Written by Bill Michael
eMarketing Manager, Xerox Corporation

You may have noticed that print has been capturing it’s fair share of media attention as of late, mostly in regards to mail delivery (in light of a February announcement that the US Postal Service will end Saturday delivery, beginning in August), as well as the protection of select printed statements/communications (with a new Congressional resolution seeking to reverse recent federal initiatives to completely eliminate paper-based government information, such as earning statements and income tax forms). Call me a traditionalist, but I still prefer to receive my statements and transactional communications in print form. This is likely due to a combination of things:

• Fearfulness of forgetting to make a payment without the physical prompt a printed statement delivers
• Not wanting to add to my collection of usernames and passwords I have registered across a few handfuls of websites (and then straining to remember my log-in credentials)
• An excuse to re-familiarize myself with an experience that doesn’t involve an electronic device and a screen

And I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Post & Parcel recently reported results to a survey showing that while over 75% of consumers can view their bank accounts online, over 85% elect to continue receiving statements by mail. Last year, the USPS released a statement citing that transactional statements are “opened more than 95% of the time and, on average, the receiver spends two to three minutes with each piece”. It’s clear that consumers value their transactional mail. Phoenix Marketing International reported that 73% of all bills and statements are still sent by mail, and according to PayItGreen, the average household receives approximately 19 printed bills and statements each month. Nineteen! With roughly 30% of the American population-alone without Internet access, printed communications and statements, specifically those of the TransPromo or transactional-promotional breed, represent huge opportunities for those involved.

And for advertisers and printers, this is likely music to their ears. But let’s be clear about something – when we say TransPromo, we aren’t talking about the stand-alone filler inserts that accompany a transactional statement, fall out of the envelop as you are pulling out your bill, and eventually end up in the trash. We are talking about utilization of a client’s ever-precious consumer data to deliver targeted, personalized, and relevant promotional information and offers that are integrated directly onto the transactional statement –  engaging the recipient and creating a higher likelihood that an action is taken. The service provider sending the TransPromo statement can either occupy the promotional space for their own advertising purposes (promoting a new reward program, CRM marketing strategy, and/or attempting to up-sell or cross-sell products/services) or sell the advertising space to outside companies who can target specific consumers with targeted, personalized messaging. Either way, the promotional opportunities and endless and can serve as a huge revenue-generator.

The benefits for all involved are very clear, and can be illustrated through the work former Best-of-the-Best winner Telemail, S.L. provided Iberia – Spain’s largest air transport group and one of the 10 largest airline businesses in the world. In this case, Iberia offered passengers credit cards that allowed them to earn frequent flyer points, while boosting the company’s bottom line. The monthly statements were printed in mass quantities through offset printing and later variable information was introduced through a separate digital print run. This created excessive waste, limited opportunities to offer personalized and targeted promotional messaging, and became a costly nightmare when trying to pair the multiple promotional inserts to the individual recipients.

By taking advantage of the TransPromo model, Telemail was able to provide Iberia with a fully integrated solution printed on their Xerox 980 Color Continuous Feed System. This solution reduced production costs by 30% for Iberia as their statements were now printed in a single run, ensuring document integrated was 100% accurate. By integrating the promotional content directly onto the statement, Iberia’s mailing required fewer inserts and thus lower mailing costs. In addition, Iberia was the beneficiary of increased revenue from 3^rd party advertisers as a result of the ability to include more targeted promotional content.

The TransPromo space is alive and well – are you taking advantage? How do you view the potential opportunities made available through providing TransPromo offerings?

Interested in learning more about the TransPromo opportunities? You may want to check out:

• Printed Customer Communications – Marketing Opportunity or Inconvenience?
• Digital Printing Cuts Soaring Coast of Monthly Statement by 30% for Global Airline
• Optimism about the Future of Print Highlighted by Printers in Survey
• Radical Redesign of Bond Statements Generates Flood of New Business

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Are you a member of the Xerox Premier Partner Global Network? Don’t miss out on your chance for international recognition! There’s still time to enter your best print work into the Xerox Best-of-the-Best Contest – but hurry, entries close at 11:59pm EST on April 3, 2013!

Written by Mary Roddy
Marketing Manager, Premier Partners Global Network
Xerox Corporation

Innovative personalized chocolate packaging that produces $100,000 in profit through a single holiday season, a direct marketing campaign that helps Mercedes-Benz UK achieve a 53:1 ROI, a wedding invitation book that helps drive over $2.5 million in revenue….what do all of these have in common? They are all previous winners of the Xerox Best-of-the-Best Program, a worldwide award contest, open exclusively to members of the Xerox Premier Partners Network.

