We recently assisted one of our customers with a major business evolution to inkjet. The company migrated from a cut sheet toner printing environment to continuous roll-fed inkjet platform. It’s a journey becoming common as clients demand the flexibility inkjet provides and printing companies scramble to respond.

• What can you do that others cannot? What case studies or testimonials can you use?
• What skills or business practices differentiate you from competitors?

Mailers are accustomed to postage rate increases in January, and the updates for 2018 followed a familiar pattern. Besides the rate increases, the US Postal Service is updating elements of the postal system. Industry analysts expect more developments soon. Mailers need to stay informed as the mailing business becomes increasingly driven by technology and data. Neglecting to keep up on postal developments can result in missed opportunities and unnecessary costs.

US law mandates the US Postal Service keep rate increases in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for market-dominant products like First Class letters and Marketing Mail. The law allows more pricing flexibility for parcel shipping services where the USPS competes with private carriers.

The CPI price cap keeps rate increases within a definable range, but that doesn’t mean the USPS assigns identical percentage increases across the board. Rate changes for individual classes and presort levels will vary with this latest price adjustment.

In April, 2017 the US Postal Service rolled out a new way for marketers to communicate with their audience. More than five million households subscribe to the free Informed Delivery service and the numbers are growing. With Informed Delivery, consumers receive daily emails containing scanned images of letter-size mail they will receive in their physical mailboxes later in the day.

Campaign effectiveness improves when marketers connect physical and digital channels. Informed Delivery is the easiest way yet to accomplish this feat. The program doubles consumer views of marketing material with no increase in cost or extra preparation. We’re advising print service providers to update their clients about this opportunity to increase direct mail effectiveness.

True leaders create an environment and culture where people can speak, question, and contribute. They are the people who listen to peers, partners, and subordinates without judgement; even in difficult conversations including “bad news” or critical comments. Effective leaders want others to express their honest opinions and find solutions in dialogue that support larger goals.

Printers operating without a MIS system are flying blind

It is easy to tell if a print operation is making money by looking at profit and loss reports. Not so simple is finding the information management needs to make decisions such as determining how much work they can add before purchasing new equipment or when to hire more people. And recognizing the point to adjust pricing for individual jobs or accounts is nearly impossible without a system to capture job level data and generate cost analysis reports.

In many shops, job cost data from the production floor is randomly collected and rarely reviewed. Making the task even harder, many shops use separate, unconnected processes to handle estimates, order entry, job scheduling, postage deposits, time tracking, inventory, and billing. Employees manually copy information generated by one software system into another, leading to errors and omissions. Real time data is unavailable, rendering informed daily production adjustments impossible.

In environments where managers cannot compare job-level costs to budgets or estimates, changing conditions or inefficiencies can make it possible to unknowingly lose money on jobs–and do it repetitively.

The Key to Success is in the Data

Helping non-profits reach their objectives for fundraising and retention requires print service providers to use a new approach; different from how they’ve interacted with customers for decades. Print vendors must dedicate more time to probing, analyzing, and testing than they might apply to traditional direct mail campaigns. A file of names and addresses imaged on pre-printed shells will not yield the desired results. The key to non-profit success is in the data.

 A non-profit organization’s data could be outdated or in disarray. Print service providers may have to help their non-profit clients assess, augment, and use the data necessary to make their fundraising campaigns successful. It is important to do this work before attempting to design compelling variable data campaigns.

Start with an analysis of the data that exists within the non-profit’s donor databases:

• What information have they captured?
• Did they record the information in a consistent manner?
• Is information missing from some records?
• Are there known duplicates?
• Is the data centralized or is it spread across several departments or locations?
• How old is the data?

Printers have the expertise, non-profits have the need

Many non-profit organizations are stuck in the past when it comes to their fundraising efforts. Part of the challenge is a lack of resources. Non-profits rely on volunteers to handle administrative tasks. There may also be knowledge and experience gaps which may cost fundraising groups more than they realize. Partners such as print and mail service providers can be valuable sources of information and inspiration. Working with their partners, non-profit clients can upgrade their fundraising and communication strategies through printed and electronic messaging.

 “Tried and True” campaigns that have always produced satisfactory results are probably out-of-date today. Internet technology has affected everything – including the way non-profits inform donors about causes and persuade them to send money.  Good news for smaller non-profits, the internet has also leveled the playing field. Now any size organization has access to the tools and techniques necessary to upgrade their approach. Non-profits must modernize their methods to take advantage of current technology and connect to today’s contributors.

Data is king in the commercial business world and non-profits are no different. Sadly, most organizations do not have the data they need. Others are unsuccessful at applying their facts and figures. Effective use of data will improve messages to members, donors, volunteers, and sponsors. Stellar fundraising requires communicating the right information at the right time to the right people. Data makes that possible. And software tools drive effective customer engagement across multi-channel communications.

Marketing and Sales Must Work Together

Creating a Business Marketing Plan for Inkjet includes several steps. Success relies upon an honest evaluation of the print service provider and a detailed analysis of customers, competitors, and market trends. If inkjet is new to everyone in the organization, or an introspective examination of the current condition is difficult, then ask for opinions from outside observers and experts to help build the business plan.

In Part 1 of this post we described assessment, review, and goal-setting activities necessary to establish a baseline and the desired objectives for developing new business for an inkjet platform. Part 2 focuses on the marketing and sales strategies print service providers must consider to achieve the desired outcomes.

Marketing Strategy

Print service providers achieving the greatest return on their inkjet platform investments have approached marketing differently from their strategies for traditional offset or toner-based printing. Their focus is on using inkjet to help customers meet their marketing or customer communications objectives, rather than on the printed output itself. Creating awareness, interest, and demand for inkjet-enabled benefits is the job of the print provider’s marketing strategy.

Inkjet-specific marketing materials can point out how a service provider’s inkjet operation can:

• Improve response rates for customer marketing materials by making documents more personalized

• Use data to create relevant documents and images designed to improve customer experiences

• Embed promotional, informational, or educational content in transactional documents

• Reduce customer service calls by creating easily understood documents

• Drive targeted messaging in other channels and integrate printed materials into multi-channel campaigns

• Get documents produced sooner due to shortened proofing and preparation times