The ABC's of VDP

The availability of digital technology for gathering, analyzing and storing information, combined with the efficiency of digital printing, has greatly expanded the ability of businesses and organizations of any size to reach out to customers and prospects with a customized message. This ability, called one-to-one marketing, is very different from the one-to-many marketing messages of traditional media. In one-to-many marketing, the same content is sent to the entire audience, who are assumed to share an interest in the content being sent. In contrast, one-to-one marketing sends a custom message to each individual in the audience, often producing a response of “How did they know I was interested in that?!” The process for conducting one-to-one marketing is called variable data printing (VDP). VDP can range from a simple mail merge (such as including a person’s name in the inside address of a letter) to a highly sophisticated change of text, photographs and graphic images (such as preparation of a booklet defining insurance benefits, deductibles and premium payments for a single individual). VDP is enabled by linking a static page layout with a database of information and a file of photographs and graphic images, then applying a set of rules that tells how to select elements from the database and image files and where to place them in the page layout. Since digital print creates each copy on-the-fly from a raster image file, it is easy to make every copy unique. VDP pairs offset quality with digital customization The early forms of VDP had several tell-tale limitations: the custom information almost always appeared in black ink, and sometimes the font didn’t match the rest of the type or the margins weren’t even. When overprint, versioning and mail merge came into wider use, these limitations became recognizable and compromised the effectiveness of the customization. Today’s VDP is markedly different. Using color digital technology, the entire piece can be printed in full color, the custom information can be placed almost anywhere, and custom graphic images like charts and graphs can be created on-the-fly as the document is printing. (Utility bills and credit card statements – known as transactional printing – are two examples this type of VDP.) When VDP is used for marketing material, each copy is unique, customized and printed for the individual recipient. Even without extensive customization, VDP is an ideal choice for direct mail, promotional flyers and event promotion: • Print only as many as you need. Limit the number of copies to the number in your database. • Test market a direct mail piece. Adjust the content of a direct mail piece for A/B testing, then use the version with the best response rate for the main mailing. • Print addresses directly on the mail piece as the piece is being printed. Eliminate labels and hand-addressing. VDP use is growing The Who’s Mailing What! Archive is the world’s largest library of direct mail information. Sponsored by the North American Publishing Company, the archive has been collecting information for 20 years in the form of 4000 to 5000 pieces of direct mail received monthly. Analyzed and stored as an online database, the archive is based on information from more than 240,000 direct mail packages. An analysis of 40 months of data from the archive (January 2009 to October 2011) shows the growth of VDP for direct marketing pieces: • In 2009, 28% of direct mail pieces were personalized. • In 2010, the number of personalized mail pieces increased to 34% (a 21% increase). • In the first ten months of 2011, the use of personalized mail pieces increased 21% of 2010, which is a 46% increase from 2009. The increased use of VDP for marketing is due to improving cost-benefit ratios (though a personalized direct mail piece costs more than a static piece, companies print only the number they need) and better response rates. MindFire, Inc., a company that provides VDP software, has studied 1856 cross-media marketing campaigns in 30 vertical industries. MindFire reports that in 2010, the response rate across all industries averaged 4.5%. Compare this with an average response rate from static direct mail of between 0.5% and 2%. Use VDP for your customers first Earlier we mentioned that VDP combines a static page layout with a database of information. The more information in the database, the more custom and personalized the VDP mail becomes. Because you know more about your customers than your prospects, and because it is easier to sell to existing customers than prospects, it makes sense to use VDP on customers first. We recommend that you start with a relatively simple project, one that takes advantage of the information you already have collected about your customers. That could include a reminder about the last item they purchased or the last donation they made, coupled with an offer specifically related to that transaction. If desired, make it a cross media campaign by including a personalized URL (uniform resource locator – a web address) on the mail piece. We’ll help you design the mail piece and check your database to be sure it has all the needed information for customization. Contact Kimberly or Dan at 303.320.4855 for more information and assistance in putting VDP to work for your company or organization.