Custom marketing with digital VDP| The Document Group

Customize Your Marketing With Variable Data Printing

In the not too distant past, preparing brochures and other marketing collateral was both expensive and time-consuming. Printing in bulk lowered costs; only cost-effective option for market segments was to add personalized material to brochures. However personalizing output for different markets, much less different customers, was virtually impossible.

The Advent Of Personalized Printing

Digital printing enhances marketing with high-quality, personalized, full-color documents akin to offset printing. By interfacing computer databases with the printing process, you can now mass-customize documents, rather than just mass-producing them. Variable printing merges marketing messages into complex materials using technology similar to mail merging.

This personalization can take one of several forms. The simplest level involves adding a name on each copy, similar to a mail merge. Next step is to add customized text and images to target different markets. Finally, full variability printing allows personalize text and images for each individual address. In all cases, the format and basic layout remains the same, along with some shared language, while some elements vary based on who will receive the output.

Roland large format printer on a print run

Creating Variable Data Printing

Variable data printing or VDF is accomplished in three ways:

  1. A static document is loaded into the printer memory, and the printer is instructed to always print this document in addition to variable data that’s printed on top of the static document. The simplest of VDP technologies, this approach is also the most limited.
  1. Both the static document as well as variable elements are combined to create separate digital documents for each recipient or group of recipients. The downside of this approach is that print files are large and can easily overcome the capacity of the print driver or Raster Image Processor (RIP), and printing is slower.
  1. Using VDP software, static and variable elements are combined in such a way that the driver only has to process and store the static elements once. This type of software is included in Adobe InDesign and in standalone or bundled software offered by many manufacturers.

Marketing Benefits Of VDP

VDP enables you, as a marketer, to be more effective in reaching your customers. Print one job for personalized postcards or bound reports with relevant images, text, and standard content. You can also create unique product variations for different markets by changing pictures and text.

The Document Group of Houston, Texas offers digital printing with variable data printing capabilities. You retain the benefits of high quality color printing and excellent image quality along with the type of customization that maximizes your marketing dollar. For information about this technology and samples of VDP in action, call us at 888-316-4670.