Reader's Digest Germany and Kodak go where no marketer has gone before – with Kodak Versamark’s high-speed inkjet technology…
Test mailing pushes the boundaries of variable data printing
Reader's Digest is one of the best known brands in the world. It is also one of the largest players when it comes to high volume direct mailings, with the German arm alone producing over 50 million pieces of direct marketing material each year. It is only natural that an organisation publishing 50 editions in 21 languages and with a customer base of several million would look at exploring the possibilities of digital print to improve on the response rates of its direct marketing campaigns.
Promotion staff from Reader's Digest Germany got together with representatives of Kodak to discuss conducting a test using Kodak Versamark high-speed continuous inkjet technology to produce a typical Reader's Digest direct mail piece using variable data. The test was designed to examine the effect of using individualised images and text in a targeted mailing on the response rate. It was also designed to determine the cost effectiveness of such a mailing. Reader's Digest selected a particularly tricky target group to the project: currently inactive subscribers targeted for re-activation.
The taskforce A taskforce was formed to carry out the project, from concept to print to finishing. Reader's Digest involved the Stuttgart College of Print & Media to help develop a creative concept; prepress specialist types was designated as the partner for reproduction and print stream creation; PrintSoft provided the design and production software Newleaf; LS Dialog Marketing oversaw the print and finishing process; and Rotomail in Milan printed the mailing on a Kodak Versamark VX5000 16-head printing system. Rotomail specialises in 360 degree customer communication, adapting their extensive technology to their customers' needs.
The campaign The team developed two creative concepts and one benchmark mailing which would help measure the success of the overall project. The concepts followed the usual style of standard Reader's Digest mailshots. Mailing 1, the benchmark, offered the recipients one of Reader's Digest best-selling products and involved no variable data element except the customer's name and address. Mailing 2, however, targeted different types of customers with different products, depending on customer affinity; eight different products were chosen for this (a selection of these are pictured on the right). Finally, mailing 3 consisted of only one product offer, but contained individualised text and images depending on the recipient's age, gender and areas of interest; 25 variations were used in total.
Klaus Kicherer, promotions production manager at Reader's Digest Germany explained, ‘We have a vast customer database in place, and wanted to find new ways of putting all the information we hold about our customers to good use. One of the challenges was to establish how much individualisation would be beneficial, and at what point it may start to actually become counter-productive. In addition, deciding exactly which elements to personalise was difficult, as we had no prior experience as to how customers would respond to this. Would they feel that we know too much about them and feel threatened by that? To an extent, we had to take an educated guess of what would and wouldn't work, based on our many years' experience in standard customer mailings.’
Ulrich Forschner, promotions director at Reader's Digest Germany, added, ‘This project was uncharted territory for us and, therefore very exciting. We've always felt that many personalised mailings we have seen have been too narrow-minded and clearly driven by what was technically feasible, rather than what was sensible from a marketing point of view. The challenge is for marketers to fully understand variable data and how to use it. Of course, a sound customer database and customer knowledge are absolutely key elements here, but not all data is useful data - it has to be interpreted in order to be of value.’
The challenges Implementing the creative concepts presented a new series of challenges. PrintSoft's Newleaf software is especially designed for the creation of complex documents for highly targeted and highly individualised marketing. However, the sheer volume of data combined with a high proportion of large, high-quality, full-colour images required some adjustments to the workflow. Hermann Fautz, branch director of LS Dialog Marketing, ‘The creative design of the material called for a large number of images, resulting in the need to use quite a lot of ink. This caused dampness of the paper which, combined with a slightly unusual size, presented the finishing department with a challenge. We used a cutting machine from our parent company GHP Bamberg that enabled us to cut independently of size, following a digital registration mark. Using this flexible technology enabled us to successfully finish a complex design.’
Jens Seidel, managing director of prepress company ‘types’, added, ‘Our role in this project was to create a complete programme from the creative design using PrintSoft's Newleaf technology. Considering the scale of the project we expected to have to deal with a much larger amount of data than we would normally, coupled with a high volume of colour images. All parties were extremely flexible and worked together to create new solutions to these obstacles. After all, we mustn't forget that this project was meant to be a test, and ,therefore, part of its purpose was to establish where the technical boundaries were, and how to overcome them.’
The results So, was it all worth it? In short, yes. Three mailings of 20,000 pieces each were sent out to a list of inactive subscribers - right on time, despite the obstacles that were encountered. The results were unexpected, and excellent.
Klaus Kicherer, ‘Given the difficulty of the target group and the technical challenges involved, we needed a response rate increase of at least 40 per cent compared to traditional mailings in order to put digital print in a competitive position with offset in terms of costs. However, we were surprised and delighted to find that we achieved instead a cumulative increase of over 70 per cent! The first mailing provided the basis against which the two tests were measured. The test mailing in which images and texts were varied according to customer age and gender returned 10 per cent more responses than the benchmark. Amazingly though, the mailing where eight different products were exchanged according to customer preference provided a 62 per cent higher response rate than the benchmark mailing, which we couldn't have been more pleased with.’
Robert Koeckeis, marketing director, Kodak's Graphic Communications Group EAMER, said, ‘We are delighted that the project was such a resounding success - not only in terms of the result of the response rate, but also in the sense that each partner involved in the project has gained experiences and insights which will enable them to improve processes for future projects. One of the primary goals of the project was to identify if using Kodak Versamark continuous inkjet technology would be cost-effective. The results have shown that it was exactly the right technology for the job - it enabled the type of data variation desired while keeping the cost down, and delivering high-quality product at 2000 pages per minute.’
Ulrich Forschner concluded, ‘Faced with a headline increase in production cost of up to 80 per cent, it can be a difficult decision for a marketing manager to embark on such an enormous undertaking. Nevertheless, the results speak for themselves. A cumulative 72 per cent response rate increase more than justifies the cost and every marketer should sit up and take note! The point about digital printing technologies is not to have them replace traditional offset - it's knowing when to apply which technology to exploit it to its full advantage. We will continue to develop themes for individualised mailings, also for lower-volume applications. The taskforce put in place for this project worked extremely well together and delivered quality output on time; we will certainly look to develop further concepts together in the near future.’
Further information is available from: www.graphics.kodak.com, or in Southern Africa from Antalis Graphics division, which represents Kodak Versamark throughout the region: www.antalis.co.za
Reader's Digest is one of the best known brands in the world. It is also one of the largest players when it comes to high volume direct mailings, with the German arm alone producing over 50 million pieces of direct marketing material each year. It is only natural that an organisation publishing 50 editions in 21 languages and with a customer base of several million would look at exploring the possibilities of digital print to improve on the response rates of its direct marketing campaigns.
The team developed two creative concepts and one benchmark mailing which would help measure the success of the overall project. The concepts followed the usual style of standard Reader's Digest mailshots. Mailing 1, the benchmark, offered the recipients one of Reader's Digest best-selling products and involved no variable data element except the customer's name and address. Mailing 2, however, targeted different types of customers with different products, depending on customer affinity; eight different products were chosen for this (a selection of these are pictured on the right). Finally, mailing 3 consisted of only one product offer, but contained individualised text and images depending on the recipient's age, gender and areas of interest; 25 variations were used in total.