Neuwied – Direct Mail Days, organized by W+D in cooperation with the FEPE association, attracted around 110 participants to Neuwied on June 28-29, 2017. The fully booked event proved to be an exciting forum for market participants in the envelope, printing and supplier industries.

Speakers from the industry and associations extensively illuminated the event theme “direct mailing” as well as the market and current trends in Europe and the US. Above all, the focus was on the enormous potential of envelopes to create added value for mailings with haptics, layouts and personal approaches. Open and response rates increased by more than 30% in recent direct mail examples. Frank Eichhorn, Managing Director of W+D, added: “Advertisers are increasingly realizing that concentrating on digital media like e-mails is not enough, but requires a clever combination of print and online media. Direct mailing offers a lot of potential again, and W+D sees its future in this area.”

The technical implementation of the creative envelopes on display, such as shape-cut formats, were presented live with their respective machines: the W+D 410 Easy Enveloper, now equipped with two window gluing stations, impressively demonstrated how fast and easy it is not only to convert envelope formats, but also to implement printing changes with the newly developed inline flexo-sheet printing units for internal and external envelope printing. Another helpful application and a link to the Internet was demonstrated by an innovative cloud solution that uses available participant data to immediately create personalized envelopes that could be printed directly on the displayed W+D 234 dL printing machine.

Direct Mail Days is a W+D initiative in cooperation with the European envelope production association FEPE that promotes personalized direct mailings and presents creative future concepts. Due to widespread positive feedback from customers and exhibitors, the next Direct Mail Days will take place again in 2018, with an exact date to be announced.