Have a high quality digital printing at an affordable price
Digital printing technologies have become vastly better, faster and cheaper, fulfilling the promise of affordable, colorful and personalized print. Hardly ten years ago, digital printing was considered a luxury and not cost-effective for sending direct mailers. The use of digital printing was only confined to certain select ultra short-run campaigns that perhaps did not require a high level of output quality. Several factors about digital printing discouraged the direct mail campaigner—print quality, cost-per-impression, color-matching capabilities and limited media compatibility.
Today, digital printing has come of age and all these limitations have been overcome enabling direct mail campaigners to finally capitalize on the promise of digital print. Most digital print manufacturers argue, and rightly too, that the quality of their digital printing output has tremendously improved in recent years.When digital printing first emerged, the print resolutions were typically in the region of 240 to 300-dots-per-inch with addressing systems printing at lower resolutions. Over the last two decades, the improvement in resolution have brought sharper print, sharper images and more variety in color ranges and the ability to create fine gradients.Hardware was not the only influencing factor for quality. Much depends on blending the right consumables—inks or toners and media.
The evolution and steady development of digital printing technologies was due to its link with the process of print and e-commerce. Many commercial printers have already taken advantage of the Internet and they use it to send and receive digital content, to exchange soft proofs, to share job status information and the like.
But lately some direct mail printers have started treating the Web not as a mere portal for information, but as a production engine that drives their workflow. Most digital printers claim that most of the jobs coming to them arrive via electronic channel. Having a highly automated workflow is terribly advantageous for both print supplier and direct mail customer. It ensures that printers keep their presses busy, while the customer reaps the benefits of fewer prep and labor charges on its print bill.
“Color is the name of the game,” say the direct mail experts. A recent research report from Rochester Institute of Technology suggests color pages are growing by more than 50 percent each year. The study report has suggested adding color to a piece—with no personalization—increased response rates by as much as 50 percent and when you combine that color with personalized, variable-data printing, response rates go up even more drastically.
Market analysts claim the cost of digital printing has come down as the machines have become cheaper and more reliable. They say that maintenance costs on digital printers are significantly lower than 10 years ago. As the cost of color eventually came down, it no longer made sense for printers to continue to support an offset operation.
Although there will always be a cost difference between the static offset pages, digital monochrome and digital full color, the value of the digital, full-color page and its ability to elicit a higher response rate—because it’s more targeted and more personalized—makes digital printing the preferred method. The digital printing costs have come down overall due to faster print speeds and competitive consumable costs. Marketing professionals say that although personalized direct mail has been talked about for years, it is only now starting to come into its own, with increasingly more sophisticated results.