Variable Data (Part 2) The Revolution

In part two of our variable data printing coverage, Vic Barkin explains how your in-plant can move into this lucrative business.

By Vic Nathan Barkin

During the American Revolution, every rifle was what today we would refer to as a customized model. A master craftsman produced each lock, stock and barrel individually. No two were exactly alike.

Finding the optimum load for each rifle meant that a rifleman had to test the accuracy of different powder volumes, patch thicknesses and ball size combinations to ensure, when the time came to hit his mark, he could trust his tool to do the job.

Marketing strategies at today's universities and organizations take a similar customized approach. The budget, marketing media mix and implementation strategy is different at every campus and corporation. Every in-plant must adapt to the needs of its own parent organization.

So when it comes to offering variable data printing (VDP), each in-plant has to examine its own situation before deciding how to proceed.

On the lower end of possible offerings are simple data-merge type documents that can be accomplished from applications like MicroSoft Word and Excel and can either be set up by your customers or by you. Examples include personalized form letters and flyers. Even Word and Excel can offer some rather complex capabilities. Conditional formatting from within these programs can include or exclude certain paragraphs, or insert specific sentences or words depending on information contained in a database.

On the high end are fully customized transactional documents that contain statistical information based on multi-level data sources. Supporting documents are either pulled in or omitted based on the data generated in the base document. The creation of these kinds of documents is part of the output process and can be quite complex in terms of specialized software and hardware requirements. Systems of this nature are often dedicated to one particular purpose.

Case In Point Northern Arizona University's Elementary Spanish Program wanted to increase sales of its K-6 learning program to elementary schools across the country. They had been sending out 50,000 full-color postcards three times a year to elementary school principals with generic information. By simply adding personalization in the form of a salutation and the individual school and city in which it was located within the body of the postcard, response rates and sales jumped from 2 percent to 8 percent resulting in 3,000 more sales.

There is, however, a huge middle ground in-plants can profit from. First, though, you have to discover what your customers' needs are, and offer your services in basic VDP design consultation. If you have an in-house design staff, you may be able to offer VDP design management and advanced customization services. These services can take your graphic designers to a new level.

Since many graphic designers are also Web developers, consider adding services such as repurposing print design to Web page layouts that incorporate data collection. This sets the stage for real-time data streams that can be utilized for ongoing response output.

A simplistic example would be that you could offer an integrated life-cycle model. A generic mailing list is used for a postcard mailing that directs recipients to a Web site. Interested prospects then fill out a Webform questionnaire. Once submitted, the data is automatically filtered into a VDP database and a customized printed response is generated. From there, the same cycle can repeat itself in future communication thus enhancing the "it's all about me" personalization phenomena.

Start Out Simple

The easiest place to start is on the production end, since that is your primary business. Look first to monochrome VDP. If you don't have any experience, Microsoft Word and Excel mail merge functions are the best places to start. Migrating from there to full color mail-merge is the next step. After that you can start playing with forms drivers like EFI's Fiery Freeform 1, which works on a variety of printers including Canon and Xerox, or if running a Kodak/ Canon/IBM 9110, you can use Kodak's Imagesource Forms Driver.

Off-the-shelf VDP products like Atlas Printshop Mail can be effective whether your current output system is PPML compliant or not. Some ASPs (Application Service Providers) digital storefronts are also offering VDP templating. Through a partnership with Datalogics, Printable Technologies (www.printable.com) now offers dynamic VDP templating that your customers can access and order from via the Web.

Production and delivery in VDP marry printing and mailing more closely than ever before. The printing and copying facility that has not had much contact with the campus mail facility will now be forced into a marriage of convenience. (See related story on page 18.) Although not all VDP requires mailing, anything that does now has the ability to be not only customized for the recipient, but also addressed and barcoded during the printing process. Using CASS and PAVE certified lists in VDP mailings qualify them for postal automation discounts.

