Got On-line Personalization?

Adding Web-to-print services to your offerings can not only bring convenience and control to document approval, ordering and brand management, but can also open the door to added revenue and growth. In fact, Web-to-print is emerging as the preferred approach to the marketing and sales environment.

Web-to-print can bring your variable data print or cross-media marketing operation to the Internet via storefronts and marketing portals. E-commerce sites are on-line stores, complete with integrated shopping cart, payment processing and shipping capabilities, which allow your customers to browse, select, customize and order dynamic print documents and e-mail campaigns. In contrast, marketing portals give customers, franchisees and internal sales teams access to branded, customizable marketing collateral through corporate branded sites. Both make it possible for anyone to create customized literature from an online template, approve a PDF, upload a mailing list, and send it all to a print and fulfillment partner.

One of the biggest advantages of Web-to-print is that you do not need to manually work with each order, since it is automatically generated through the Web, thus reducing labor costs while producing more work. And you can set up automated, lights-out production—24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Choosing a solution

Once you decide to adopt this on-demand, online technology, it is important to choose a solution that provides an interactive customer experience and has a flexible architecture that allows for extending its capabilities. This might include additional modules, including integrations with shipping companies and data providers, or the ability for custom integration with third party applications like workflow management software and CRM, MIS and DAM systems. When choosing a solution, one should also keep in mind how product templates are created and managed. They should be easy to edit and modify. Finally, your Web-to-print solution should also be able to deliver items other than print, such as e-mail, downloadable PDFs, or tangible products like t-shirts and mugs.

With Web-to-print, print providers, creative agencies and corporate marketing departments can put the power of personalization in the hands of their customers and employees. For Traxion, the digital communications and marketing services division of privately-held Sells Printing Company LLC in New Berlin, WI, this proved to be a key to their success.

Sells Printing, established in 1916, is the Milwaukee area’s sixth largest commercial printer. The company opened its Traxion division in 2008 after seeing a new revenue opportunity—providing one-to-one, digital marketing services, becoming a one-stop shop for their marketing communications needs.

One of Traxion’s first customers, Lentz Design, provides personalized marketing materials to real estate agents through a Web portal. Lentz enables agents to create and produce postcards for promoting the properties for sale. Ease of use and compelling creative were important to Lentz, and the company needed help in implementing its vision for a new realtors’ storefront that would be easier for agents to use, and more customizable for responding to market shifts.

Introducing new functionality

Traxion developed a new Lentz Design Web ordering system that retained the existing storefront’s look and feel, while introducing new functionality that made ordering faster and the Lentz site more user-friendly for agents. Lentz’s site now offers full customization and personalization capabilities and exciting, new, dynamic postcards with personalized images branded “The Wow Factor.” For example, targeted recipients’ names can appear on street signs, drawing their attention to a message about a new home on the market.

Agents can also now upload mailing list files, and the site automatically matches the data to the proper fields online. Previously, agents had to download a template to manually populate and upload recipient data, which added significant time to the ordering process.