Worth the Trip

It's been a busy week with travel and meetings with potential customers. These are the kind of weeks I absolutely love and remind me that making the phone calls and doing the follow up are so important...and worthwhile. Yesterday, we were fortunate to have potential customers visit BPI Media Group's plant in Boaz, AL from the Atlanta area. I was reminded of how much we really can do under one roof, and the prospects seemed quite impressed as well.

Sometimes, it takes seeing to believe that we really can do all the design, prepress, print, bindery, mail and fulfillment from BPI's primary location in Boaz. As we made our way through the plant from department to department following the work flow, the faces of the employees were welcoming and confident. They're confident because most of them have been there for 10+ years...some even 20+ years. That's a lot of experience, and a lot of technology to keep up with as it is ever changing in our industry.

Having our Kodak Insite proofing system in place makes those who are hours (even states) away be able to proof immediately upon uploading files. Just because we're in Boaz doesn't mean it will take longer to get your proof. In fact, you'll get it faster through Insite. Seeing our conventional presses in motion and how a 40" 6-color offset press works is impressive if you haven't seen it before. The technology of our Kodak Nexpress digital press is also something to see. If you have custom pantone color needs, our pantone mixing system will knock your socks off. When we added 20,000+ square feet to the existing building in 2002, we allowed for room to grow and added room for a warehouse to hold fulfillment materials. Bindery was able to grow by added additional folders and fugutive glue features. This added space also allowed us to set up our own mail room with 2 inkjetters/tabbers in the mail department.

You don't have to take my word for it that we do it all at BPI in Boaz, come visit. I promise, it's worth the trip, and we'd love to have you!

Until next time...Elizabeth

.

Which Digital Printing Level Is Right for You?

Whew, what a week! In the past week, I've logged over 900 miles, but it is always great to sit across from a customer or prospect and learn what's going on from a marketer's perspective. I learn more during those meetings than I do any other time. Thank you to those who've taken the time recently to meet with me and hear about some of the exciting things going on at BPI Media Group. I have truly been blessed to have some really great customers. Because of that, I love working with them to help business grow, prosper and make their daily duties easier.

This week, I want to share the 7 levels of digital printing because they just might help in your marketing plans for 2012. If you've never considered some of these, chances are you will after learning a bit more about each level. With the addition of our Kodak Nexpress earlier this year, we've opened the door to possibilities for our customers that weren't possible before. I hope you'll embrace a few of these levels and even adopt them into your 2012 marketing plans. You'll see how each level builds upon the previous level, digging deeper into a more personal 1:1 communication with your customer or prospect.

Level 1: Static, Short-Run Printing. Static, or unchanging, documents that are needed in a small quantity fall into this category. Perfect for when you need, for example, 200 copies of a flyer in a hurry. Digital printing allows press runs for as few as one copy and can contain multiple paper types. Benefits of this are for most everyone providing quick turns, avoiding excess and obsolete materials and eliminating storage space for the larger runs.

Level 2: Version Printing. This includes a common design but has unique content or verbiage to target a specific audience. Versioning makes for a more relevant communications piece and can allow for dealer or distributor branding while using the corporate standard.Versioning can also help lift response rates.

Level 3: Personalized Printing. Using a database with recipient information, you can seamlessly add names and/or addresses into the copy of your printed piece. This direct communication encourages a stronger customer or user relationship.

Level 4: Customized Printing. When you not only personalize the message but also customize the images to make it more relevant to groups, this is customized printing. This further increases participation, drawing the recipient in, thus improving response rates. Customizing also allows for individuals to receive smaller, more timely messages tailored to their specific interests or needs.

Level 5: Transactional Printing. Printing digitally, or "on the fly", allows you to include financial or other personalized and customized content onto the piece. This can also include dynamic charts and graphs specific to the recipient's unique demographics. Thousands of transactional printed pieces can be produced much more economically through digital printing.

Level 6: Fully-Customized Printing. This level of printing incorporates more complex personalized and customized applications including images, text, graphic and layouts that are unique for each recipient. This means every single piece is unique with a true 1:1 communication to the customer or prospect allowing for highly relevant information to be shared.

Level 7: Automated Fulfillment. When your customers or prospects visit your website, for example, and enter specific information, a personalized campaign piece can be generated based on the information that person entered. This is done through a very efficient workflow where the entire digital printing process is automated. This reduces the need for manually creating each piece and can link the print communication program to e-marketing.

While you may be familiar with levels 1-3 or even 1-4, I would love to go over any of the levels with which you're not yet familiar to see if they would benefit your program or offering. These are just the tip of the iceberg and are all great ways to enhance your marketing communications pieces. Added value is seen in each of the levels, so if you've yet to consider the benefits of digital printing, give me a call or send me an email, and lets work on a plan to help you and your company print smarter. To download more info about the 7 levels of digital printing, click here. Until next time...Elizabeth

I'm new to twitter, so please check it out & follow along if you'd like.

Follow BPI on facebook & twitter:

1:1 and Other Ways to be Green

Kermit the frog said it best when he said, "It's not easy being green." However, with more options now, being environmentally responsible doesn't have to be difficult. In fact, with BPI Media Group, we make it pretty easy.

