This is James Michelson from VDP Web, the Principal there. And one of the things we’ve had the most interest in during the AP Forum is how, as a commercial printer, do we really look at – how do I get into the sales process. What are the challenges that become and what’s preventing our customers from really getting involved in cross media, in Pearls, in leading pages, in variable data?
Well, we found that in a lot of the case studies that are presented, there’s all these different parties involved. You have information systems and information technology and the agencies and all these other people that come together to pull that. Well, the challenge is, how do I sell that group? And would it be better for my sales process and my bottom line if I could look at it and go to one person and make a decision and that one person who makes a decision I can provide all the different services that they need?
Now, if we have access to data from IT, great. If we can get creative from their Marketing Department or their agency, terrific. But as the printer, if you can say to one decision maker, “Hey, I can take care of all of this for you, we’ll handle the process from soup to nuts…” then you can make it work. One example is from a printed static piece, Harrah’s was launching a new – and we figured we were in Vegas; this is probably a good example. We’re launching a new casino vote in Chicago, and what we’d like to do is we’re going to print these flyered pieces. Terrific. Well, let’s put on a test-to-win and a unique 800 number, and a generic landing page. So, from one sales process, by adding those three collection mechanisms, the printer was then able to launch follow on direct mail campaigns, follow on collateral campaigns so they’ve got multiple runs of ink on paper from one print sale.
The other thing that does is now, that commercial printer is in charge of the data stream. All that data is collected is sitting at that commercial printer’s location and they have control of the marketing process.