Customer Conversations and Variable Data Printing

Prior to the advent of variable data printing, companies that rely on direct mail have been relegated to using techniques similar to the shouting method displayed by other forms of mass advertising. It’s easy to find an advertisement that shouts at you – just open a magazine, turn on the television, or look at a billboard. Mass-market forms of advertising like these are intended to provide an appeal to a broad audience, and due to the widely varied nature of that audience, mass advertising cannot expect to engage any customers in earnest or meaningful conversation.

Until very recently, direct mail was the same, essentially a distributed form of mass-market advertising, the same message copied and disbursed to thousands of mailboxes simultaneously. With the recent explosion of popularity in online social media, it should be clear that such mass-market messages have grown cold with American consumers, and the public craves personal attention from the businesses they patronize.

But with variable data printing, direct mail communication now has the unprecedented ability to engage a customer directly in a personal conversation. Sound impossible? Variable data printing allows a direct mail run to introduce personal information on each piece of mail, on the fly, literally customizing each and every letter or postcard, down to the pictures used and font styles.

By addressing a customer by name, by offering something you know they previously displayed interest in, or by offering details on their shopping preferences, you are able to begin a real and meaningful conversation – and the simple truth is that conversations are far more likely to end in purchases than shouts. Most amazing of all, even though variable data printing offers companies who use direct mail an opportunity to multiply sales exponentially, utilizing a digital printing press might actually cost less than standard offset printing services provided by traditional printing and publishing agencies.

Interested? You should be! For more information on how variable data printing can revolutionize your direct mail campaigning and allow you to converse with your customers rather than shout at them, download and analyze our Print Equipment Matrix at absolutely no cost to you!

 

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