This program draws participation from the most successful and innovative print shops across the globe, showcasing creativity and business impact using Xerox digital technology. In addition to recognition of great digital work by the graphic communications community, winners receive outstanding marketing and promotional opportunities. Each winning entrant is featured in a case study which can be used with customers and prospects, posted on the web, discussed in presentations, and as a proof point in email and direct marketing campaigns. Winners are showcased at regional, national, and international industry tradeshows/events and also in international press releases.

Today we’re announcing the 2013 Xerox Best-of-the-Best Program will open for entries on January 8, 2013. Members of the Premier Partners Network can submit their work in any of the following categories:

-Books
-Collateral (Web-to-Print)
-Digital and Offset
-Digital Packaging
-Direct Marketing
-Photo Publishing
-TransPromo

If you are a member of the Premier Partners Network –be sure to take advantage of this tremendous opportunity! On January 8th, visit the Best-of-the-Best website at www.xerox.com/bestofthebest to get started.

If you are not a member of the Xerox Premier Partners Network, visit the Premier Partners Portal today at www.xeroxpremierpartners.com to learn about the program and benefits members receive, and become a member!

You’ll want to hurry – this year’s Best-of-the-Best Contest closes April 3, 2013!

Written by Mary Roddy
Global Marketing Manager, Xerox Premier Partners Global Network
Xerox Corporation

Written By Joe Schember
Product Marketing, Digital
Mohawk

Remember when you were growing up and your parents would tell you that you were special? Whether you were struggling to make new friends or upset about a bad haircut, hearing that simple phrase could bring a smile to your face – even if it seemed like the world was ending (oh, dramatic youth). Printers today are striving to be special. They want to be more to their customers. To bring smiles to their customers’ faces, while still running an efficient and profitable operation. Many in the industry are turning to specialty digital substrates to achieve this goal.

Mohawk’s Specialty Digital portfolio includes synthetic, pressure sensitive (labels, clings), magnet, embedded, and photo substrates designed for digital presses. Whether it’s on your Xerox Color 560 or your Xerox iGen 150, these unique materials help make you special while increasing your bottom line. If you’re hesitant to go beyond paper, keep reading as I debunk some common myths.

Myth #1: They’re expensive.

Any higher initial cost is easily offset by the printer’s ability to set a higher selling price and achieve a higher margin than traditional paper jobs. They’re also packaged in smaller quantities so you can buy only what you need.

Myth #2: They aren’t compatible with my digital press.

Mohawk has a reputation for quality and works with leading manufacturers to test compatibility of our digital products. Many specialty products perform well in a range of digital equipment, but you can check your specific compatibility in our matrix provided thru Mohawk MakeReady. Samples to test are readily available thru your paper merchant or online at MohawkConnects.com.

Myth #3: They’re hard to sell.

Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. Use specialty substrates in your own self promo. Show customers examples and throw a few samples into existing jobs. Explain how these materials can make their marketing campaigns more unique, effective, and impactful. Digital is great for these short, demo runs to spur interest.

Myth #4: My customers don’t have an application for them.

Show them what they can do and I bet you’ll be surprised. Synthetics are great for waterproof books or ID cards. Pressure sensitive stocks shine as bottle labels, window clings, and decorative seals. Magnets are attractive for calendars and signage while embedded magnets and synthetic cards make durable loyalty cards and save-the-dates. Finally, panoramic photo paper enables layflat photo books and collateral where images and graphics sprawl freely without being lost in the gutter of a traditional bind.

The applications are really endless with these types of materials, especially when paired with digital print and VDP. Don’t limit yourself. Give yourself a shot to be special today!

BONUS: I’m happy to have an exclusive giveaway for the Xerox readers today! Shoot me an email with your shipping info and I’ll send you a free copy of Mohawk’s Specialty Digital Swatchbook so you can begin exploring these high-value materials.

Written By Bill Michael
Marketing Analyst
Xerox Corporation

You know them: hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste. At drupa, each of your senses will be put to great use, as you will:

• Hear: The excitement of the 1000s of attendees in the print industry having conversations on a variety of topics.
• See: Technology and software that represents the future of our industry
• Touch: Printed samples with specialty media, innovative finishing, and special toner
• Smell: toner, ink and paper in the air as you walk by every vendors stand.
• Taste: German cuisine (maybe for the first time) and perhaps a few brands of German beer with some friends and colleagues.

