You search for something on the Internet, and are promptly bombarded by ads and offers for the product or its envious competition’s. Your searches and clicks are translated into instantaneous on-screen marketing. The result might leave you feeling somehow invaded and overstimulated by intrusive technology.
It’s become somewhat commonplace, however, to accept that marketers are constantly collecting information about us – our preferences, location and habits. It’s understood as a way to better know the consumer and to create more engaging, effective marketing geared specifically to his or her likings. We’ve embraced this technology in Internet advertising, but have we grasped its effectiveness when migrated to print marketing?
The same data that drives those instantaneous online ads can be more conspicuously used to generate a variable print marketing campaign – each recipient receiving a printed piece unlike any other in the campaign. The images could subtly speak to a recent search, purchase, or interest intertwined with demographic information such as age and gender. You might be surprised to know how readily this information is collected, or in some cases, already made available in the data captured by your marketing team. The key lies in knowing how to leverage it.
Digital print should no longer trigger an association with small-format, short-run. Instead, digital print has embraced high-volume, high-value pieces with a very specific target audience. The possibilities of digital now allow for the creative utilization of a 20.8” x 29.5” sheet. Whether this means designing a highly engaging folded self-mailer, or simply taking advantage of a higher capacity for variable postcards, you could be dropping a customized piece in the mail each time a customer visited your website, for example. The piece itself would utilize the data you collect so that both text and image content are programmatically placed into the layout correlating to the specific page or product that piqued the prospect or customer’s interest.
So where do you start? Hatteras can help. We’re involved in a number of campaigns that are truly combining the power of data with the capabilities of digital print. This example only scratches the surface of the possibilities that digital print brings to the table, leveraging technology without the eerie instant on-screen inundation. Instead, utilize the data to empower your offline, printed communication, and stand out amongst the static, same-to-all campaigns.