Proof that personalisation works

Ar article appeared today in the US based print newsletter “WhatTheyThink?” by Heidi Tolliver-Walker about personalisation. Personalisation takes advantage of the ability of digitally printed products to make every copy of a document different. On our web sie, we describe personalisation thus.

“One of the characteristics of digital printing that sets it apart from conventional offset printing is the ability of digital presses to make every page that comes out of the machine different from the page before it.

“Because the information on each page is constructed electronically and is not physically burnt onto a plate, as in the case of offset printing, it is possible for each page in a print run to differ from the page before it.

“The technical problems involved in doing this have to do with the speed the data must be processed at in order to keep the press running a full speed, and the software required to build and process what we call a ‘variable data’ job.

“The degree to which each page differs from the preceding page might be slight or very significant. For instance, a simple case might involve just the name and address on a flyer changing. A more complex application would involve complete slabs of text, photographs and background colours changing.

“Each page doesn’t have to be different. A print run of say 1000 pieces, might consist of 50 different sets of 20, just as it might consist of 1000 different pieces.”

The article referred to above gives a recent example of the power of personalisation. The return on investment (ROI) for a well constructed personalised piece has always been impressive. This example shows just how impressive!

I recently ran across a company that produces personalized newsletters for healthcare providers. The solution, called PENS, marries patient data from hospitals and other care providers with targeted content. Based on the services and treatment in the patient’s health history, the healthcare provider can send out targeted newsletters that are relevant to each individual recipient’s health history.  Pretty neat!

The results are impressive.

For example, in a reader survey conducted for ProHealth Care, a two-hospital system in Waukesha, WI, 73% of recipients said they read the newsletters cover to cover and 95% became aware of services that they didn’t realize the healthcare provider had.

It’s no wonder that, at Aspirus (Wausau, WI), among current patients, newsletter recipients were 500% more likely to continue to use the healthcare systems’ services than those who did not receive the newsletter. Among prospects, PENS newsletter recipients were 300% more likely to ultimately use the healthcare provider’s services than those who were not.

Those are some powerful numbers!

Because the PENS solution automatically tracks the relationship between which articles the recipient receives and utilization of services, PENS customer can calculate detailed ROI.

At Prohealth Care, articles on incontinence received only 50:1 ROI. But those on cardiac screening received 226:1 and 444:1 ROI, respectively, depending on the year.

Not every marketer can create newsletters to this level of detail, of course, but the point is that relevance really works. There is another point, too. You’ll only know that if you track it!

There’s only one media that can stop the rot — paper!!!

This article appeared in today’s ProPrint email newsletter. It is by Frank Romano, professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology and widely recognised as a leading “guru” in the print industry.

“Along with the other article I have just posted “Don’t write off print media just yet”, it warns against too quickly predicting the demise of the printing industry.

“The world is rushing to store data in ‘the cloud’ or in digital formats that are quickly outdated.

“The world’s first hard disk was invented in 1956. It weighed 450 kilograms and stored five megabytes. It was obsolete within five years. Those 8-inch floppy disks from the 1970s are unreadable. Data stored on Syquest, Zip, MO, and Bernoulli disks are also unreadable unless you have saved the drive and have a computer with a SCSI connector. I have Firewire backup drives that are unusable on some Apple computers: there is no Firewire plug.

“Data rot is the tendency of our recorded media and computer files to become inaccessible as they are orphaned by new technology. Over time, temperature, humidity, light and mouldy basements make this information very difficult to read.

“Another aspect of data rot is finding machines to read old media. Take the 8-track tape player, for example. The only way you can find 8-track cartridges is in a flea market or a garage sale.

“The same is true of file formats. We can’t open Microsoft Word documents from the early days, because today’s Word can’t open those early files. Apple has eliminated optical media from some its computers. Try to find a reader for an 8-inch Shugart floppy disk. We are about to enter a new era of data rot, as consumer videotape fades away. CD-ROMs are also going fast, replaced by DVDs and USB thumb drives.

