Gimbel & Associates Blog

Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the experts.  Roger Gimbel & Randy Hardy will be discussing how AI will impact printing.  To register, see details and links below.

Any marketer or designer knows that success and customer engagement come from standing out and creating memorable experiences. Print is a proven method of creating strong connections, and one method of intensifying engagement with printed pieces even more is by adding embellishments.

Embellishments are finishing decorative applications added after the actual printing, in the post-press phase of production. Broadly, embellishments include multiple types of inks, from metallics to invisible formulations; specialty coatings; die cutting; embossing and debossing; and various foils.

Today, the most effective marketing programs are fueled by data, which can be an anxious topic for creative people. It doesn’t have to be. Learning some basics about data is all it takes to leverage the power of data and avoid mistakes that result in re-working the design.

Why is data important?

When it’s used properly, data can increase customer engagement and responses. The more you know about your recipients, and can use that knowledge to drive the images, text, and offers, the better you can create meaningful communications. A customers’ shopping history, for example, can predict their interest in future purchases and allow you to design interesting offers to which they are more likely to respond.

Even the most basic information about your targets such as location, gender, and age can make a big difference, turning a generic campaign into one that is personalized.

Print providers face the dilemma of marketing their services with in-house resources or hiring a marketing firm.  It’s a reasonable predicament. Print service providers (PSP’s) offer many services that execute on strategies marketing agencies recommend. These include graphic design, print, and direct mail submission. PSPs are experts in those parts of a marketing program. Would it be much of a stretch to write the marketing plan and manage the digital components? How much time could website design and maintenance, SEO, and social media take?

It boils down to one simple question: “How much of my company’s marketing should I do myself?”

Printers are famous for executing marketing programs for their clients while neglecting efforts to promote their own businesses. Part of the problem is that marketing can seem time-consuming, complex, and expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. Marketing is based on a few fundamentals: know your clients, decide what you want to tell them, and choose the tactics that work best.

Are you focused solely on getting the “daily laundry” out the door each day?

Direct mail is staging a comeback! Instead of concentrating solely on saturated channels such as email and social media, marketers are once again embracing mail’s superior open and conversion rates. To produce the best results requires both creative designs and compliance with postal mail best practices. Designers who have spent little time with direct mail may need to get up to speed on the details that make a direct mail campaign successful.

The volume and complexity of the US Postal Service’s Domestic Mail Manual can be overwhelming, but creative people need to focus on only a few important areas to ensure their designs flow smoothly through the mail. Design missteps that affect mailability can be expensive. Errors discovered at production time increase costs and put deadlines in jeopardy. A bit of knowledge is all it takes to prevent last-minute disasters and get maximum value from direct mail campaigns.

Printers understand about the impact printed items can have on people. Interacting with print involves multiple human senses including smell, touch, and hearing-besides the visual aspect. Designers that concentrate mainly on digital mediums may not realize how to get the best results from their printed projects. They don’t know what they don’t know

Printing can involve complicated and exacting specifications that creative people must take into consideration during the design process. Informed designers working closely with printers will produce the most desirable outcome. Dialogs that begin with the questions below create favorable collaborations.

Nearly all printing companies have by now pondered the idea of adding digital inkjet devices to their production floors. Top performing companies have already made the move, and it’s paying off for them. Over 50% of the top 50 U.S. print providers on the Printing Impressions 400 list are running production inkjet presses. 75% of them are experiencing revenue growth. It’s no wonder that inkjet is so popular, but printers have lots of choices when they decide to invest in an inkjet press. How do you know which one is right?

Printing projects start with project design but marketers and designers aren’t always up to speed on printing industry developments. Lack of information can cause designers to miss out on exploiting new technologies or create unnecessary expense. Here are some trends and printing operation developments that can affect how creative people design print projects.

Color Choices and Specialty Inks

Printing presses can create only a portion of all possible colors by mixing their four basic inks; cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). When colors must be exact, such as in a corporate logo, printers purchase specialty inks or “spot colors” that ink companies pre-mix to exact specifications. Ink companies create the colors according to the Pantone Color Matching System (PMS).

The printing business is awash in advanced technology and automation. One can walk around the trade shows to observe software and equipment everywhere that handles many of the tasks formerly dependent on experienced printing professionals. Automation enables printing companies to produce more work in less time and at lower costs. But that doesn’t eliminate the need for skilled humans to envision solutions, monitor progress, and include new technology in efficient workflows. And legacy equipment still in use at most print facilities will require educated operators.

For quite some time this industry will need talented individuals dedicated to keeping print a viable and valuable means of communicating information-and that’s a problem.

The discussion on business growth for today's commercial printers is highly focused on technology considerations around such topics as inkjet, digital, workflow, and other process and production related concerns.  In our strategic work with commercial printers of all sizes we constantly face a wall that challenges their senior management team. How to focus "On the Business" versus focusing "In the Business?"   Day to day operations absorb the greatest amount of time for senior management.  Where we are going and how important is it if not more so than what happened on the shop floor that day or what order did not get filled?