variable data publishing

November 17, 2018 By Tom Gimer

Holiday Card Ideas

Around this time of year, Christmas and holiday card orders start coming in. Along with party invitations and envelopes, these holiday season items keep us quite busy into the New Year!

Many of our clients trust us to design, print, cut, score and fold their holiday cards and party invitations year after year. (Many also count on us to address envelopes and handle the mailing services.) These clients value the satisfaction they get from sending out an original, attractive looking piece of art to friends and family each year. With all the cookie-cutter card templates out there (you’ll probably have a few cards with the same lame Shutterfly layout sitting above your fireplace this year), it’s no surprise that many people prefer to create custom cards. Can you blame them for trying to look like they actually care?

Want to get started now on a Christmas card you will be proud to share? Go here. We offer very fast turnaround times, so it’s never too late.

But what should your card look like this year? Remember, most people display all the cards they receive in plain view throughout the holiday season, so why not create something thoughtful and different this year? Below are a few ideas that might help you think about how to create the perfect holiday card.

Hand-drawn artwork

Have you or your kids created anything special this year? Perhaps a cute drawing or painting? No matter what size it is, we can take that special artwork and make it the centerpiece of your holiday card.

Personalization

If you can create a mailing list in Excel with different fields in each column of your spreadsheet, you can easily personalize your holiday cards. Custom greetings and salutations (anything really) are possible with variable data. When your recipients open your custom printed envelopes to find a holiday card that was created especially for them, they’ll definitely see the effort you have made to make them feel special.

Photo-Retouching

You have a photo you want to use for your card, but it needs some help to get it ready for public disclosure. Our designers are Photoshop experts who can edit your photo as you wish — such as by removing a person, adding a special background, or simply retouching to remove imperfections.

When you’re ready to get started, we’ll be here…

August 28, 2013 By Tom Gimer

Variable data ideas

Personalized marketing materials get higher response rates. I could point you to several studies which confirm this (but I’d rather keep you here.) Below are a few ways to personalize yours using variable data:

Personalized correspondence

A personally addressed letter will consistently outperform a generic form letter. If you’ve purchased or assembled a mailing list, this is the simplest way to implement variable data. And if it is formatted properly in a spreadsheet, it will cost you only pennies extra per piece to personalize your mailing. Which sales or fundraising letter do you think will get better results — one addressed to Manager, Owner, Current Resident or perhaps one that actually identifies the recipient by name and title and refers personally to him or her throughout the piece? It’s a no-brainer.

Customer-relevant content

If you keep track of what your customers purchase from you, how often they buy, etc., you can incorporate this and other relevant information into your marketing pieces. Let’s say your customer purchased a purple widget from you recently. Your next mailing could reference this acquisition, either with a “thank you”, a promotion on widget repair or upgrades, or with pictures of other happy purple widget owners.

Demographic tie-ins

You can create marketing pieces with different content, art and images for different targets. Females can get different content than males. Older targets can get different content than younger ones. If you keep track of this information about your clients, you should consider using it in your marketing to get better results!

Think about how you’d like to personalize your marketing pieces and I bet VDP can be used to do it.

May 21, 2012 By Tom Gimer

VDP: the power of personalization

We’ve written about variable data publishing (VDP) in the past. We’ve talked about how using variable data makes each piece better and different by the inclusion of data from a customer’s client list, spreadsheet or database. We’ve talked about how VDP is a great way to improve open rates, response rates and, ultimately, return on investment. The problem is, once again we were talking a different language than most of our readers. Sorry about that!

So today we’re revisiting the subject of variable data publishing (also known as variable data printing) with a view towards trying to help you understand what it is, why it is so powerful, and why we absolutely recommend that you consider incorporating it into your marketing.

The best word we could think of to accurately describe VDP is “personalization.” Personalized pieces are the complete opposite of generic, boring form letters. Every VDP piece includes a different message to each recipient. These personalized pieces get significantly higher response rates than generic, making direct mail (already a proven method of obtaining new business) even better from an ROI perspective.

And personalization is more than just having each document start with a different “Dear [insert name]”. Although this is a common method of personalization using VDP, it’s really just the beginning of what you can do. There is no limit to the number of different data points you can include to customize your message. If your client database includes a lot of information, you can incorporate as much or as little of it into your piece as you’d like. Whatever business you are in, and whether you do it for marketing purposes or not, you gather information about your clients. From the date of their last purchase, where they are, what they do, what they buy, the amount of money they spend per purchase, or something else, you have access to that information. When you use it to customize your correspondence and your offers, what you send speaks to them much differently than a generic letter.

