I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. III. When Why IV. DIGITAL PRINTING = … · when & why to go digital i. introduction 1 ii. what’s so “digital” about digital printing? 2 iii. digital printing

When & Why to Go Digital

I. INTRODUCTION 1

II. WHAT’S SO “DIGITAL” ABOUT DIGITAL PRINTING? 2

III. DIGITAL PRINTING AS A MEDIA BUY 3

IV. DIGITAL PRINTING = PRINTING YOUR WAY 4

V. DIGITAL PRINTING IN PERSONALIZED

“RUNS OF ONE” 5

VI. DIGITAL PRINTING FOR PACKAGING 6

VII. PREPARING TO PRINT DIGITALLY 8

VIII. SUMMARY AND RESOURCES 9

Print & Marketing Solutions

In marketing communications, all media get attention. Print gets results. Correctly blend-ed into the media mix, digital printing gets some of the most satisfying results of all.

Savvy marketers—especially those spe-cializing in database-driven campaigns—appreciate print’s potential and know how to leverage it. Consider the example of the telecommunications company that follows up with personalized e-mail and printed di-rect mail each time a customer goes to one of its retail stores. Sending timely post-vis-it offers turns into a 30% chance that the customer will make a purchase.1

Academic research confirms what market-ers have learned about the response-gen-erating power of print. One study found that content delivered in print outscored digital channels in engagement time, emotional stimulation, recall, and perceived desirabili-ty and value2. These are not just subjective reactions. An experiment that used MRI scanning to “see” participants’ brains while they looked at digital and printed materials discovered that “tangible materials leave a deeper footprint in the brain” as people in-teract with them. 3

Print is powerful—and harnessing its pow-er is a skill that can be learned by every business-to-business (B2B) or business- to-consumer (B2C) marketing professional with a product to sell, a service to promote,

or a message to communicate. The key to success with print today is understanding how to align it with the new ways in which people expect information to be delivered to them—a connection that digital printing makes with the ROI to show for it.

This white paper describes what digital printing is and how it can be used to full advantage in multichannel marketing cam-paigns. It covers digital press technology; the cost of digital printing; the concepts of “print on demand” and 1:1 personalization; product applications; and tips for working with providers of digital printing services. The information is aimed both at those who are new to digital printing and at those who want to be sure of getting maximum re-turns from their current digital print spend.

Investment in digital printing is on the rise everywhere. Printing Industries of America, a trade group, estimates that the volume of print produced digitally is increasing by as much as 3.5% annually while other kinds of print lose market share.4 The reasons for digital printing’s popularity can be intuited by every media buyer who has ever wanted to use print in a more targeted, cost effec-tive, and result-getting way. The sections to follow will make the reasons clear.

1Heidi Tolliver-Walker, “Hot Ideas for Cross Media Marketing & NFC,” Printing News (December 2015)2Graham Jones, “5 Significant Reasons Why Print Is More Valuable than Digital,” Business 2 Community (July 27, 2015)3Case Study: “Using Neuroscience to Understand the Role of Direct Mail” (Millward Brown, 2009)4Printing Industries of America, “Digital Printing and Ancillary Services”

“Print is powerful—and harnessing its power is a skill that can be learned by every marketing professional with a product to sell, a service to promote, or a message to communicate.”

INTRODUCTIONI.

Image courtesy of Hewlett-Packard

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What media buyers need to know about digital printing isn’t how to produce it, but how to use it. Still, it helps to have a basic grasp of the digital printing process and its special capabilities.

Most mass-produced print—for example, magazines, newspapers, and books—comes from conventional printing systems. These are sometimes referred to as impact printing systems because they have fixed image carriers (rotary plates or cylinders) that directly or indirectly contact the sur-face of whatever is being printed. Offset li-thography, flexography, and gravure are the main conventional printing processes.

Digital printing is done with non-impact printing systems that use electrostatical-ly charged toners or inkjet ink. Only these substances touch the paper, and only when the system’s computerized controls tell the press to create a new image for the next cycle of printing in the run.

This is the most fundamental difference between conventional and digital printing methods. Conventional presses reproduce the same images over and over again, usu-ally in runs comprising thousands of iden-tical impressions. Digital presses re-cre-ate them from page to page in whatever number of “runs of one” the customer re-quires—including very small quantities.

