Digital

Last week, Communisis chief executive Steve Vaugh­­an said the new print management model was “based on technology”. These comments, coming from the man who famously declared that print management, as we knew it, was dead, reflect a revolution taking place within the UK’s direct and transactional mail sector.

Knowledge is profit for the digital printers of today. The direct mail sector has been threatened by negative headlines, low response rates and an increasing drive towards environmentalism. The industry was forced to evolve to survive. That evolution has come in the form of personalisation.

Technological advancements and a better understanding of data mining and manipulation has enabled personalisation across a variety of applications, using print to complement other platforms, such as SMS and the internet.

Technology is key
Vaughan’s comments concur with the message coming from across the industry.

Polestar Direct’s Tim Smith said: “The key to unlocking the potential of digital print is know­­ing how to use the technology.”

Andy Young, group managing director of Dsicmm, added that data manipulation enabled a true dialogue with clients’ customers.

He said: “We are moving closer to one-to-one marketing. Data driven personalisation is our focus.”

Indicative of the changing industry, Dsicmm now employs 70 software developers across the group, each designing software packages tailored to individual client’s needs. Ten years ago, the then two separate companies only em­­ployed one developer between them.

The largest and most advanced example of the new age of digital printing is publishing the Tesco clubcard marketing literature, a job entrusted to Pole­star Direct. More than 13m statements are mailed per quarter and the statements contain both vouchers and coupons while the mailing is highly personalised with over 9m variations.

Today, digital printers are continually searching outside the box to add value. Print, as a medium, remains very much alive, but it is supplemented by additional services. Each company has its own methods.

Individual approach
Dialogue Solutions has developed Infastream, a fully integrated SMS, internet and print service enabling consumers to respond to ‘trigger marketing’, where special prompts are defined and coded into your database.

When a pre-determined ev­ent occurs, this code ‘tr­­ig­­­gers’ the automatic creation and dispatch of a re­­levant marketing communi­­­cation, be it a digitally printed DM, an email, an SMS message, or a personalised web page.

Personal print
The Howard Hunt Group has its own data management company, Celerity, which specialises in database development, prospect pool creation and data enhancement. Celerity ties in with the company’s printing arm to deliver personalised print.

Personalisation comes in many different guises. These include having the client’s name written on a calendar to a fully integrated marketing campaign involving integrated personalised websites and printed marketing literature with, for example, offers and discounts based on the consumer’s spending habits.

Young says the early adopters of personalisation did not realise its potential. “The best personalisation is when the consumer does not realise they have been targeted. It is about driving personalised imagery and content, not just writing a name in spaghetti letters.”

Indeed, it has taken clients a long time to wake up to the applications for which personalisation can be used. Aside from cross-media marketing, a key growth area currently is transpromotional marketing, or transpromo.

Also known as white space advertising, trans­promo enables banks and utility providers, among others, to use their invoices as extremely well-targeted marketing documents. It is potentially a vast market.

New angle
Recent research by Pitney Bowes estimated that over £2.8bn worth of advertising space on bills and statements lies unused in the major European economies of Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Spain.

Communisis’ Vaughan said: “Over the past few months, we’ve seen our big customers talk about trans­promo in a more serious way than ever before. That is a real opportunity for us.”

According to Dsicmm’s Young, transpromo is not a new concept. “We have pioneered the concept for the past six years and lay claim to the world’s first transpromo invoice.

“Successful transpromo today is not simply about merging data. It is process driven, often involving multiple data sources. We have used up to 11 different data sources for one application in the past.”

Personalisation increases response rates and reduces wastage. Technology and, more specifically, data management lies at the heart of digital printing in 2008. As Polestar’s Tim Smith concludes: “Digital printing is about finding solutions for your clients, not filling the presses.”