Most everyone receives a lot of advertising and promotional mail in your mailbox. And as you sort through all that mail maybe one particular piece caught your eye because it was personalized with either your name or some images that were familiar to you. That is variable data printing!  Regardless of whether you received the mailings at your home or office, personalized mailings are much more likely to get noticed and in turn help drive sales. Variable data printing make effective use of digital printing presses to help any marketing piece be extremely effective.

You’re might be familiar with the concept of a mail merge where names and addresses from a spreadsheet get automatically inserted into a letter or envelope address. Variable data technology is very similar with the exception that you are not restricted to just text being the only thing you can merge. With variable data printing you can automatically merge text, images and data into a graphic design as it’s being printed.

Some Examples of How You Might Use Variable Data Printing

• A local car dealership knows that the lease on your car is coming to the end of the lease period.  Since that dealer sold you your last car they have information about the type of car you like, your color choices, your age, the accessories you like, etc.  The dealership can then create a variable data marketing campaign that generates a brochure that features the type of car you prefer (SUV?), the color you chose before (Blue?) and uses a stock photo showing a family with young parents enjoying their brand-new blue SUV with rear seat entertainment options. And of course, it would be personalized with your name in big, eye catching letters. By using variable data printing, the dealership can send a completely unique marketing piece to every contact in their database. It’s often called “one-to-one marketing” because it’s one unique message going out to one specific individual.
• A college wants to attract new students to one of its five school disciplines.  In researching various colleges, you went to this colleges website and filled out and submitted a form on the school’s website indicating the year you would be attending college, your gender, ethnicity, the type of study you’re interested in as well as your hobbies. By using this data, the college can create a marketing piece that speaks directly to your interests. When this marketing material arrives in your mailbox you get the impression that this is the perfect college for you to attend because the materials you received spoke almost entirely about your study interests, mentioned some clubs that correspond with your hobby interests and shows pictures of dorm life with people of your ethnicity and gender.  The chances of you considering this college as your choice for your college education will be significantly higher through the use of this type of variable data or “one to one marketing” printing.

How Can Variable Data Printing Help Your Business?

The best way to answer that question is to look at it from your customers perspective and imagine what their impressions would be after receiving such a highly customized and targeted message. Variable data printing has been shown to increase the response rates of as much as 300-600 percent. Taking the time to personalize communication tells customers that you value their business, and you understand who they are and what they’re looking for. Customers and prospects are much more motivated to make a purchase from you when you make effective use of variable data printing.

Let’s us help you get your message out using variable data printing at Creative Influence!