Although the direct mail market is growing, until the technology is in place and data quality improves it is still too expensive to produce personalised print at volume on advanced digital colour printers.

　　Think personalisation in print and thoughts turn to the typical Indigo presentation at Ipex or Drupa where after watching the theatricals, you walk off stage clutching a bag with assorted literature including a job which has your personal details and a photograph snapped while you waited for the show to begin, all printed on the spot in a limited period of time.

　　This is how one to one marketing has been perceived by first Indigo with its E-Print machines then for a short while Agfa and its Xeikon derived Chromapress and more recently Xerox and the IGen3 and Heidelberg and its NexPress. But very few of these advanced digital colour printing machines are busy with variable data print and personalised work.

　　The reasons are simply that this method of printing is still too expensive and marketing managers deciding how to promote their products remain unaware or unconvinced of the advantages in paying considerably more to produce considerably less.

　　This is not the case where the printed product is used to inform rather than sell. Here the ability of digital print to produce just the information that is required will help the end customer by reducing the information overload from manuals which detail every conceivable combination of features and in multiple languages.

　　It will also help the original supplier of the product in that it cuts down on warehousing and eliminates any redundancy of information. Taken to the ultimate, as many software companies do, the solution is to provide the information in a digital format and to encourage the customer to print out his own manual from the CD supplied.

　　Earlier objection

　　One of the earlier objections, that data of sufficient accuracy was not available, is fast disappearing as websites and call centres are being used to collect just such personal details. Some believe that in order to justify the investment in the call centre technology, companies will need to become proactive in using the information, and that this will therefore mean digital print.

　　Meanwhile millions of examples of digital variable data print are produced each day and sent as bills and invoice statements to every household in the kingdom. Increasingly these are not just recording what has been bought, but are also prompting the purchase of new items.

　　The perfect example is the Tesco Clubcard quarterly mailing which reaches ten million people with inducements to go to the nominated supermarket and buy, buy, buy. However if personalisation and one to one marketing is to work, then it has to descend from these mega jobs to those capable of being tackled by sheetfed or digital printers.

　　Growth area

　　Last year Carlton Barclay, one of the more adventurous direct mail printers called in liquidators, but subsequent developments suggest this was a one-off rather than proof there is no market in short and mid-volume personalisation. According to Advertising Agency figures, direct mail is one the few growth areas of advertising spend, reckoned at 7-8% a year, and certainly those companies handling this type of work and that have developed an expertise in it, seem to have fared better in their niche than those competing in the commercial sector.

　　Take the Anton Group in Essex. Multi-unit Speedmasters have been joined by Xerox Docutechs and a NexPress and now by Scitex inkjet heads able to personalise a complete B1 sheet which has already been printed litho as part of a finishing line. Scitex inkjet has been best known for personalisation on web presses, such as those at Vertis, previously Colorgraphic, where the cost can be justified by the run lengths.

　　Now, however, the technology is beginning to make its way on to sheetfed systems, for tasks such as providing personalisation on covers for Viking Direct at Polestar and on specialist finishing equipment at Vertis' sheetfed operation in Croydon.

　　"The Scitex really requires a minimum run of 25,000," says Andy Ruddle, sales director of its sheetfed operation in Croydon. "We do a lot of test runs before the work is committed to Leicester and thanks to the Scitex we are able to replicate the final product better than ever before so that response is much more meaningful.

　　"Overprinting on the Xerox is quicker, but the resolution is not so good as the Scitex so there is compromise in terms of looks and feel."

　　Black and white mailings

　　Xerox and Océ lead in terms of producing personalised black and white mailings, for instance at St Ives where these are used to send out information to company shareholders. "It's the sort of statutory stuff that companies must send out to their shareholders," says Dave McGolpin. He heads the group's direct mail division where vast quantities of work are printed first and personalised later, where the Xerox and Océ laser printers are used.

