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Sell VDP? Not Me!

Printers and distributors should know better than to mention variable data printing

By Rebecca Trela

Maybe it’s the tiny letters that make insurance forms hard to read. Maybe if it weren’t so confusing, and written in financial mumbo-jumbo, I’d contribute more to my 401(k) plan, figure out the Allstate invoice and pay taxes before Easter. Unfortunately, with complex documents such as these, a lifetime of head-scratching and red tape stretches before me.

This isn’t the case, however, for professors at Florida International University, Miami, where a carefully applied VDP plan has trimmed unnecessary information from compensation and benefit statements. The year-end statements, detailing everything from salary to 401(k) to dry cleaning services, feature reader-friendly graphs and legible type. The information it contains speaks to an audience of one.

Like many companies and organizations, FIU previously printed a summation of possible benefit packages and options that essentially was a book, says Rick Wellner of Franklin Graphics, Miami. Wellner designed the 4-color, 51⁄2-inch by 81⁄2-inch brochures, which are created from an Excel spreadsheet through an XMPie VDP application. Although the statements are easier for employees to understand and take fewer pages to print, he says, the true purpose of the program was to find a way for the university to appreciate employees. By recognizing the school’s monetary commitment to each person, it increases employees’ feeling of value.

“It really helps with retention,” Wellner says. The university’s HR director, he says, tells him the professors are happy when they realize their salaries are actually worth 30 percent more than the standard paycheck in health care and retirement value. After the first year of implementing the program, nearly half of all 2,000 recipients voiced their approval to the HR department or through a feedback forum. Although the program took “forever” to set up, he says, it’s blossomed into three years of repeat business. “Transactional VDP is a residual business and a great way to sell variable,” he says.

Although the program isn’t a traditional commercial application of VDP, and the expense isn’t supported by direct ROI, the program still makes sense for his customers, Wellner says. “Now I’m showing this to other companies as an easy way to show employee appreciation, and it’s really caught on.” The success of transactional programs lies in the end result, not the process: It’s not about VDP, it’s about what happens for the end user.

There are No VDP ‘Jobs’
“You never talk about the press!” Wellner exclaims, excited and exasperated. As a 25-year veteran of the printing industry and a seasoned VDP seller, he’s often accosted by someone seeking his variable data expertise. Focusing on printing, not the client, is the classic amateur mistake, he intones. “No pizza shop or car dealership in the world cares about your equipment.” No matter how exciting new digital printing equipment might be, he says, never mention ‘VDP.’

“There’s no such thing as a VDP job, only VDP programs,” he says, laboring to explain. The focus of the process is results, which might not come with the first campaign or even the second, until a robust database is created and the promotion tweaked. Although all successful variable data programs produce double-digit returns, it can take several months to see results, Wellner says. That’s why he describes himself as a marketing consultant, not a printer. “I bring return on investment, not product.”

Brad Lena, a consultant for PIA/ GATF, relates a story from his days of working for a southern manufacturer: “We had just finished putting together a VDP program for BB&T, a regional bank,” he says. He worked on everything from writing the copy and arranging design to managing the data and implementing a response collection program. “We’re set to press go, and the vice president of the bank and I are on the phone. She asks me, ‘By the way, where is this being printed?’” Lena laughs. “My gosh! It’s being printed 50 feet down the hall!” The client had become so focused on the program aspects that the commoditized printing part wasn’t an important detail. And with good measure, Lena allows—the firm’s price included 70 percent service costs and 30 percent printing costs.

“While printers are seduced by good craftsmanship, clients want to know what it’s worth to them in sales or dollars, not how it looks,” he says.

Also, Wellner says, when confronted with the words “variable data printing,” many clients’ eyes glaze over or narrow in consternation. “They’ll tell you, ‘I don’t want anything to do with that!’ They probably got burned by some shop that set up a campaign and it failed.” Although VDP is often touted as a print industry prodigy child, ready to solve all a customer’s pain, it has ups and downs like any other project.

But the pricing, Wellner and Lena say, is unlike other print jobs. Usually there is a flat fee per project, and sometimes the price of printing is broken out from the service aspect, which could include everything from data cleansing to prepress time. “I can’t stress this enough,” Wellner says. “You’re providing a solution. It’s a concept. You have to price the project from start-to-finish.”