What this difference can mean to the cost of printing is discussed in section III. Import-ant to understand here is that the “digital” aspect of a non-impact printing system is the stream of data that tells it what to print. Like a desktop printer connected to a per-sonal computer or a mobile device, a digital production press runs entirely on data—there is no need for plates, complicated press setup, or any of the preparatory steps that go with conventional production.

Another similarity is that because a digital press also is an Internet-connected device,

the data to drive it can come from any-where. This means that the job can origi-nate in one place and be streamed as data to a digital press in a printing plant or a retail printing center close to where the finished copies are going to be used (think of the convenience and the savings in shipping).

The data stream can consist of static (un-changing) content or of words and images that can vary from print to print: a unique ability of digital printing that will be covered in section V. Augmenting a digital press with inline finishing equipment for tasks such as folding, trimming, and bookletmaking turns it into an all-in-one system for delivering fin-ished product in a single pass.

Used for the kinds of jobs that take full ad-vantage of what they can do, digital press-es are versatile, high-quality, cost efficient production systems. They solve problems, and they offer new creative options for per-suading in print.

WHAT’S SO “DIGITAL” ABOUT DIGITAL PRINTING?

“Digital presses are versatile, high-quality, cost efficient production systems that offer new creative options for persuading in print.”

II.

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Image courtesy of Hewlett-Packard

“Digital printing lets buyers print as much as they need, but no more than they need—a strategy that keeps cash from being tied up in excess inventory.”

Conventional printing is a form of mass manufacturing, and as such, it enjoys economies of scale: cost structures that decrease as the quantities produced in-crease. This happens because convention-al printing has up-front fixed costs—mostly from platemaking and press setup—that printers recover by factoring them into the unit cost (price per piece) of the job. As more copies are printed, the unit cost goes down.

This is good news for buyers who need a lot of copies, and it explains why offset and flexo continue to be the processes of choice for high-volume work. The down-side is that their economies of scale don’t kick in for runs of hundreds (or tens) of cop-ies. This can make conventional printing in small quantities prohibitively expensive.

Today, however, ordering in small quan-

tities is how buyers increasingly prefer to source their printed matter. The solution is digital printing, in which there are no up-front costs to recover. This means that once the printing begins, the unit cost will remain constant no matter how many cop-ies are produced. In small quantities, the unit cost of digital printing is lower than that of conventional printing, making short runs affordable.

At a certain level of volume, digital breaks even with conventional and then begins to lose its unit-cost advantage. Because late-model digital presses have higher break-even points than older equipment, the newer devices may be good options for medium-volume jobs as well as short runs.

Working within the economic “sweet spot” of digital production is the smart way to buy many kinds of printing. With digital printing,

it isn’t necessary to over-order for the sake of getting a price break, because the price isn’t quantity-dependent. This lets buyers print as much as they need, but no more than they need—a strategy that keeps cash from being tied up in excess inven-tory. Waste and obsolescence of printed matter cease to be problems.

A print services provider that has both con-ventional and digital equipment will know how to help its customers make the right calls about cost and quantity. But, the de-cision to go digital is often about more than price. Buyers also choose digital printing for its flexibility and rapid turnarounds. When need or opportunity arises, a digi-tal press can quickly deliver whatever it will take to make the most timely and effective response. That’s a proven formula for re-turn on investment—and the real value of digital printing.

DIGITAL PRINTING AS A MEDIA BUYIII.

Digital Printing in “Green”Every printing process has an environmental impact, but with digital printing, the impact can be minimal. Digital printing’s biggest “green” advantage is the fact that it produces only limited quantities of VOCs: volatile organic compounds, chemical substances that can contribute to air pollution when they enter the atmosphere as a side effect of the press run. Digital toners and inkjet inks generate much smaller volumes of VOCs than the inks and fountain solutions used in offset lithographic printing. Unlike offset equipment, digital presses don’t need VOC-producing solvents for press washups (because there are no washups).

Digital printing typically is used for small runs. That means it consumes less paper than conventional printing and yields less paper waste. Digital presses also can print on recycled papers and on those sourced from sustainably managed forests. All in all, digital printing is as environmentally friendly as print-ing gets—a strong point in its favor for eco-conscious businesses and their customers.

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“Engineered for short runs, a digital press can get a job into production as soon as the job file appears in the queue.”

The first digital production presses entered service more than 30 years ago. Soon after they did, printers and print buyers began to realize that the paradigm of their business relationship was changing. They called the new arrangement “print on demand.”