And here’s the coolest part. When we use VDP, rather than printing 1,000 (or 100,000) copies of the same letter, we print 1,000 (or 100,000) different letters. Or postcards. Or invoices. Or whatever you’re printing. And it doesn’t take us any longer to do it.

So how does it work? Think of VDP as having 2 distinctly different elements. The first element is the basic template. This is the letterhead or postcard layout which contains things that every recipient will get such as logos, headers and footers, contact information, and possibly even large portions of body text. The second element of VDP is the personalization. Here is where we merge in different data points that relate directly to the reader, so your letter, postcard, or other correspondence attracts and keeps the attention of your target. It speaks directly to him or her (regardless of the size of your list) on a one-to-one basis! Every reader gets a different message, and that is what makes them read it.

Is VDP expensive? Absolutely not. Powerful computers and software do most of the heavy lifting, and that makes pricing for variable data services (through us anyway) very reasonable.

So VDP is both highly effective and cheap. And this is why most smart marketers are foregoing generic when for pennies more they can have custom, targeted, individualized pieces.

Digital presses running VDP can create attractive, personalized pieces at price points which provide extremely high ROIs compared to generic. And for this reason we believe that VDP is one of the biggest reasons for the decline of the offset printing market in the United States. What do you think? Give us your feedback below!

March 6, 2012 By Tom Gimer

What is a mail merge and how much does it cost?

I’ve written in the past about variable data publishing (VDP) and how using marketing materials that are uniquely tailored to the recipient improves response rates, leads and sales. The problem is, we continue to get calls from people who have no idea what any of this means!

So for this post we’re going back to basics and going over one of the simplest forms of VDP — the mail merge. With a mail merge, you are simply printing recipients’ information (such as salutation, name and address) on a piece that will be mailed. Most often these are newsletters, brochures, postcards or envelopes but a mail merge could be done on anything to be printed and mailed. If you have a large mailing list, mail merging will save you a lot of time and energy while at the same time making your materials more attractive and professional. So how is it done? Here’s an overview…

First, you provide a spreadsheet containing all of your members’ (or subscribers’ or targets’) information. Most often this is a Microsoft Excel file, although we can work with other file types. Here’s a post about how to properly set up your data file.

Next, we review what you’ve submitted to make sure that it is properly formatted. More often than not, the file needs work. This is where we earn the bulk of our mailing fee. It could be something as simple as taking out empty rows in your file or adding field names, but regardless of what needs to be done we make all necessary changes to ensure that your data can be properly merged into the printed piece.

The cost for mail merging — essentially working with your data and setting it up to print properly — depends upon how many addresses we are going to print; and it decreases as the number of addresses goes up. Mail merge pricing ranges from as much as $0.15 per address (for just a few addresses) to $0.03 each (for many). There is a $6 setup fee.

So let’s say you are going to send postcards to 3000 people on a mailing list. At this level, merging is $0.04 per address, so our mailing fee is $126. Here is what your $126 gets you:

1. we review and reformat (as necessary) your mailing list
2. we print individual addresses on each of your 3000 pieces
3. we take the postcards to the post office and mail them
4. we save you money on postage whenever possible

Update: Just to clarify, in the example above we are already printing a 2-sided postcard, so our mail merge fee covers merging the names onto the card with the other content. In other cases, such a job where we are mail merging and printing envelopes, printing is additional, and the cost depends on the number of prints and whether we are using color vs. black ink. Contact us with your specs to determine total cost of your mail merge and print project.

So, the next time you think about handwriting addresses, printing and sticking labels and affixing a first class stamp to every piece in your mailing, remember this post and consider letting us handle your mail merge or mailing project from the DC Metro area.

February 1, 2012 By Tom Gimer

How to set up a mail merge

Merging data saves time and energy If you’re sending out a mailing, one of the easiest ways to save time and energy (and look more professional) is to merge information directly onto the printed piece(s). Depending on who you talk to, this is called data merging, mail merging, or variable data publishing. To do this, you’re going to need to create a properly formatted file for the printer. It’s actually pretty easy. Here’s how.

This first thing you’ll need is the right software. Microsoft Excel works fine for this. But you can use any software that is capable of generating a Comma Separated Value (.csv) file.

Next, when you first create your data file, make a column heading for every element of data you’ll be including. Elements could be Name, Address, Address2, City, State, Zip, etc. Some people include City/State/Zip in the same field because they are always printed together. That’s fine too.

Once you have your headings, add or import your data. Make sure there are no line breaks in your cells!

Now that you’re done adding the actual data, you’ll need to save the file properly. “Save As” a .csv file. You’ll need to find .csv in the file type drop down.

That’s it! Send your file to the printer with instructions as to where each element should be merged into the final print!