Articles
The Great Color Debate
By Dave Henkel, President of Johnson & Quin
In a slowing economy, it becomes critical for marketing professionals to design campaigns that set their company apart from the competition, foster customer relationships, and generate sales-all while staying within the parameters of shrinking budgets.
Marketers today have a wide range of tools they can deploy to communicate with customers. The trick is to use these tools effectively and add value without increasing costs. Current technologies have made full-color digital printing easier to produce than ever before, but it is generally much less expensive to produce that piece using preprinted forms and monochrome laser or ink jet personalization. In spite of the promised impact of full-color, marketers should take a step back and consider if full-color might be adding cost without truly improving response rates before designing a campaign around a digital variable mailing piece.
Some niche products, such as real estate, are ideal for variable digital production, with their low average mail quantities, coupled with the benefits of variable color for the property and agent photos. For many products and services, these same conditions do not apply: Either the mail quantities are much greater, or the use of color as a variable mechanism is not likely to enhance response. Most financial, retail and business-to-business mailings are unlikely to show substantially improved response rates for color digital versus the more conventional, less costly techniques.
Given the production cost in relation to full digital color, the cost-effective alternative of preprinting static, full-color mailers and then using monochrome laser or inkjet to personalize the piece will most likely prove that "less can be more" when it comes to generating a greater return on investment. Customers will still get the message that you know who they are and understand their needs, and you will benefit from considerably lower production costs.
