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Printing Gets Personal with VIPs

Written by: Deborah Osgood

Article Overview: At a time when doing more with less is the rule of thumb in business marketing, direct marketing strategies are making a comeback. How? …by getting personal with VIPs using VIP technology, otherwise known as Variable Information Printing.

Printing Gets Personal with VIPs

At a time when doing more with less is the rule of thumb in business marketing, snail-mail direct marketing strategies are making a comeback. How? ...by getting personal with VIPs using VIP technology, otherwise known as Variable Information Printing.

Successful marketing is all about making your prospects and customers feel like VIPs. To do this cost effectively, digital marketing campaigns have traditionally been the choice, offering email contact management features that allow companies to custom tailor messaging to different audiences with little to no extra effort or cost.

However, with the proliferation of email generated spam, junk mail and viruses, many businesses are limiting access to email through firewalls and permission-based email solutions. Individuals are using junk mail filters and permission-based applications as well to limit the endless stream of unsolicited special offers for anything from physically enhancing prescriptions to notification of award for a sweepstakes never entered.

Thanks to this ever increasing level of email abuse marketing tactics, the pendulum is swinging back to direct mail marketing as an effective business development and communication strategy. Fortunately, however, today's direct mail marketing options offer a lot more in terms of message personalization than they did years ago, thanks to Variable Information Printing (VIP). With VIP technology, the image that is printed in a direct mail piece can be varied completely from one page to the next as the digital press runs. VIP technology allows for high levels of personalization within a press run, a process referred to as mass customization, or 1-to-1 marketing.

Through the use of a database, text and images can be varied based on information contained in the database fields. This is frequently called a "data driven" process. For example, if a database contains demographic data, such as gender, an image that is most appropriate (golf clubs for a man or a spa package for a woman) can be printed to create a more relevant, personal message or experience for the recipient.

So why is this important? Years of research and business practice show that personalization yields higher response, and improved results. Whereas a typical static, non-personalized direct mail campaign might result in a 1% or 2% response rate, a well-designed, highly personalized mailing can yield response rates in excess of 20%!

Further good news for businesses that are doing more with less these days to build sales, a direct mail campaign can be totally designed, produced and launched through an outsourced web-based business relationship. For example, Conquest Graphics is an 85-year old commercial printing business in Richmond, Virginia that expanded into Internet-based solutions in 2006.

By visiting their web site, an individual can access design templates for most any direct mail piece, upload copy, images and other graphic elements, chat live, place an order and arrange for any assembly and mail distribution services.

Given trends in email marketing, VIP technology is turning out to offer various competitive advantages as well as better ROI for businesses of all sizes. Most of all, being able deliver personalized and targeted messages shows that you pay special attention to each individual prospect and customer. This could easily mean the difference between their choosing to read and respond to your message versus the competition.

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Article Tags: direct mail, marketing strategies, variable data printing, VIP, virtual information printing



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