Think digital, print digitally

Part of the challenge for printers is to understand the way in which digital marketers think and how the cost of lead acquisition is calculated. Presenting print options in terms that marketers are familiar with can only help demonstrate its worth and its superior conversion rates. These are typically 3 to 4% for static types and considerably better for personalised or contextualised offerings, rising to as much as 10%, dramatically higher than email or any digital channel.

Another challenge is to overcome outdated perceptions of print amongst its potential (or existing) clients, or simple ignorance of it among a generation raised and trained on digital marketing techniques. Printers are understandably prone to thinking in terms of ‘what can we produce’, while marketers ask ‘what results can we get?’.

As well as showing the better response and conversion rates of print, it may be useful to present a suite of pre-defined options in terms of print products, with prices. These could range from simple flyers to self-mailers, more complicated mailpacks or brochures, depending on the client and the campaign. Actual print samples should be provided too, particularly for anything that requires unusual or high quality finishing or embellishment.

With above average growth rates, household door drop share of the total mail market has strengthened: up from 20% share in 2020 to 23% in 2021, growth has been driven by a number of key advertiser sectors.

- DMA 2022

The point of this is not to limit the client’s options but to help them understand what they are and to remove from them the burden of having to invent a print product from scratch. For those not familiar with print, this step can be another obstacle to choosing it, and a printer who says ‘we can do anything, what do you want?’ is not necessarily helping, while one who shows an example, says what it cost and most importantly, what it achieved in terms of response, is far more likely to have a fruitful conversation.

Such a discussion may also run into objections around the data capture aspect and links to or creation of online resources that come from print, typically ‘we can’t get IT to change the website to support that’. There is an opportunity here for printers with the requisite data and IT skills to provide a complete package, that extends beyond the printing and becomes more of a lead generating service.

Key drivers of market growth have included Restaurant/ takeaway and Local tradesperson advertisers who have recorded modest double-digit growth in the 20-30% range, while a handful of smaller volume categories have experience an almost doubling of volumes (e.g., Mail order/ Online retail, Travel, Letting/Estate agents, and Telecoms), as confidence has returned to the market.

- DMA 2022

Enterprising printers could also offer to handle follow-up activities beyond simple data capture from QR coded links and its transfer to their clients. A choice of software tools for automated campaign management already exists, and could be used to trigger follow-up actions such as emails or more printed communications.

As well as leading to more chargeable work, potentially including more print, this embeds the printer into the client’s operations at a higher and more strategic level, and moves away from the print-as-commodity trap that inevitably leads to a downward spiral on prices and margins. The printer becomes a marketing partner rather than a commodity supplier, and this changes who’s involved in the conversations at the client end from administrative or procurement staff to marketing, and potentially at quite senior levels.

There's been an overall 34.4% increase in ad spend. Comparing door drops to other media channels, particularly Direct mail and Magazines and News, similar year-on-year growth can be seen (15-20%), returning them towards their 2019 levels - if not there yet.

- Advertising Association/WARC Expenditure Report, 2021

Time, context and traceability

Digital printing is central to all of this. Because of its ‘every page different’ capability, printing very short runs – down to just one, if required – is possible. This means that versioning, personalisation or what might more generally be called ‘contextualisation’ are also possible, which all add to the value of print.

The key is to make the print relevant to its recipient. This covers a very broad range of possibilities, from simple ‘take one’ leaflets on hotel reception desks to high quality coffee table-type books left in the room that showcase other hotels in a chain, to promote further bookings, or even souvenir books that feature famous guests of the establishment and which can be sold to guests as a memento of their stay.

Equally, localisation can be as simple as including address details on a leaflet promoting the local branch of a retail store, fast food franchise, bar, sports club or music venue, as part of a door drop targeting the relevant geographical areas, without needing any specific knowledge of the recipients, or necessarily incurring postage costs.

At the other end of the scale, where customer data is held, it’s equally possible to implement full one-to-one personalisation in both print and finishing, with unique QR codes and landing pages to track response directly.

There is also the ‘creator’ market, which includes vanity or niche publishing, in which individuals seek to monetise their own creations or curations of content, including social media or other internet sources. By their nature, such publications are unlikely to ever sell in very large numbers buy may over time generate worthwhile long-tail sales through repeated small quantity orders. Inkjet economics may suit this type of work better than toner and may also enable cost-effective production of memento items for smaller events and organisations.

Digital print is also quick. Because it does away with the need for plates and make-ready, digital print can be very responsive to short-notice client demands, unpredictable market trends and fast-arising but short-lived opportunities. This also means that rather than having to print in quantity in advance, which the economics of analogue offset printing favour, it becomes practical to print less but more often, saving on wastage and storage costs.

This also allows print to synchronise with the marketing cycle: for example, a fast food outlet will most likely have data on how often its customers visit and can therefore refresh its promotional offers at the right rate to coincide with this, or possibly even to pre-empt and accelerate it. Digital print has the agility to support this cost-effectively and at short notice.

Further, digital print also makes it possible to test out different approaches quickly, by running different versions of campaigns concurrently in different areas, or sequentially over time, to establish what works better. A process of iterative refinement and ongoing improvement then becomes possible.

For those in e-commerce environments with no physical stores, in-box promotions via slips added at the packing stage could drive additional sales.

This is a largely untapped opportunity as e-commerce companies have generally felt it too difficult or expensive to produce the necessary print in a timely way. Yet there is no reason why it could not be, with boxes of the relevant slips or flyers shipped to distribution centres; some printers have already begun handling e-commerce fulfilment themselves, which further increases the integration opportunity. The response levels from such initiatives would be easy to track through subsequent sales, even without QR codes or other identifiers.

Collectively these could be called smart documents because they are relevant to the context and circumstances of the recipient, which will increase their effectiveness, especially when combined with digital channels that add further touchpoints and which can link directly from print. The demonstrably improved response then justifies a premium for the production of these documents, again moving the printer away from the commodity price trap.