Today, I'll share a few ways you can take comfort in knowing that printing isn't as bad as you think for the environment. It's all about partnering with folks like BPI Media Group who care and are willing to do what it takes to make a difference.

"What's your company's environmental policy?" Sure, I hear this from time to time from marketing executives. Sure, every printer more or less has a policy like this in place, so I'm not going to tell you that ours is better, but I will tell you some ways we offer solutions that can make your efforts to protect and conserve go further, and save some green at the same time.

Top 3 ways BPI Media Group can help you go green and save green:

1. Database cleansing. When's the last time you really took a look at your data and purged it, updated it or deduped it? Even if you mail to your entire list, you can save paper, print and postage costs simply by checking for undeliverable addresses or deduping. In a lot of cases, there's no need to send the same direct mail piece or catalog to more than one person at the same address. Deduping by address is a great way to eliminate this extra cost. Many lists we see have incomplete addresses or misspelled names. BPI's mail department has some really great systems in place to help with these common issues. We run all lists through what's called NCOA (national change of address), which automatically updates an address for anyone who has moved and left a forwarding address. We also cass-certify all mailing lists to verify addresses. This same process will dedupe by name, address or exact match. All of these are great resources that are FREE when we handle your mailing.

2. Targeted personalization. By pairing down your main catalog or book to only include what is appealing to an individual or a targeted group can help your ROI and efficiency tremendously. Not only are you saving on print costs, but you're also sending a focused message to that customer or prospect of relevant material. Here's a great example of this: a small college prints a full catalog listing all majors, courses, extra curriculars, etc. This 200+ page catalog can be awfully pricey, and consume a lot of raw materials, to print and mail to all students. Instead, this college reduces their consumption of paper, ink, chemicals, etc by approx 75% simply by narrowing down the material that is relative to that particular student or group of students. This is essentially called versioning, and we'll cover this indepth in a future blog. BPI's digital print department can effectively handle this type of project when you wan to print various versions of the same piece. The info you need to narrow down a catalog like this can be gleaned from your database, online surveys, sales team, etc. Use this info to reduce waste and be more effective in your communications pieces. There's a trickle-down effect here too: elimination of energy used to produce excess/unread pages, gas and/or postage to distribute them, and not to mention all the raw materials saved during the production process.

3. 1:1 Mailing. Along the same lines as #2, you can get even more focused on your list by personalizing your direct mail pieces. Printing a 1:1 message engages your customer or prospect in ways that weren't possible a few years ago or cost effective for that matter. With the addition of our Kodak Nexpress and prinergy workflow, BPI can handle variable data printing (VDP) in a multitude of ways from graphics to messaging. These personalized mail campaigns tend to be to a tighter group of recipients, thus having a direct decrease in your print and mailing costs. More green saved!

Here are some of the technologies that BPI has in place to help make us all better stewards of our environment:

-Kodak Insite Proofing System: Offers soft proofing instead of hard-copy proofs. (We know there are times when color is critical and a hard-copy proof is needed, but for the times that you can soft proof, this is a great alternative!) You can also use this for your internal proofing without having to print out multiple copies of proofs every time changes are made.

-Storefront Solution: Set up this online ordering site where your internal staff, sales team, etc. can order collateral and stationery on an as-needed basis rather than printing and storing tons of materials that will become obsolete a few months from now anyway. This is a huge time/energy-saver for your team as well as a way to reduce print and storage costs. You'll also be saving paper and other raw materials as well.

-Database Analysis: We can help in cleansing your database, so you can do more targeted mailings, save on print and postage costs. Our mail department has been trained on ways to help mail more efficiently. We can even suggest some parameters at the design phase of your project that could help. (Size, shape, paper really does matter.)

Here are steps BPI takes to make sure we are preserving the environment:

• Recycling all plates, ink, wooden pallets and paper
• Using vegetable-based inks
• Using a soft proofing system
• Cleaning mail lists to reduce bad addresses (wasted print and mail costs)
• Providing options for recycled-content paper
• Using papers (both digital and conventional) that is 100% biodegradable
• Using a digital press with consumables that are 100% biodegradable
• Using only paper that comes from sustainable forests.

Interesting stats about print vs digital media:

• It takes 500 kilowatt hrs of electricity to produce 440 lbs of paper (average amount we each consume annually). This equates to powering one computer continuously for 5 months.

• 20% less CO2 is used/yr by a person reading a daily newspaper (print!) vs that person reading web-based news for 30 min/day.

• Print is a renewable resource, on average 5 million trees are planted ea day in the U.S.

• According to the EPA, paper is recycled at a much higher rate than any other materials at 57%, with glass at 24%, plastics at 7%, electronics at 18%.

-Source: DOWN TO EARTH, A Practical Look at Environmental Issues and Trends, The Print Council

So, printing isn't the environment's worst enemy after all and paper isn't the only way you can save money on your print budget. I'd love to talk with you and explore ways our environmental measures can mesh with yours to help us preserve this beautiful planet we call home. Here's a great resource for learning "Why Print is Green."

Until next week...Elizabeth