“VHS tapes can still be played even if there is an error on the tapes. With a CD or a DVD, if there’s an error, the disk is non-recoverable. Many of us are paying to have old audio and video recordings transferred to CD and DVD. CDs are almost gone. The lifespan of DVDs varies from five to 100 years, according to testing but that assumes that there are drives to handle them. There may not be.

“If you leave data on your hard disk, the drive only lasts five years or so. So every five or 10 years, we must move our files onto a different format. We must make back-ups in different formats, stored in different places. Keeping it on the web is also not a really great strategy. A very large photo site just went out of business.

“Yet, a major trend is the “cloud”. This means you are using someone else’s disk drives. They are not in the sky, they are somewhere on earth in a server farm. Will those files be there 20 years from now?

“Thomas Edison invented the Dictaphone that used a wax cylinder to record your voice. To erase it, you treated it like a lathe; you would use a sharp metal rod and scrape off the wax until it was smooth again, and then you could re-use it. But if you saved it you could play it until the needle wore the wax down.

“A technology for long-term data preservation was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: a titanium disk the size of a long-playing record that was supposed to last 10,000 years. Then they realised there were assumptions that weren’t right, and it would only last 20 years.

“Even though most US government publications are electronic, many are printed in short runs to be stored at Depository Libraries and the National Archives. Why? Because the only data storage medium that has proven to be readable after 200 years is – paper!”

The link to the article is http://www.proprint.com.au/Feature/292561,there8217s-only-one-media-that-can-stop-the-rot.aspx?eid=16&edate=20120313&utm_source=20120313&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter&nl=daily

Don’t write off print media just yet

The following quotation comes from an article that appeared today (Tuesday March 13th 2012) in the excellent print newsletter, ProPrint. It serves as an encouragement to those of us involved in print, and a warning to those who think print is dead thanks to iPhones, iPads, blogging, FaceBook, Twitter etc.

“Every new channel is meant to kill its predecessor but this rarely occurs.

“Digital evangelists are spruiking everywhere that print is dead. With each new media development, “experts” have proclaimed the demise of another. Radio was going to kill off print. TV was not only going to render print impotent and replace radio and cinemas. Movies were to be the end of theatre. But history is a fantastic teacher. Despite all the predictions, the majority of mediums still exist and have continued to evolve. So why is it that this time round, an industry that stems back centuries appears resigned to its demise?

“It’s fair to say that the past few years have been a torrid time for the printing industry. Recent results being posted by printers are consistently below forecast, volumes are down and the growth in digital alternatives continues to escalate. Are we witnessing the demise of print as a viable marketing and communication medium?”

Here is the link so you can read the rest of the article: http://www.proprint.com.au/Feature/292089,don8217t-write-off-print-media-just-yet.aspx?eid=16&edate=20120313&utm_source=20120313&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter&nl=daily

Paper merchants raise prices amid “economic maelstrom”

Australia’s ‘big three’ paper merchants – Paperlinx, KW Doggett and BJ Ball – have announced paper prices will rise by as much as 8%.

Printers have been informed of 7% increases at Paperlinx, effective yesterday, while there will be upcoming hikes on some KW Doggett stocks of 7%.

When the 6-8% price rise takes effect at BJ Ball, it will mark the second hike in three months following a 5% price increase in September.

BJ Ball general manager Craig Brown said the price rise was down to a triple economic threat.

“The factors in the increase are three fold: paper prices remain low, the costs of doing business continue to increase and orders of paper volumes continue to contract,” he said.

“The bottom line is that we need to get more margins to maintain our position as a leading low-cost paper merchant.”

KW Doggett national marketing manager Catherine Doggett told ProPrint that the merchant’s price increases would come into effect on 5 December.

“It is about getting back to a sustainable business model,” she said.

