Moving Into Transpromo - In-plant Impressions

By Bob Atkinson

The Principal: Using Transpromo to Educate Customers

Based in Des Moines, Iowa, The Principal Financial Group is a global financial company offering retirement solutions, life/health insurance, wellness programs and investment/banking products.

To produce the statements and other support materials needed by the company, The Principal’s 150-employee Print to Mail operation has been using digital printing and VDP for almost a decade. In 2000, the in-plant began with Xerox 2060 systems, and by 2004, increasing volumes and variable data requirements took them to Kodak NexPress systems. At one point the in-plant had 10 NexPresses on its floor.

As a leader in the financial business, The Principal wanted to use technology to provide relevant information to customers. It started utilizing transpromo printing on its 401(k) statements as a way to educate customers and help them make smart investment choices.

Last year, with very individualized 401(k) report designs and huge quarterly runs (up to 20 million letter-size impressions), the company moved to two dual-engine, full-duplex 20? InfoPrint 5000 web color ink-jet presses to handle the workload. These presses are capable of up to 916 letter-size color impressions per minute.

To feed these presses, The Principal uses a mainframe running highly-optimized VDP software written in Exstream’s Dialogue programming language (now owned by HP). This system produces thousands of individualized PDF files, which are sent to the front-end RIP systems of the two InfoPrints. Each RIP system is a three-stage system with 20 dual-core processors and specialized RISC-chip processors.

The InfoPrints are roll fed using Lasermax Roll Systems LX550 unwinders. Post-press, the in-plant uses inline Lasermax Roll Systems cutter/trimmers and stackers plus an IBIS Smart-binder SB-3.

Adding the InfoPrints has stirred interest among the in-plant’s customers, says Rex Brooker, senior IT leader analyst. They are asking questions about additional print opportunities for the printers.

The in-plant plans to retain five or six of its 10 NexPresses to produce marketing collateral and other high-quality work, he says.

OVER THE past couple of years, the term “transpromo” has been popping up across the printing industry, particularly among in-plants, where demand for it is highest. What is transpromo printing, and why is it an attractive option for many companies and organizations? Transpromo is the addition of promotional or customer education messages to regular transactional documents, like bills and statements.

It’s an old idea, but new and faster digital presses have enabled far higher production speeds and the ability to customize literally every text or graphic item on the page for each customer. To marketing and customer relations people, this is a great combination—people open and read statements and bills immediately, and special messages in them get read far more than regular direct mail pieces. This combination of high read-throughs and individualized messaging is hard to beat.

Let’s look at what you need—and the pitfalls to watch out for—when getting into transpromo printing. Along the way, we’ll look at one company—investment giant Principal Financial Group—that has already made the move to transpromo in a big way.

>>>Step One:
Find the Right Application

First and foremost, you need a specific business application for transpromo work in your regular print communications with current or prospective customers. That usually means a periodic mail-out piece you send out, which can be re-designed to include one or more areas where your transpromo text and/or graphics will appear, customized to each recipient. And you’ll need to know what sort of messages you want to send to different clients.

In the case of the Principal Financial Group (or The Principal, as the Des Moines-based company is often known), the application was the 401(k) statements the company regularly sends thousands of clients.

“We wanted to look different from our competitors and offer far more to our clients,” explains Dan Thomas, with Retirement and Investor Services at The Principal. “We use variable messaging in a number of our client communication pieces, but none to the extent as our 401(k) statements.” (See sidebar for more on The Principal.)

>>>Step Two: Team Up

Second, and perhaps most challenging, you’ll need the active participation and buy-in of at least two other departments in your organization, typically the marketing/communications group and your IT department. The marketing department is responsible for creating the static and variable text and graphic files that will appear on the piece, in addition to the usual statement info. Marketing can specify who gets what transpromo information, based on any number of parameters.

The IT department, usually the keeper of customer databases, will provide files with the specific customer information that will trigger the different types of messaging. You end up with three main components:

n A master template file (usually a PDF) with fixed text and graphics plus one or more variable zones.

n Separate graphics (some can be data-driven tables or charts) and text files to merge into the template.

n One or more customer data files from IT that determine what goes into each customer’s copy.

At The Principal, the focus is on educating customers and helping them make smart investment choices. Data from several customer databases in IT is used to present every client with the right mix of facts, figures and recommendations, created by the communications department. For example, if a customer is currently investing 4 percent into his 401(k) but his employer will match up to 6 percent, his 401(k) statement will include the suggestion to move up to 6 percent contributions to maximize returns.

>>>Step Three: Gear Up

Third, you’ll need printing hardware systems and variable data printing (VDP) RIP software that’s up to the flexibility, image quality and production speed for the type and volume of work your application demands. Until recently, the only sorts of digital printing systems capable of printing individualized pieces at acceptable speeds have been toner-based sheet or roll-fed presses (Xerox iGen3/4, HP Indigo, Kodak NexPress, etc.), but now a whole new generation of high-speed systems are increasing production speeds dramatically—high-speed ink-jet presses (Fuji Jet Press 720, InfoPrint 5000, HP Inkjet Web Press, Kodak Versamark VX5000, etc.). These presses are capable of producing tens of thousands of individualized A4-sized color impressions per hour—fast enough for most large-run mail-outs.

To keep that new digital press running at or near full speed you’ll need substantial VDP RIP hardware and software power. Remember, you might literally be merging and imaging an entirely new page layout hundreds of times per minute for the length of the press run, in full CMYK process color. These days, that means multi-processor and multi-system RIP hardware “farms” with VDP RIP software that splits the processing load across many systems automatically.

For example, HP is now demonstrating VDP RIP farms with hundreds of processors, all driving the same ink-jet press. Some of these RIP systems simply put out thousands of customized PDF page images to the press, while others use a more sophisticated approach, sending raw page data to the press using one of the variable data streaming languages like PPML. Any text or graphics common to all copies are cached in the press so that only the variable zones need to be sent across for each piece.

Customize to Fit Your Needs

As you can tell from the sidebar on page 25, The Principal, given the task at hand, has created a large, state-of-the-art system, but based on your volume and customization needs, you may do perfectly well with a considerably-smaller system and investment. Most of the high-speed digital press manufacturers offer complete hardware/software VDP systems suitable for transpromo work.

Next you’ll need a well-organized and robust workflow plan—IT, prepress and post-press. You may well be running terabytes of print data in each run, coming from several different computer systems across different departments, so careful planning and excellent connectivity are a must. As you develop the overall system, you’ll need to do extensive testing and small-scale trial runs to make sure everything works as planned, as well as regular job proofing to make sure the right information ends up in the right place.

Finally, there is one crucial factor to consider when moving to VDP/transpromo. Rex Brooker, senior IT leader analyst at The Principal, sums it up this way: “I cannot emphasize enough the importance of excellent ongoing relationships with your print hardware, IT and software vendors. The help and support we’ve received from the great people at Kodak, InfoPrint and Exstream has been crucial to the overall success of our 401(k) print-to-mail program.”

And what do The Principal’s customers think about their new 401(k) reports? Here’s Dan Thomas again: “Customer feedback on the new 401(k) reports has been excellent. They’re finding them lot more user-friendly. And at our call center, the calls we get now are less about trying to understand the report and more about how they can improve on their investments.”

Whether your transpromo requirements are as demanding as The Principal’s or something on a far more modest scale, there’s a system out there ready for the task. But remember to do your homework along the way.

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