Solution First, Printing Second
When Pello Walker describes his all-digital print facility east of San Francisco, the word “print” only pops up once. “Our company is known for integrating cutting-edge print and e-marketing with web-based tracking and lead management, graphics, database management, mailing and digital variable data technology. In a certain sense,” he finishes, “we separate ourselves from other printing companies.”

Walker, who has been selling VDP-type solutions since 2005, has joined the ranks of silent VDP providers, albeit unknowingly. While most of the work he does is variable data printing on the company’s iGen3s, he won’t say “variable data” in front of a client, and considers himself a businessman first, printer second.

About two years ago, Walker found customers couldn’t provide him with a database to take full advantage of the personalization. So he built a contact software piece, AMS or Automated Marketing System, which collects and manages information for end users much like ACT or Goldmine. He creates trigger-based automated action plans and the rest is easy, he says.

“In the beginning, selling VDP was very frustrating, Walker says. “I’d show clients all the things we could do and then ask them for their database—that’s where it stopped,” because customers didn’t have databases to give him. “Something simple and easy was this long, onerous process. There are only so many times I can show up and ‘create value’ before I’m merely a pest.”

Daily Digital Imaging (DDI), the five-person company Walker owns with his wife, Mary, recently implemented this data-gathering solution for a luxury car dealership. Walker taught the dealer’s CRMs to log information on a central laptop for each customer who walked in the door. DDI sent a follow-up thank you brochure that pictured the desired car and listed its features along with a photo of the salesman. On the back, a map showed the route from the customer’s house to the dealership. The dealer’s sales per month went from about 85 to more than 100 cars.

“In creating a marketing campaign for someone, you absolutely have to be interested in their business, not just the print business,” Walker says. About as often as he makes print referrals, Walker says, he suggests television and radio ads, too. The dealership had already budgeted for an annual marketing plan, the kind of business that makes for the best VDP customers. “They know they want to market, but they’re not doing it well or they’re not tracking results,” Walker advises. “That’s your guy.”
Although many in the industry report sales cycles for VDP of more than a year, that isn’t always practical. “We don’t have the luxury of time to massage a client for three months to get their business,” says Albert Garcia, VDP Director at Franklin Graphics, who works with Wellner. “In fairness, it has taken more than two very intense years to get where we are—and tons of training.”

Similarly, Walker meets with a client three or four times in four to eight weeks. “These guys, who take a year, they’re trying to sell variable data processing on its own and that’s a tough row to hoe, cost per piece versus cost per response. Or it’s a company that’s scrambling to put together a database. You have to qualify your VDP customers.”

The Database Opportunity
“Looking at the very best VDP, you would never know that’s what it was,” Lena says. The days of ‘word word word NAME, word word word NAME,’ have come and gone. “This is relevant content delivered at the right time. It’s a seamless integration of data points that doesn’t jump out at the viewer.” The consumer might think of an offer like this as nothing other than a coincidentally useful coupon that came in the mail.

But the industry isn’t ready to sell, much less supply the data for, a campaign like that. “Variable data is in those awkward teenage years,” says Steven Schnoll, a print industry consultant, Schnoll Media Consulting, New Providence, N.J. “Many manufacturers promote variable as the salvation for printers—but it’s not. It’s a great opportunity for someone who knows how to manipulate it.”

Those manipulators may well be smart distributors, suggests Lena. “I’m of the opinion that the market’s diverging into two different groups, the print manufacturer and the print marketer. One is focused on the VDP, and one is focused on the customer’s customer,” he says. “The bulk of the revenue resides with this marketing person, selling a tremendous amount of service from web hosting to postcards.”

Eventually, VDP will involve data collection through RFID chips, Schnoll predicts, and direct mail will become more “directed” and less junk. “But right now, the opportunity for the graphic communications provider is building a database,” he says, in MySQL, Oracle or even Microsoft Access—any program that supports relational analysis. As many VDP sellers confirm, no personalized campaign can succeed on fancy programming or graphics alone.

“It’s an exciting market out there,” Schnoll concludes, “but I stress, it’s not a panacea. VDP is one tool in an arsenal of many that are required by the flexible print provider.”

Rebecca Trela is assistant editor at Print Solutions magazine. Email comments to rtrela@psda.org.