Value-added opportunities arise as customers increase demand for unique, personalized products
By Eric Fiedler
It's no wonder postal workers are among the most disgruntled of the nation's masseseach direct mail sale means more work for them.
Direct mail sales have been on the rise for more than a decadeat a clip of about 7 percent per yearand show no signs of stopping.
"There will be some changes in the frequency or the size and weight of the pieces that are mailed out after the postal increase in January, but I do not believe the opportunities will decline for a long time," said Lee DeMattia, marketing manager for TRANSKRIT®, Roanoke, Va.
However, along with these opportunities come new demands for unique products and increasingly complex jobs that will help a piece stand out in the pile of mail people receive daily.
To help quench customers' thirst for unique products, TRANSKRIT invested in an assembly line of new equipment. "We purchased an offline finishing system which allows us to do some unique folds and perfs and die-cuts with repositionable adhesives," said DeMattia.
Vanguard ID Systems, Exton, Pa., offers mailers that combine a direct mail announcement with a choice of any one of its cards, key tags, Family Paks or Short Pak products. "We have seen great interest from our customers because we offer some things our competitors don't," said Marcia Carnes, a national sales representative at Vanguard.
Vanguard also offers variable data in multiple languages, graphic changes on the fly and one pass duplex printing.
GBF Graphics, Skokie, Ill., recently added a Versimar 300x600 dpi resolution high-speed ink jet printer to produce medium- to higher-end pieces.
"In addition to a variety of equipment and technologies to do personalization, we have some fairly sophisticated finishing equipment that we designed ourselves that allows us to do specialty folded and die-cut products," said Bob Blohm, technical production manager for GBF.
Transkrit also offers a variety of traditional and unique direct mail formats. "We have recently expanded our imaging capabilities and acquired a new offline finishing machine for medium- to long-run products," said DeMattia.
In addition, company bought a ten-color press which allows four-over-four printing on a spot or varnish, as well as a Dupont waterproofing system which gives the company the ability to proof directly on the same substrate as the job. "It gets as close as possible to what the product is going to look like on the actual stockif you print on a different stock the color may appear different," DeMattia explained.
Some of the key markets for direct mail, according to DeMattia, include sweepstakes, subscription renewals, publishing, fund raising, membership intakes and traffic violations. She has also noticed some business being generated from online information sites.
"Each segment of the market requires something different," she said. For example, fund-raisers generally stick to very basic pieces because they don't want to be perceived as spending too much. Markets for higher-end pieces include political, insurance and financial.
Whatever the market, the majority of the direct mail products being produced today are highly personalized.
"Personalization is our niche now," said Blohm. "We focus our efforts on ways to increase personalization on almost all types of direct mail."
"We have the ability to personalize up to five plys up and up to 81&Mac218;2&Mac253; inches in width," said DeMattia. She added that TRANSKRIT has increased its internal staff to handle the demand for personalized direct mail. "We don't pretend to be a [mailing] list house, but we do provide our customers with list conversion, file splitting, merge/purge and deletion of specific accounts."
- Companies:
- Vanguard ID Systems
- Places:
- Exton
- Roanoke, Va.