　　"But four colour and personalisation in one pass just doesn't exist at volume," he adds. In the very small runs the company has an Indigo, anything longer he says is "cost prohibitive" adding: "There's no technology that can do four-colour either cost-effectively or from the four-colour point of view. The Scitex Versamark is the closest, but the quality is not good enough for print that is selling something, and at nearly £1.5m for a machine, the Versamark is expensive."

　　Versamark offers a decent production rate and acceptable resolution from its inkjet heads, but the quality is not litho and the choice of papers is limited. It is finding a niche in transactional print ­ BT's domestic statements are printed in colour on a Versamark for example ­ but it has not yet crossed over to commercial printing.

　　HP Indigo is hoping that the web versions of its machines will address the productivity issues, at least to some extent while producing a known quality. Its W3200 produces 8,000 A4 colour pages an hour, slow by conventional standards, but fast for digital. The first installation in Europe will print car manuals on demand for Volkswagen at Infowerk in Germany, matching the specification of the vehicle, including the local language, with the owner and service manual.

　　This is not a new application as Xerox used this idea with Land Rover in the early days of Docutech. However says Holger Lippe, manager of customer service information at VW. "A growing number of niche car models and more language versions of our owner manuals are reducing print quantities. These can only be produced cost-effectively with digital printing."

　　Failed to progress

　　However the digital printing technology espoused by Canadian company Elcorsy seems to have failed to progress to commercial reality and for the moment Xaar has sidelined its commitment to develop high quality page wide inkjet printers for use in a colour digital press. In other words, for the foreseeable future the current technology is what the industry has to work with.

　　For the moment with Xerox presses capable of overprinting with variable data and costing only a fraction of the inkjet press, it remains cheaper to print first and add the personalisation afterwards.

　　Equally Heidelberg's Digimaster machines might be used in this way, though the German giant has limited experience of doing this. It is however trying to crack the nut of adding personalisation to enhance the value of conventional print. During the last Drupa, an area of its stand devoted to emerging technologies displayed an inkjet system from US company Spectral able to overprint anywhere on a sheet. While this has yet to see the light of day, discussions between the two companies continue.

　　Closer to home, Heidelberg will show inkjet personalisation at one of its upcoming Open House events demonstrating the capabilities of the Domino technology.

　　The UK company has unveiled a drop-on-demand unit which significantly improves the appearance of type over the existing continuous inkjet systems it has and which are extensively used in adding addresses to mailshots and adding inkjet heads to Sitma lines for magazines sent out on subscription.

　　But Heidelberg reckons that there is more of a future in using digital printing for personalisation as the market is moving in this direction. Says Chris Matthews: "We have really been thinking about what we can do that's different. One of the issues is that run lengths are coming down, customers are wanting faster and faster turnrounds, that provides the market for NexPress, because in this way they can make short run print quickly. We'll be showing solutions from companies with variable data software applications and which can manage the process of file delivery to the press."

　　That file delivery is crucial to the success in direct mail work, something which has kept barriers to entry high. According to Graham Beales, Polestar Direct's managing director "The necessary skills are not just about production, but also whether you can manage the customer's data to get the best response for him".

　　A lot of what Polestar produces is print first then overprint, with uncoated papers preferred when laser printing to add personalisation. New laser printers which use finer toners may be opening up this restriction so allowing a wider range of material to be considered. Andy Ruddle at Vertis in Croydon says that it works with some art papers as well as the uncoated grades.

　　Waiting to take off

　　While the pieces are falling slowly into place, integrity of data on the one hand and printing technology on the other, this is still a market waiting for take off.

　　The cost of entry remains high for a printer wanting to test the waters by buying a full-blown colour digital press, but a route that involves adding personalisation through black only inkjet or laser overprinting would seem worth investigating for those not willing to go the full distance.

　　One day the world may start demanding fully personalised to customised print at all points in the cycle, but when it comes to promotional or marketing print, this remains a long way off.

[时间：2004-03-15  作者：Bisenet  来源：Bisenet]