NAU Dog And Pony Show In the fall of 2000, after familiarizing ourselves with the capabilities of our recently installed Heidelberg Digimaster 9110, NAU Creative Communications formulated a marketing strategy to sell variable data printing. That's when we hit on the "Dog and Pony Show" concept. First we published a primer titled "NAU Creative Communications Proudly Introduces the Heidelberg Digimaster Network Printing System," which outlined all our newly acquired capabilities. Next we sent out personalized invitations to all departmental print buyers, from area coordinators to vice presidents, inviting them and their staffs to a personal demonstration at a particular time and date. If they did not respond, we called them. The invitations were printed on the Digimaster with a simple black-and-white "Dog and Pony" motif. To further reinforce this black-and-white theme, it was also stated that Oreos and milk would be served. The demonstration began with an overview of the Digimaster. We also handed out copies of our primer. Next we showed the speed of our new system by processing a 2,000 record Word/Excel mail-merge document with our new NT Server. The first letters started printing at rated speed less than two minutes after we pressed the print button. This first document was meant to show the capabilities of our new system using existing standard Microsoft Office technology, while the second document was designed to take the same Excel database and use it in a brochure that had about 200 Mb of graphics in it. By using a special forms driver we were able to process the next document at the same speed as the first, explaining that we were (and still are) the only facility, commercial or in-plant in Northern Arizona with this capability. Since then we have built a thriving variable data printing business centering on full black-and-white personalization. Full color shell printing for postcards and newsletters has also blossomed and we have taken full advantage of "versioning" in many of the projects we currently print.

Bindery operators, up until now, were only concerned with finished quantities in jobs. But if VDP jobs are to be kept in order, new operating procedures will need to be developed in the bindery. Bindery and postal handling lines will blur as decisions are made about where to fold, collate and insert depending on the level of personalization used in a document.

Strategic management is an area that can open even more sources of revenue for your department. Managing the content of VDP templates, like managing Web site content, is an ever-changing and evolving activity. Working with your customers to ensure that the base information contained in your printed pieces is constantly revised and updated is one of the prime benefits of VDP. (And these revisions, of course, should be chargeable activities.)

Being involved with the "success management" of VDP is another way to strengthen your relationships with your customers. Through response coding, tracking mechanisms can be set up to perform a statistical analysis on the success rate of any marketing action. It doesn't matter whether you or your customers perform this analysis, just get it done. Of course, if you are requested to do this, it again should be a chargeable activity.

Loading The VDP Rifle

To get started, first get familiar with office software like Word and Excel mail-merge, before you move to more complex applications. Learn all you can about data manipulation, formatting, sorting and filtering. You'll eventually be handed data from customers with varying experience levels and you'll be expected to perform miracles.

Partner with other "brigades" on your campus. Data centers have expertise you can use. If you're not aligned organizationally, at least open the lines of communication. The same goes for your mail center. The specialized software used to clean and sort mailing lists can also be used in databases that handle personalization.

Finally, get to know your organization's list-holders. Departments such as human resources, the registrar's office, the bursar and the alumni office, employ people to ensure that their data is accurate and up to date.

Institutional and departmental strategic plans are important pieces of marketing strategies. They define objectives and set the framework for actions. If you intend to truly "partner" with your customers, then it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with their goals. By gaining an understanding of what they wish to accomplish and whom they want to reach, you will have an edge in proposing creative solutions for their marketing needs.

Recruitment, enrollment and development objectives should be at the top of your list. After all, taking a VDP marketing approach means rethinking when print will occur. It's not only about relevance, but immediacy and responsiveness as well.

Big Techniques Of Aiming Small

A big misconception is that customers mistakenly assume variable data projects require many fields of data to be effective. In truth only a few data points are needed to pull off a powerful VDP project. With just first name, gender and age you can put together a wealth of materials.

Let's assume a brochure is created using this scenario. John is an 18-year-old male. Mary is a 34-year-old female. Conditional logic from within your VDP software is set up so either a masculine or a feminine message is used depending on gender. Furthermore, those in the 18-24 age bracket receive images attractive to their age group, while those from 30-40 years old receive images pertinent to their age group. The result is a more demographically relevant brochure targeted specifically to John or Mary.

Another tactic is to produce versioned short runs rather than doing strict one-to-one work. For example, a campus visit planner requires 16 different versions, one for each area high school senior class, each averaging 300 impressions. This uses a creative template to take advantage of the economies of scale for production, bindery and mailing, and does it all in one print run.