“We have continued to absorbs costs into the business such as freight, electricity and occupancy, but it has gotten to the point where the margins don’t sustain these costs so we must pass them onto the customers,” she said.

“Paper prices have been at a historically low level and it has come to a critical point at the busiest time of the year. Despite our best endeavours to keep our price at a low rate, we got to the point where we can’t maintain those prices anymore.”

Doggett added that although customers were never happy to see price increases, they understood the reasons for the hike and had been accepting of it.

A letter sent to Paperlinx customers said the paper merchant could no longer “be insulated from the economic maelstrom” the company found itself in.

“Exacerbated by rising input costs, inflationary pressure and exchange sensitivities our operating companies are ongoing aggressively recalibrating to what can only be described (as we have seen in many other global markets) as a marked and permanent structural shift in print volumes and raw material demand,” said the letter.

Possible forthcoming image deblurring function in PhotoShop (you MUST watch this!)

A colleague has just sent me a link to the most amazing new filter Adobe is considering incorporating into PhotoShop.

The filter takes a photograph blurred because typically the camera shutter speed was too low. The filter tracks the direction of movement of the blurred image, removes all but the final state of the image, and magically turns a useless image into something that is pristine and sharp.

This is truly magic. View the video by clicking here.

Green warfare!

Greenpeace and Wilderness Society slam PEFC as ‘signing off forest destruction’

The war of words between paper certifications has escalated after FSC backers Greenpeace and The Wilderness Society published a scathing report calling PEFC ‘greenwash for bad forestry practices’.

The report ‘On the Ground 2011’ is a follow-up to a report published earlier this year, now with input from Victorian conservation group My Environment.

PEFC claimed the report was published ‘by a set of organisations who all have close links or vested interests in FSC’ — which is a commercial rival of PEFC.

The report’s author, Anna Jenkins, is a former director of FSC UK. On a local level, the FSC Australia board includes Sean Cadman from The Wilderness Society.

Greenpeace has apparently downplayed this connection by saying ‘neither FSC nor any of its employees had anything to do with the production of the report’, according to PEFC.

In a press release sent yesterday, the local arms of Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society and My Environment slammed PEFC and its Australian affiliate, AFS.

Reece Turner, forests campaigner for Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said that ‘behind the green-looking label, the PEFC in many cases signs-off on the destruction of tropical rainforests in places like Chile, Borneo and Indonesia and ignores the concerns and complaints of indigenous and environment organisations’.

According to Warrick Jordan, national forest campaigner for The Wilderness Society: ‘It is increasingly clear that the PEFC and AFS logos cannot be trusted by consumers to deliver high environmental and social standards for forest products.

‘PEFC and AFS must fundamentally change their approach if they are to become anything other than greenwash for bad forestry practices’, added Jordan.

Sarah Rees, spokesperson for My Environment, said: ‘The PEFC standard is greenwashing bad forestry practices all over the globe, from the tropical forests of Indonesia to the majestic ash forests of Victoria’s Central Highlands’.

PEFC countered with its own statement, saying it ‘believes that collaboration beats confrontation every time’.

‘We take all criticism regarding our organisation very seriously and endeavour to cooperate fully with those who seek to understand or enquire of our work and achievements.

‘Any form of dialogue between stakeholders, however, must be held in an open, transparent and truthful manner, and be based on the best intentions in order to be constructive and bear fruit’, said PEFC.

AFS national secretary Richard Stanton told ProPrint that he believed there was another agenda behind the ‘On the Ground 2011’ report, but added ‘we don’t buy into commenting on FSC. We just focus on making sure our standard is as rigorous as possible.

‘We meet the standards set by Standards Australia. We focus on that. There isn’t a lot of value of getting into a slanging match with FSC’.

‘There is a lot of product that isn’t certified to either standard, and that should be the focus, not having an argument about the relatively small percentage that is certified’, added Stanton.