Print on demand remains the norm for digi-tal production today. It’s a customer-centric model that gives the buyer the prerogative of determining:

• How much printing is to be produced

• When and where it is to be delivered

• When to rerun and update previously printed jobs

Buyers often did not have these options with conventional printing. If they want-ed small quantities, they had to agree to printers’ minimums in order to get an ac-ceptable unit price. Timing depended on

finding an open slot in the printer’s press-room schedule—a delay that could take days if not weeks. Because of high setup expense, going back on press for a reprint with updated content might be difficult to cost-justify.

Digital printing eliminates these constraints. Engineered for short runs, a digital press can get a job into production as soon as the job file appears in the queue. Today, print service providers are speeding up the workflow with e-commerce portals that let customers submit job files through web browsers and track the progress of their jobs in the same way. The wait needn’t be long: with digital printing, “in by 5, out by 9” has become the slogan for the quick turn-arounds that the process is capable of.

Because job files can be sent anywhere via the Internet, production can take place at

whatever location best suits the custom-er: at a local plant, if the customer wants to pick up the copies there; or at any site in a multi-facility network. The larger the network, the more options the customer will have for getting the printing done at or close to the location where the material is going to be used.

When the information in them needs to be edited or expanded, digital files are easy to update. That makes reordering equally convenient—simply send the revised file to the press, specify a quantity, and print. Anything printed digitally can never go “out of print” as long as there is fresh material to add to it and an audience that wants to read it. In this way, print gets a new lease on life as a channel for B2B and B2C com-munications of all kinds.

DIGITAL PRINTING = PRINTING YOUR WAYIV.

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Image courtesy of Hewlett-Packard

Few audiences are cut from identical piec-es of demographic cloth. The people in them differ widely by gender, age, location, income, purchasing history, and a host of other characteristics. Conventional print can’t target them on the basis of these traits without separately produced messaging for each group—a costly and an impractical proposition.

Digital printing’s answer lies in its most rad-ical technological departure from conven-tional printing—its ability to print variably. Unlike a conventional press, a digital press can change the content of every page it prints within a run so that no two pages are alike. The differentiation comes from pulling variable content out of a database and placing it into a virtual printing form ac-cording to rules that define what the printed image will look like. In this way, the press can turn each piece into an individualized message that greets its recipient by name and tells a story based on that recipient’s identity alone.

Variable data printing (VDP) software cre-ates fields within documents into which the variable elements—text, images, photos, charts, etc.—are automatically inserted as the documents are printed. The database that the variable content is drawn from contains all of the information the sender

possesses about the intended recipients. The data often are gathered through in-bound marketing — for example, from the recipients’ visits to the sender’s web site.

Depending on what the sender wants to ac-complish, the output can be a simple mail merge, with just a few pieces of variable in-formation; a versioned run, combining stat-ic content with sections tailored to selected groups; or fully personalized, 1:1 printing in which up to 100% of the content is spe-cific to the recipient. Including QR codes and personalized URLs (PURLs) among the variable elements heightens the impact and increases the likelihood of a response.

Targeted communication with VDP-en-hanced “runs of one” can be an excep-tionally powerful marketing tool. Research by print industry trade associations shows a response rate of 6% for personalized di-rect-mail pieces vs. 2% for non-personal-ized mail—a difference of 300%.1 A printing company that sent out 3,000 postcards of each type found that the difference worked out to 100 additional leads from the person-alized cards at 61% less cost per response than the plain ones.2 Clearly, when VDP is done correctly, another way to abbreviate it is “ROI.”

www.visitlanikaibeach.com

DIGITAL PRINTING IN PERSONALIZED “RUNS OF ONE”V.

1Kathryn Wyckoff and Ron Carll, “Why Variable-Data Printing Is a Must-Have Technology” (Printing Industries of America)2Sean Owen, “Personalization Drastically Improves Response Rates” (Talient Action Group, February 1, 2015)

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“A digital press can turn each piece into an individualized message that greets its recipient by name and tells a story based on that recipient’s identity alone.”

Image courtesy of Hewlett-Packard

If it can be printed conventionally, it can also be printed—and probably should be print-ed—digitally. Direct mail, brochures, flyers, posters, books, and periodicals are all ex-amples of items that get a new dimension of usefulness when printed in short runs, with or without personalization.

Packaging also belongs on the list. Many market trends are driving the production of packages and labels into digital printing territory: product-line diversification (also known as “SKU proliferation”); the rise of new retailing outlets such as club stores and “dollar” stores; and brand strategies that seek to capitalize on seasonal, region-al, and group-specific consumer marketing opportunities. Brand owners want ways to make their packaging more engaging, per-sonal, and relevant—qualities that digital printing can give it in abundance.