Don't Sell VDP

We use the term Variable Data Printing in our industry to define the integration of data into the printing process. Your customers, though, are not interested in processes as much as they are results. Therefore the emphasis should not be on VDP, but on relevant messaging.

No longer should customers think about print buying on a cost-per-piece model. What is important now is cost-per-response.

Put simply: Your customers want higher response rates. The more relevant the message, the better the response. Variable Data Printing is a messaging enabler. It provides a relevant, unique message that is specific to the needs of the recipient.

Success stories go a long way in convincing skeptics. Promote case histories. Many are available on the Web. Look to organizations such as PODi, The DMA and CAP Ventures.

Before it sold its digital print business to Kodak, Heidelberg promoted the following example. Two mailings were sent out, each with a $30,000 budget. In one, 100,000 static direct-mail pieces were sent out, generating a 2 percent return. The resulting sales generated $120,000 in revenue.

The second mailing was a personalized mailing, however this time only 50,000 pieces were sent. Money previously allocated to half of the printing and mailing cost was now used in database market segmentation preparation, PPML templating and digital VDP output. The resulting 10 percent response rate generated $300,000.

Guide Your Generals

There are many ways to help your generals (my customers are flattered when I call them that) sight in on their targets. First, guide them to a clear sight picture or "focus" based on your technology. Once they understand what you can do, you can help them gather accurate targeting information. Promote electronic surveys to gather information and to build databases in an organized manner with the outcome in mind.

Start out with the customers most likely to be leaders in using VDP. In a university environment, the most likely to lead and succeed are admissions, financial aid/scholarships, development/advancement, alumni, athletics, registrars, bursars and residence life. Their success will bring the rest in for you.

Sit down with your key customers and offer to perform a free "needs analysis." Focus on the inefficiencies in their existing systems and existing printed collateral material. Discuss their current inventory methodology. How many do they order and why? What is the shelf life before any of the information in any piece changes?

Look at how much floor space is taken up storing printed material and ask how much they throw away annually. The answer may make them realize more money is being wasted than they thought. Refigure the cost per piece for your customers based on obsolete material waste. Then offer VDP solutions.

One great suggestion is to lay all of your customer's printed marketing pieces out on a table and review the potential for print on demand and VDP for each one. It helps to have a digital specialist on staff to assist on these sales calls. Once you've got your customer's attention, a personalized "Dog and Pony Show" (see sidebar on previous page) can best demonstrate your capabilities.

Choose Your Pricing Battles

Since VDP is a value-intensive service, you should formulate your pricing to be both profitable to your organization and cost-effective to your customers. When providing estimates, even consultation time should be factored in, since it is no longer just the product that is of value, but the service as well. Other value-added chargeable activities include formatting, system time for development, testing and quality assurance steps to ensure integrity in the printing and finishing process.

Don't sell yourself short when it comes to pricing VDP. The returns your customers get as benefits will more than pay for the charges. It's not only the cost per response methodology that comes into play, but the savings realized by the POD model.

On a flintlock rifle, the stock holds the lock, trigger and barrel together. Both your ROI and your customer's ROI are dependent on careful planning and proper selection of software and hardware based on the desired outcome. One thing is sure. Your marketing-oriented customers are investing in CRM technology regardless of what you offer. Take advantage of that investment and make your time worth their money.

It's about results. After all, like comparing a good quality flintlock rifle to a poor quality musket, VDP is about quality not quantity. More relevance equals more interest.

So quit throwing lead downrange. Abandon the "spray and pray" technique. Tell your customers to stop trashing obsolete material and instead eliminate floor space currently used for inventory.

For you, the more spent up front, the better the return. Run lengths go down but the charge per piece goes up. And customer success makes budgets grow. For your customers, cost per response goes down, budgets are more effective, and results mean success.

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This article is an excerpt from a paper by Vic Nathan Barkin, who, when he's not taking aim with his long rifle, manages the printing and reproduction services department at Northern Arizona University. Part one of this article appeared in April. The article is based on a presentation he made at the 2003 Southeastern University Printing and Duplicating Managers Conference. For the full text, contact Mr. Barkin at:

Victor.Barkin@nau.edu