At the Xerox stand (Hall 8b), your senses can best be used by seeing and touching the applications that we’ll be showcasing live in our stand, including many Best-of-the-Best winners. These winners include: IOS (Digital and Offset), Mediaware (Digital Packaging), MBA Group Limited (TransPromo), Telemail, S.L. (TransPromo), Easy Print (Photo Publishing), Printshop (Photo Publishing). Three additional winners include:

	DG3 Europe Limited (Best Overall Solution, case study) The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, the largest youth charity in the UK, wanted to enable their award winners to create and order personalized Achievement Packs online. They approached DG3 Europe Limited, who mapped out an end-to-end solution using FreeFlow Process Manager™ and the iGen4 with a Xerox FreeFlow™ Print Server – resulting in a 637% increase in usage of the achievement pack.
	De Budelse (Digital Packaging, case study) Recognizing the growing area of digital packaging, De Budelse built FotoChoco.nl to enable orders of personalized boxes of chocolate. Using the iGen4 and FreeFlow Print Server, they were able to sell over 11,000 boxes of chocolate. (your sense of taste!)
	CopyCat (Direct Marketing, case study) Using the Xerox Color 1000 Press, CopyCat used clear dry ink and personalized cross media to drive new business. The campaign generated a 10% response rate and helped bring in 20 new orders from new customers.

Please stop by Xerox Stand in Hall 8B to see and touch these great applications. We’ll find other ways to exercise your other senses!

Written by Gina Testa, Vice President
Worldwide Graphics Communications Business
Xerox Corporation

Coming from Western New York State, the warm, tropical air in Miami Beach this time of year is absolutely transformative. As the Graphics of the Americas show opens its three-day run here today, the gorgeous weather is giving me a lift in much the way that business transformations are bringing new surges of energy to many in this industry.

Tomorrow I’m leading a panel with three graphic communications customers, who’ve all engineered business transformations to take advantage of new opportunities for growth. Roger Manning, owner of Banyan Printing, Mark Serbin, president of Serbin Printing, and Richard Sierra, president of Nationwide Graphics at Dodd Communications are all from Florida and have compelling stories to tell.

While there’s no “right way” to transform a business, some patterns do hold. Change is often evolutionary, not revolutionary, so the transformation takes place over time, rather than all at once.

Moving upstream to provide more marketing services is a common strategy among today’s graphic communications providers. Over time, the graphic communications provider becomes not just the host of a Web-to-print solution, for example, but manager of their customer’s marketing supply chain, reducing costs while improving distribution speed and fulfillment flexibility.

Others graphic communications providers may find transformation in new lines of business, such as production of books, photoproducts or personalized product packaging. Still others may focus on improving their internal operations, automating their workflow to improve their efficiency and lower their costs.

What are you doing to transform your business? If you need ideas, take in our panel discussion on Friday, March 2 at 10:30 a.m. or stop by the Xerox booth at the show. Look for me. I’ll be happy to talk to you about transforming your business…and about the weather in Rochester, N.Y. I hear a few inches of snow fell there yesterday.

Written by:
Matthew J. Volpe
Smart Press Production Consultant & National Customer Trainer
Xerox Corporation

Many print professionals have heard of G7 but are not exactly sure what it is.  So, what exactly is G7? G7 is an IDEAlliance registered trademark – “G” for its focus on the color gray and the “7” ink solids specified in ISO 12647-2. It is a gray scale specification AND a calibration method that has roots in offset. The main goal of a production G7 press run is to match an accurate G7 proof. It’s a specification that provides formal colorimetric definitions for neutrality (gray balance) and tonality (darkness, lightness, and contrast of an image). Plus, it is also a calibration method that adjusts gray balance and tonality to meet the G7 specification.

What does becoming a G7 Master Printer mean to you? Becoming a G7 Master Printer simply states  that a facility has calibrated it’s equipment and systems to G7 gray balance and neutral tone curves and is capable of delivering G7 proofs and print products. One important fact to remember is that becoming a G7 Master Printer is a qualification/designation, not a certification. Valid for 12 Months not 2 years.

What are the Benefits of G7?

This methodology yields a consistent appearance regardless of who prints it, where it’s printed, or what technology is being used. Gray balance definition is the same for any imaging system, regardless of substrate, colorant, or screening technology. It provides an enhanced basis for process control in any color imaging system, without additional color management.

So, who really wants G7?

Advertising Agencies and Print Buyers don’t like surprises. They want proofs to match press prints AND want proofs to look the same from one proof to another.  They also desire a consistent, predictable appearance regardless of who prints it, where it’s printed, or what technology is being used.

Then, there are the Print Providers. Print providers need to satisfy existing customers AND attract new business. They also require better manufacturing process control systems, faster turnaround, lower cost, AND consistent, predictable results.

Xerox is Proud to Offer G7 Consulting and G7 Master Designation Printer Services

Whether you have Xerox presses or offset, our Certified G7 Experts will train and educate your staff on the G7 Specifications. We will recommend, document, and implement Standard Operating Procedures, validate that your print engine qualifies for G7, prepare and submit your G7 Master Printer application.

Would you like to increase your customer base, quality, productivity and bottom line by using the G7 method?