Case Study March 2007

Omega Graphics helps Wells Fargo personalize its marketing collateral with web-to-print

We suggested a more economic alternative. They had been printing hundreds of thousands of collateral pieces. We told them, 'Guys, you print so many of these, you may want to consider a new solution.'"
Michael Kennedy, CEO Omega Graphics, Rancho Cordova, Calif.

Wells Fargo & Company is a financial services conglomerate with $483 billion in assets. To disseminate information to more than 23 million customers in the United States and internationally, the company produces tons of collateral, segmented according to customer type, location and income level.

Omega Graphics, a former AlphaGraphics quick printer in Rancho Cordova, Calif., had been producing static marketing pieces such as postcards, brochures and letters for Wells Fargo, but two years ago the manufacturer suggested a change in tactics. “We suggested a more economic alternative,” says Michael Kennedy, CEO of Omega Graphics. “They had been printing hundreds of thousands of collateral pieces. We told them, ‘Guys, you print so many of these, you may want to consider a new solution.’”

Omega Graphics had implemented web-to-print a few years prior for other clients. Omega Graphics suggested that Wells Fargo use web-to-print to cut down on superfluous inventory and allow for personalized mailings to customers. Under the new method, marketing collateral designed with Wells Fargo’s business clients in mind would be personalized with variable data printing. The system, which Omega Graphics purchased from a third-party software provider, allows 2,000 Wells Fargo employees in 23 states to create customized pieces.

Now employees can log onto a web site “that has a ‘skin’ to make it look like a Wells Fargo web site,” Kennedy says. “It’s part of their intranet.” The end users create personalized collateral for Wells Fargo’s customers with the help of Adobe InDesign CS2 templates and digital data that can be uploaded such as customer names, addresses and images. Omega Graphics also handles the mailing and fulfillment.

Kennedy says the entire process took about seven months to complete. After the system was set up, “we basically had to go on the road with Wells Fargo from city to city and train the employees. We had to demonstrate the program and that part was painfully slow sometimes.”

But the clients were happy with the end product. “They love it,” he says. “The employees that are more digitally savvy tend to pick it up and use it easily. But there are a few that take longer to adapt.”

Omega Graphics uses its Xerox digital color press and offset presses to print the VDP pieces for Wells Fargo. “We do the basic shells on a sheet to drive down the cost,” Kennedy says. “We add the variable elements later.”

In the past two years, the printer has had to upgrade the system only a few times to meet the needs of its customer. “We make minor adjustments all the time, especially with the formatting of artwork,” he says. “Because there are so many users for the system, there are people who try to input things beyond what the system was designed for. That’s usually when we have to make changes.”

Banking on a New Solution