The contest between variable data printing and personalized printing

We are one of the largest high-speed laser personalized printing plants in the Midwest. Our feature is the ability to print complex personalization and MICR products. These products often have hundreds of industries, so we need to process thousands of forms or use thousands of pictures. We have already owned seven high-speed IBM 4100 printers, and through our own efforts, we have obtained the title of “Direct Mail Pioneer” from IBM.

Do you think that "personalized printing" and "variable data printing" have become synonymous? I strongly feel that these two kinds of jobs are very different, and the market for personalized printing is also a little more complicated than the variable data printing market, but some people think that the meaning of variable data printing is to print data to Any form of printing on paper, I feel very confused and contradictory.

I would love to know what you think about this issue and how people outside of the traditional personalized printing market view this issue. You also want to understand the areas of application of these two technologies and your definition of the difference between personalization and variable data printing.

In my opinion, I see variable data printing as a small amount of digital color or medium-volume on-demand publishing. What do you think about people in the variable data printing market?

I think this email is very interesting for the following reasons. First, because over the years, print service providers are very willing to let marketers imagine personalized printing in various forms, which helps them to do business. Who will call it the name? Secondly, this is a question of merit. It virtually increases the depth and complexity of this market.

Where exactly is the difference between personalization and variable data printing?

Define "variable data printing"

Since the establishment of this market, variable data printing has been defined as a database-driven file containing text or images. Broadly speaking, it also includes telephone and utility bills. Although we do not call them normatively "variable data printing" - but we will call them transactional printing - under such definitions, they are very suitable for printing bills. And, like variable data printing, they all have a close relationship with the recipient's information. I can responsibly say that the response rate of credit card bills can surprise most salesman of variable data printing.

The reason why we say that variable data printing is different from transactional printing is that it is based on Postscript and is printed on equipment designed for high-quality prints. Variable data printing products are basically Colored, they are usually used as promotional materials rather than bills and statements. Now let's tidy up the ideas. It is actually "printing driven by one-to-one Postscript database for the production of marketing materials on high-quality commercial presses," so we can call it "variable data printing."

The meaning of the name

But the questions raised by this reader are very interesting. For example, the reader's company does not produce transactional prints, and it does not produce typical variable data print jobs. They produce very complex one-to-one documents, and sometimes files containing hundreds of variable data (such complex documents require thousands of sets of codes). And, while these products are not as attractive as color-variable images and tables, they all have their own role. Sometimes they are printed with black ink, and sometimes they are printed on colored offset prints, so these products are very powerful and influential.

A typical area of ​​application for variable data printing: A large amount of product information is obtained by sending consistent basic correspondence to different states and cities. The volume of delivery of such products is very large, so their cost must be kept to a minimum. Designers of such letters must find everybody’s existing financial products (if it can be known) in countless data of various types. Marketers are most willing to provide cross-selling products for each product, register content and Validity and other information. Then design different letters for recipients in different regions because each place has different cultural, legal, and special requirements (some states do not allow "affordable" text on promotional materials). All content should be built on the premise of not breaking the law.

The partner of printing service provider Affinity Processing Co., Ltd. used the words “One to One by the Millions” last year to describe the marketing of such products. The company's applicable database is very large, reaching 1,700 MB, and the single-page printing cost is relatively low, enabling production on high-speed monochrome printers. Their jobs usually use the AFP workflow, which is a necessary condition for speeding up.

So how does the printing industry call these jobs? People call these types of jobs “hybrid variable data printing (so-called mixing, which means printing color content with an offset press, and printing personalized content with a digital press)”. They have also been referred to as "database marketing," but as the application area continues to evolve, both arguments may coexist and may disappear together. For the time being, although they have not been widely recognized, we call them "trans-promo" files.

Get rid of radar

Regardless of what you call them, and regardless of the development of variable data printing, this is a highly complex and cost-effective way to influence, and it can escape the control of every marketer. This is a secret. They are usually colored and more personalized than most of today's variable data print emails. Their economic efficiency and cost efficiency are relatively high.

I say this for two reasons:

The major developments in the variable data printing market are driven by the commercial printing sector, but these jobs are the data programming and processing company production tasks outside of the commercial printing field.

Although many marketers working in commercial printers have already achieved success, one-to-one sexuality is still a secret among volume marketers.

Many printing company owners do not understand computer programming, so they are not good at expressing their own ideas. After operating in the commercial printing field for a while, most printing companies have turned into service production companies. The printing workers have also become ordinary artisans, not marketers or business development specialists.

This is a pity, mainly because many marketers do not have the appropriate capabilities. At present, the biggest obstacle they face is getting good data. When you start printing one-on-one documents on a color offset paper, it is best to use black and white ink to print personalized content, so that you can carry out effective marketing activities. Have you ever encountered the problem of wanting to print variable data print jobs, but the lack of new mailing lists in your hands? Don't be afraid. You can send out one million black and white personalized emails first, and then design a colorful, variable-data print email based on the recipient's feedback. In this way, you can achieve satisfactory results.

These processing companies usually become database processing experts. If you have a simple data furnace, you can find professionals to see if you can use your database in conjunction with other databases, so that you can get more about customers. information.

Many marketers believe that printing millions of names is a simple and mechanical method. To be fair, their ideas are not correct, and programming and customer service personnel can find useful things for themselves from these complex contents. You can tell them what you want, and they will tell you how to do it—no matter how many rows of code are used.

Content in the name

Now, let's go back to the beginning of the article. Is the reader doing variable digital printing or personalized printing? Is it both, or both? Can you distinguish between database marketing, hybrid variable data printing, and Trans-promo? A marketer may say that it doesn't matter what he calls, but I don't think so. The ability to distinguish between different applications has a crucial role to play in the growth of the market. Let's start with the name!