Digital printing won’t replace offset lithog-raphy or flexography for mass- manufac-tured packaging. But, it can complement these processes with packaging applica-tions designed to make the kinds of impact that wouldn’t be possible with conventional production.

During the 2015 holiday season, for ex-ample, the makers of Oreo cookies invited consumers to custom-color and decorate special packages online. The flexible-film packages with their one-of-a-kind artwork were then printed on digital presses and sent to the creators.1 Anheuser-Busch used the same technology earlier in the year to print 200,000 different versions of a shrink sleeve for cans of Bud Light.2

Mass-customized packaging like these two projects, or small runs of packages with 1:1 personalization: digital presses can handle them all. Digital printing is the ideal solution for test-marketing new package designs or for turning out quick batches of sales sam-ples. When ingredients change, or when product safety regulations require a change of packaging language, just-in-time digital printing lets small producers (for example, artisanal food shops) handle the updates with ease.

Some digital presses are designed specifi-cally for packaging. Many general-purpose digital production presses can print card-board, shrink film, label stock, and other commonly used packaging substrates. All

print in high-resolution CMYK; some have expanded gamuts of up to seven colors and can lay down specialty inks and coat-ings such as opaque white and clear UV. Digital presses also excel at imprinting QR codes, security markings, track-and-trace taggants, and other graphics that protect and enhance packaging.

Labels are especially good candidates for digital printing. With the right equipment and software, matching brand colors and accurately reproducing critical graphic ele-ments can be guaranteed. A digital press with inline finishing units delivers the labels in ready-to-apply form, just the way the customer wants them.

The Smithers Pira research organization forecasts that the world market for digital packaging and label printing, worth $10.5 billion in 2015, will enjoy a compound annu-al growth rate of 13.6% through 2020.3 It’s a dynamic printing market that gives every producer of packaged goods new ways to reach potential customers and strengthen ties with existing ones.

Digital Printing for PackagingVI.

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“Brand owners want ways to make their packaging more engaging, personal, and relevant—qualities that digital printing can give it in abundance.”

1Andy Thomas, “Oreo launches customized holiday packaging” (Labels & Labeling, November 17, 2015)2“HP Unlocks Mass Customization Capabilities to Produce 200,000 Unique Bud Light Cans” (WhatTheyThink, September 11, 2015)3“The Future of Digital Print for Packaging to 2020” (Smithers Pira)

Is Digital Color Colorful Enough?There was a time when color from digital presses wasn’t up to the standard established by offset lithog-raphy. Today, there is no significant difference between the two processes in terms of color reproduction quality. With their high output resolutions, broad color gamuts, and built-in technologies for quality con-trol, digital presses can meet the most exacting color requirements.

Digital presses operate in the same four-color printing space as offset presses. This means that any job color-separated for offset will print the same way in the digital process, as a combination of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK). Four-color printing accurately reproduces the hues of most artwork and very often can match custom spot colors by precisely blending the colorants. Fine details, smooth gradients, realistic skin tones—all are easy to achieve on a self-digital press with a skilled operator. Today, printing digitally means printing confidently.

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Today, virtually all print jobs originate dig-itally, and printing them has become an extensively automated form of computer integrated manufacturing. This is true of conventional as well as digital production—both are high-performance, high-precision processes with many built-in safeguards against printing errors and waste.

No press, however, is better than the file it is given to print. This is what makes the quality of input files the key to trouble-free production. Working together, job creators and print service providers can establish routines for file submission that eliminate the most common kinds of input errors.

Most print service providers publish file preparation guidelines to assist their cus-tomers in submitting jobs. These instruc-tions typically cover acceptable and un-acceptable file formats; crop marks and bleeds; image resolution; color space conversion; document sizes and layouts; and font embedding. Files are checked for compliance in a process called preflight, performed with software either by the cus-

tomer prior to submission or by the provid-er upon receipt.

With very few exceptions nowadays, files are uploaded to web portals where they are queued for entry into the provider’s pro-duction workflow. At this point, depending on the requirements of the job, the custom-er will see a proof: either a screen-based “soft” proof or a hard-copy version deliv-ered physically. The customer may be able to mark up soft proofs interactively through the portal if the provider offers that service. The customer’s sign-off is the green light for printing to begin.

