Printing Marketing Materials? Now What?

If your organization has decided to print as much marketing materials in house as possible, have you considered the next step in the process. Printing has been made easy with several manufacturers offering a higher end printer that prints high quality color on various media types. Although the print technology is available, I still see organizations decide that producing their final marketing pieces is still a complicated process so they hold off on diving into the printing business. I cannot understand the thinking myself. I have been advocating to keep print in house to my customers for years. I have sold printers capable of doing some very nice print and not to mention the capability of variable "images" print, VDP, audience of one or whatever the flavor of the day is. I have stolen every great idea from my production specialists, my analysts and any customer doing the creative work that I love. Everything that I have put into selling the concept of having an implant has resulted in only moderate success.

However, in the last couple years the shift to printing "in-house" seems to be happening, finally! Large corporations have had the money and bandwidth to have an in plant for printing and mailing for many years while smaller organizations mostly have outsourced. But I am seeing a greater interest for companies of all sizes to be self sufficient. Why the change? in my opinion I think it was always trending this way but finally the technology has caught up enough and the pricing has dropped for companies to make the commitment. I see more small production devices stuffed in offices or the mail room than ever before. I also see several customers being sold the wrong technology by vendors that really have no idea how to help these company's with their desire to print high end materials.

So what is the next part of the process? A final piece like a brochure, business card, magazine or catalog was produced by a manufacturer with large equipment for cutting and completing printed material to a finished piece in large volumes. Commercial printers have all types of equipment to finish a product and in some cases they even mail it or have it mailed. This has become an area of opportunity for my company. Not only do I have the best equipment for print, I have excellent solutions for finishing pieces. We have partnered with Formax, a leader in bindery and mailing equipment. Solutions for taking printed flat sheets, such as business cards, are extremely affordable and allow a small organization to produce their own finished materials in house. The simplicity of these types of devices allow employees of all skill levels to be part of the process. Many of the devices have interfaces what allow users to simply press a button or two to cut, crease or fold marketing pieces to their final form. Software is more capable of driving marketing campaigns for mailers. The equipment for stuffing envelopes for invoicing, letters, return envelopes are so advanced but easy to use. Pressure sealed mail pieces have the highest open rate, so if your company is trying to improve your messaging with your potential or current customers a pressure sealer is small enough for any in plant.

The point is that working with a vendor that offers all these capabilities will open your organization up to many possibilities. From creation to a finished piece can be 100% under your control. If your organization outsources print chances are that there is a solution to keep this work in house. #vosupstate, #printing, #Formax,