An experience told through SPC’s perspective
SPC recently met with a client with a very long-running and successful customer acquisition program. From all perspectives, it would be considered a complex direct mail program executed with multiple products, formats, offers, and unique customer groups. Over time, it had grown to include 18 separate mail packages produced at varying intervals. We examined the newer versions added over the last several years and all were performing well, so the marketing team concluded the status quo was fine.
As we dug into the production workflow, we discovered the approach had become inefficient, difficult to manage, and most importantly, the program was unnecessarily costly.
Streamlining the Production Process Through Format Standardization
With the high degree of variation in the packages, managing the data and production had become a taxing recurring cycle of constant proofing and approvals. In this case, we reviewed the various versions and, although there were many iterations of the same basic formats, many had been designed with slight size variations in width and/or length. Our team looked at opportunities to introduce format efficiencies without creating any noticeable change in user experience or results.
Building Efficiency Through Digital Print
SPCFuel considered transitioning to a digital print strategy. We were able to propose a reduction from 18 separate packages produced individually down to 3 base packages running on a digital press every other week. We redesigned the like packages into common sizes, allowing the digital press to easily “layer” in creative, products, offers, and data. Envelope variations and offers were handled through imaging on our inserters. The move to a digital production approach allowed for a huge improvement in execution efficiency for both SPC and our client and resulted in substantial cost savings and a significant improvement in ROI. Additionally, we achieved postage savings by combining mail streams. The digital print strategy also allowed the production management to become structured, predictable, and simplified vs. managing the packages separately.
This new approach yielded a steady cadence of data, format simplification, and greater flexibility to allow for potential additional FREE testing of offers, benefit hierarchy, creative elements, customer segmentation, etc.
Migrating to a digital platform is not only great for complex, data-driven mail, but it may also be an ideal way to automate and consolidate multiple uniquely managed campaigns into a more structured programmatic approach. It can result in huge dividends in cost, segmentation, and personalization. As a bonus, the management of a program becomes much more simplified when it runs in a programmatic digital workflow.
Contact Ryan LeFebvre at ryanl@specialtyprintcomm.com to strategize migrating to digital.
Written by: Jeff Graves
Strategic Accounts Executive