This article first appeared in the Aust/NZ edition of ProPrint

InDesign: how to print colours correctly

An excellent article from www.creative pro on how to print colours correctly from InDesign was brought to my attention a couple of days ago. The article begins as follows.

Billions of years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, print production managers checked documents with something called “progressive proofs” or “color proofs”. These printed pieces of paper showed how each process color (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) would print alone and in combination with the other colors. They were output as follows:

• The magenta plate alone
• The yellow plate alone
• A mixture of the yellow plate combined with the magenta plate
• The cyan plate alone
• A mixture of the cyan plate with the yellow and magenta plates
• The black plate alone
• A mixture of the black plate on the yellow, magenta, and cyan plates

The production manager used these paper proofs to see whether colors combined smoothly without abrupt drop-offs when one color blended into another. The proofs also revealed whether spot colors were set to knockout or overprint correctly.

While technology has moved on, and few places employ production managers any more, you still need to know whether your documents’ colors are correct. You could let your print shop discover any errors, but who has the time or money to re-do a job when you could have prevented mistakes before going to print? Instead, let InDesign’s Separations Preview panel show you any problems and how to fix them.

It is quite a long, relatively complex and technical article, with lots of illustrations. Highly recommended. Click here to access the full article.

Boutique letterpress launch party pulls in big Sydney print buyers

Letterpress is back, judging by the turnout at a launch night of boutique printer The Distillery, with hundreds of guests, including buyers from M&C Saatchi and Pacific Magazines, spilling out onto the street.

More than 320 people attended the launch events held across two nights last week to officially open the firm, which specialises in high-end stationery printed on a 1959 Heidelberg Windmill.

The letterpress facility was overwhelmed by designers and print buyers from such notable companies as M&C Saatchi, Interbrand, Merivale, Random House, Pacific Magazines and Fairfax Media.

The Distillery director Nathan Leong described the launch as “the proudest moment of his life”, where he and the staff members wowed the packed crowd with a live demonstration of the vintage machine.

“The event was a huge success, and we were really able to connect with the creatives and designers who appreciate the tactile qualities of print,” he said.

The company rescued the press, nicknamed ‘Wolfgang’, from defunct Chippendale Press’ liquidation auction last year where it was likely to be sold for scrap metal.

In recent months, The Distillery restored the machine to its original working order and has been producing high-end print work for design agencies and consumers from the wedding industry.

Leong added that the company was already seeking larger premises and another printing press, due to the overwhelming demand for work from new customers.

Guests to the event were given a valuable sample pack, packed with beautifully ornate stationary and printed “treats”.

The article first appeared in ProPrint

The owner of “The Distillery” is a good friend of our company, and if any of our clients would like a quote for letterpress work, please let us know.

Tips and tricks in Adobe PhotoShop 5

As a member of Adobe’s ‘service provider’ programme, we receive regular emails with helpful trip and tricks.

This morning I received a particularly helpful email with a number of tips and tricks I was only vaguely aware of, or not aware of at all, in PhotoShop.

Tips include dealing with distortions in photographs using Puppet Warp, sharpening elements of an image without sharpening the whole image, rapidly making unwanted lines disappear, making short work of small and tedious retouching tasks and more.

To access these timesaving tips, just click here. I will publish more of these as they become available.

New design portfolio on Kainos Print web site

Our wonderful designer, Dragan Djuric, has created a new design portfolio for us, utilising work he has created for us over the last six and a half years, and incorporating other work he has done.

The portfolio is very extensive and covers a wide variety of products. It consists of a moving ribbon of images down the bottom of the portfolio. If you move your cursor to the right, the images move along fast. Move the cursor to the left, and the images move backwards quickly. Keep the cursor in the middle and the action is slow, enabling you to easily make a choice, click on the choice, and see the larger image.

Dragan’s design prices are extremely reasonable. They are listed on the second page of the portfolio. One of his greatest assets is that he understands a brief very well, and does not insert his own ego into the design!

Check out his portfolio by clicking here.