The ease or the difficulty a customer ex-periences in following these routines is a good indicator of how reliable a partner the print service provider will be in the long run. The best providers focus on eliminating all points of friction from the job submission, proofing, and approval sequence. Some add convenience by letting customers store templated documents at their portals for quick updating and reordering. Others permit online tracking of work in progress.

Choosing a print service provider is a signif-icant business decision, especially for buy-ers who are new to digital printing. Some evaluative questions to ask are:

• How long has the provider been in busi-ness, and what kinds of facilities does it operate?

• Does the provider offer both conventional and digital printing services?

• What is the quality of its customer support?

• Are there ancillary services such as kit-ting, warehousing, fulfillment, and data-base management

• Above all, is the provider prepared to act in a consultative role, educating its custom-ers about how printing technologies can help them do more for their customers?

Consider the answers carefully. Good print-ing comes from good craftsmanship. Great printing comes from great partnerships.

PREPARING TO PRINT DIGITALLYVII.

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• Personalized URLs (PURLs). These take recipients to landing pages with content tailored to their characteristics, interests, and purchasing histories. PURLs in direct mail campaigns generate solid response.

• QR (quick response) codes. A printed piece with a QR code is like a redeemable gift certificate for useful information, cou-pons and discounts, special offers—things that customers ap-preciate and remember.

• Transpromo. Combining transactional information — billing notices, bank statements, etc. — with personalized promo-tional offers in the same document creates a piece that the recipient is guaranteed to look at and highly likely to respond to.

• Augmented reality (AR). It’s an emerging technology with enormous potential for print. AR apps and software need a tar-get to trigger the AR experience on the viewer’s mobile phone. Nothing serves the purpose better than toner or ink on paper.

• Short codes. People are still in love with texting. Using print to get them to send text messages to promotional short codes is a natural tactic for marketers. Short codes can be printed on direct mail, store displays, packaging, signage—wherever an audience is on hand to see them.

Digital Printing: Consider the PossibilitiesFrom the beginning, digital presses have been vehicles for finding new ways to leverage the effectiveness of printed communications. Here are some applications that have proven ideal for digital printing:

This white paper has tried to enumerate the advantages of digital printing for media professionals who buy printing. It concludes with some advice for making purchases that will repay the investment with measurable results.

Look for clues in plain sight. If the volume of print that an or-ganization buys is stable but the number of orders it consists of is rising, that may point to an opening for digital printing. Frequent product rebrandings and other recurring obligations to change printed content also are indicators that digital printing is needed.

Think digitally, print digitally. To take full advantage of what digital presses can do, begin planning printing projects as digital jobs from the ground up. Pursue opportunities to generate more response with smaller quantities. These opportunities exist in every print-buying organization.

Deconstruct the audience. Success with digital printing is all about segmentation and targeting. No customer population is homogeneous. It’s essential to know how the audience breaks down and how every distinct group within it expresses its needs and preferences.

Optimize the database. Personalized printing is database-driv-en. For effective use in 1:1 campaigns, customer records must be comprehensive, up to date, and clean.

Don’t print in a media vacuum. Digital printing works best in multichannel campaigns where print, online, and social media messaging generate traffic and responses for each other. The most highly regarded print service providers are those that specialize in helping their clients develop multichannel campaigns.

Look at ROI first, cost second. Managing the media spend is always a priority for buyers, but with digital printing, focusing on the price tag is the wrong way to do it. Consider what happened when an independent optician used personalized brochures to win back business from customers who had ceased visiting the practice. The mailings worked so well that the initial ROI on the effort was 500:1.1 That ratio, not the dollar amount of the printer’s bill, is the true metric of value in digital printing.

Do some homework. Good information about digital printing and its applications is not difficult to find. Here are some worthwhile sources:

Print in the Mix (printinthemix.rit.edu)

Value of Print (value.printing.org)

PODi Inc. (podi.org)

The Digital Nirvana (thedigitalnirvana.com)

PrintPlanet (printplanet.com)

WhatTheyThink - Labels & Packaging (whattheythink.com/packaging)

Staples® Print Solutions, a nationwide network of facilities for business printing products and services, welcomes the opportunity to discuss the benefits of digital printing.

SUMMARY AND RESOURCESVIII.

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“To take full advantage of what digital presses can do, begin planning printing projects as digital jobs from the ground up. ”

1“Hodd Barnes & Dickins Recalls Lapsed Clients” (PODi The Digital Printing Initiative, 2015)