertising information.

The trend in the printing of future transaction bills is to use more web digital presses, and the proportion of color printing will increase. Therefore, in order to meet future development needs, Microdynamics also installed the Kodak Versamark Vantage four-color inkjet printer. The machine can print color variable data prints at high speeds. Harter said that the market for color variable data printing is very large. Whether from the perspective of production cost or from the perspective of the market, variable data printing should be adopted so that customers and printers can achieve a win-win situation.

Case Two: Success is Inseparable from a Good Database

Mail-Well entered the variable data printing market in October 2000 and has set up a one-on-one project team. The project team has 9 people, of whom 2 are directly promoting potential data to the potential customers.

The company's digital press is IBM's Infoprint Color 130. The one-on-one team collects information from the Ford Motor Company website and generates a customer handbook for each consumer. Once visitors to the site have chosen the colors, styles, engines, etc. of their favorite car, the one-on-one team will collect all the data, print a 16-page booklet, send it to the customer, or generate a PDF electronic document. Send it directly to customers via E-mail. After receiving such personalized brochures, 61% said they would visit dealers.

The practical experience of Mike Emerson, Mail-Well's marketing manager, is: To make variable data printing successful, the most important thing is to have a good database. The Ford Motor Company project was successful, but some companies were unable to conduct one-on-one marketing because they did not have a good database. Mike Emerson said: Without the support of a strong database, variable data printing cannot be a business that is cost-effective.

As a marketer, Mike Emerson is optimistic about the prospects for the application of variable data printing, but he also emphasized that more people should really understand how to apply variable data printing, and that some people should dare to invest and dare to practice.

Case 3: Both as salesman and consultant

Twenty-five years ago, Dave Rohe founded The document Cerntre. According to Dave Rohe, variable data printing business can be divided into three levels: high, medium and low. The highest level is the printing of bill processing and financial transaction bills; the lowest level is simple data merge printing, for example, name, address, company The names are combined on one print; the middle level is marketing materials.

The document Cerntre does both variable data printing and short-run digital printing. The company currently employs 20 people, 2 DocuTech 6155, 2 DocuColor 6060, all with on-line postpress equipment. The company's current main service target is the pharmaceutical industry. Its customers include both pharmaceutical companies and hospitals.

The document Cerntre has printed and mailed more than 10,000 postcards for 30 doctors in a hospital. The contents of the postcards are different for patients of different ages and genders. For example, for a female patient, there is a photo of a woman that matches the age of the recipient. The health issue that the woman of that age should pay attention to is displayed next to it. The picture of the doctor, the doctor’s signature, and the office’s telephone number are also printed on the postcard. Wait. According to the report, the rate of feedback received after the postcards were posted reached 26.3%, which is much higher than the rate of feedback that the hospital used to advertise on radio and newspapers.

Rohe believes that the sales cycle of general variable data printing projects is relatively long, and sometimes it takes more than a year to get a project. He stressed that printers can't wait for customers to come to their customers, they must go to the customer to advertise to them the characteristics and advantages of variable data printing. In a sense, the salesman of a printing company should be both a salesman and a consultant.

Rohe discusses database issues with customers early in the sales of variable data printing projects. Although the document Cerntre also accepts documents in the Access format, they generally require customers to provide documents in Excel format. Rohe said that files in the Access format are prone to serial errors; while documents in the Excel format are clear at a glance, it is easy to find out whether there are errors.

According to Rohe, the proportion of ordinary digital printing of the company is slightly larger than variable data printing, but he believes that in the next two years, the business volume of variable data printing will greatly increase, and the company's variable data printing business will account for the total business volume. More than 75% of the amount.

Case 4: Treat printing as spread

In 1994, Mike Nelson and his partner Joel Hoefle created Digital Marketing. Joel Hoefle has a background in communications; Mike Nelson has done direct sales. Instead of treating themselves as printers, they treat digital printing as a marketing service and print as a media.

At the beginning of the company's establishment, they took the job to the company where the digital press had been installed, but soon they discovered that it was difficult to control the progress of the project. As a result, Digital Marketing bought Xerox DocuTech and HP Indigo digital presses in 1996, and added post-press processing equipment and inserts.

Digital Marketing has 65 employees, of whom 8 are programmers, 6 are file engineers, 5 are engaged in creative work, and 10 are doing customer service and marketing. The company’s first customer was the American Express Financial Advisers in the United States. They used to send the standard manuals for the unified printing to customers. The information printed on the manuals was soon obsolete. Today, Digital Marketing prints custom brochures for them, personalizes each of American Express's 8,000 financial advisors, uses different photos and colors to differentiate customers, and prints financial brochures Photo of consultant.

Nelson emphasized that printing is becoming more and more common, so managing the process and content is more valuable to customers. In real life, there are already a lot of existing data. If you can make full use of this data, digital printing can provide more value.

Case 5: Cultivating customers is the key

In 2001, Commins and his brother Daniel created Creative Digital Color. The company has two Xeikon 50D digital presses and four employees. Today, 70% of the company's business is variable data printing jobs.

Commins believes that sales of variable data printing business not only demonstrate your product to customers, but also have good eloquence. When they introduced to customers, they not only had many successful cases, they also prepared a lot of actual samples.
Commins believes that nurturing customers is the key to winning a variable data printing business. You must tell customers how to use their existing data and what they can do by adopting variable data printing technology. The company's technical staff sometimes encourages customers to create new databases based on the characteristics of variable data print jobs. Through the joint efforts of all the company's personnel, Creative Digital Color's variable data printing business has developed rapidly, and the total number of print jobs for general jobs is between 4,000 and 5,000. Commins is ready to enter another Kodak NexPress.

The above five stories tell us how digital printers in the United States have succeeded in the field of variable data printing. Although the national conditions of the United States are different from those of China, the US market is also different from the Chinese market, but their successful experience is domestic. The peer can learn from it. The application of domestic variable data printing started late and is not universal in the United States. We look forward to the domestic digital printing industry personnel can join hands to jointly develop the variable data printing market and promote the promotion and application of variable data printing.



Source: Ke Yin Network

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