Print marketing automation delivers benefits that redefine what’s possible for modern print shops. For print businesses to reach new markets, grow revenue, and do more with less, they must diversify: gone are the days of printers printing just one kind of product.
Printers must also market themselves in new ways —because it’s not enough that you add new capabilities; your customers and prospects need to know that they’re available (and envision for what those capabilities could accomplish for them).
To get the most marketing automation benefits for your spend, both for campaigns you design for your clients and those you design for your own business, you’ll need the right set of tools.
That’s where Ricoh software comes in.
Below we’ll show you the importance of the right tools and how Ricoh software products, redefine what’s possible.
Tools Enable Personalized Communication
The right set of software tools enables printers to engage in print marketing using personalized communication—at a scale and level of automation that wasn’t possible before.
This has huge implications for the work you do for your customers, as you can do more for them with no increase in labor (and perhaps even a decrease). For example, using FusionPro, you can personalize marketing outputs for your clients and easily adjust color, images, and text directly in the file (with no recreation).
Not only that, but new capabilities in print marketing automation also deliver equally significant implications for your own print marketing efforts: you already have a database of customers. If you don’t have a way to communicate with them that’s both automated and personalized, your outbound marketing efforts are stifled.
More than likely, you’re missing out on business opportunities.
Tools Enable Automated Print Workflows
In addition to powerful, scalable customization, the right set of print software solutions also enables automated print workflows.
These also redefine what’s possible in commercial printing: automation can extend your capabilities, increase your throughput, reduce manual errors, and much more.
Using a print MIS, like Avanti Slingshot or a powerful marketing asset management suite like MarcomCentral, printers can automate the workflow as a print job is being onboarded. This means:
- Fewer manual touchpoints which reduce print job onboarding errors
- Higher print job capacity
- Faster turnaround times delivering those jobs more quickly and meeting customer deadlines
- Cost savings which increases per print job profitability
And, most importantly, it means higher customer satisfaction. Customers who receive more work, faster, with fewer errors, and without additional costs tend to be some of the happiest you’ll encounter. And you can create and keep more of that type of customer through automated print workflows.
Here’s one example: imagine a tradeshow where, for whatever reason, circumstances change. Suddenly there’s last-minute requirement for brochures, business cards, backdrops, banners, or tent cards. The margin for error (and thus reprints) is nearly nonexistent. With print workflow automation, you can speed up the entire process from input through finished production.
RICOH Produces Software Tools That Deliver Results
For both of these outcomes (personalized communication and print workflow automation), Ricoh offers powerful solutions that deliver results.
MarcomCentral: Streamlining Print Marketing Campaigns
MarcomCentral is a marketing asset management software that empowers print service providers to centralize and automate their print marketing campaigns. From campaign creation to printing, management, and delivery, MarcomCentral delivers powerful capabilities in static, versioned and variable data pieces.
MarcomCentral is a cloud-based system that provides web-to-print e (W2P) capabilities that allow you to capture customer data accurately and automatically.
Print shops can leverage MarcomCentral for their own marketing campaigns as well, advertising additional services to your existing client base with a high level of customization and personalization.
FusionPro: Enhancing Personalization and Customization
FusionPro is an equally powerful variable data printing (VDP) software that further enhances your ability to personalize and customize print data pieces. By taking customization further than was previously possible, businesses can intensify reach and increase conversions.
And once again, this benefit shows up both in products produced for customers and those produced for your own marketing efforts.
The Right Tools Make All the Difference
For commercial print businesses facing growing customer needs and continued pressure on margin and profit, print marketing automation is no longer optional. It’s an essential part of digital transformation, one that’s beginning to separate businesses in terms of what they can do, how efficiently they can do it, and at what price and profit margin.
Your print marketing automation efforts start with the database you already have (even if that database is currently sitting idle—or even if you’re not thinking of your existing customer data as a database). It’s always easier to expand your footprint with a current client than to win a new one.
What does this look like in practical terms?
- When you buy a brand-new machine, talk about it!
- If you start offering a new service, faster turnarounds, or anything that could improve the lives of your clients and pull in new business from them—tell them!
- Take every opportunity to upsell using personalized communication.
On that last point: one Ricoh client offers consumer- and business-oriented customized products and does a masterful job of customizing the experience, offering right-fit add-ons and optional upsells to every transaction. While you likely don’t have a “personalized e-commerce giant” as your end goal, you can employ the same tactics at whatever level makes sense for the size and scale of your business.
Of course, to make it all come together, you’ll need the right set of tools.
MarcomCentral allows a printer to have a portal open for a client so they can use and reuse sections of deliverables for other deliverables. This creates a library for a customer’s “printables” that can greatly speed up fulfillment and even design. MarcomCentral also allows customers to communicate directly with you all along the way, from order submission to fulfillment.
FusionPro VDP covers the design and personalization elements, allowing you to personalize communications at the individual piece level.
If you’re locked in to one specialized print service, it’s time to expand your offerings so you can expand your business. And it all starts with the right set of solutions from Ricoh software.
Let’s get started ->
Meet the Author
Rosalynne is the Sr. GTM Strategy & Deployment Manager at RICOH Graphic Communications. She is a technology marketing professional bringing many years of expertise in US / Canada and International product and program marketing, communications, event management and public relations in the print industry. Rosalynne holds an honors marketing degree from the British Columbia Institute of Technology and a second designation as a CTSM (Certified Trade Show Marketer) for Northern Illinois University.
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