XMPie Innovation Showcase Debuting at Print 09

Stop by XMPie Booth #1117 at Print 09 to be the first to experience the XMPie Innovation Showcase — a personalized, interactive exhibition of a full-featured cross-media campaign. The Innovation Showcase will allow you to independently walk through a corridor where you can see, hear and experience the creation of the fictional Melody Concert Series campaign, including how the printed mailer, e-mail message, Response URL™ (RURL) Web site, mobile interaction and fulfillment offering are all orchestrated in perfect harmony to demonstrate the power of effective, relevant, integrated communications.

The latest XMPie features will be highlighted through the exhibition, including enhanced e-mail capabilities, RURLs with true Web interactions, API-driven custom Web integrations, U2 and the RURL Wizard and templates. Even Google maps and personalized mobile SMS are incorporated. Upon exiting the showcase you will be provided personalized fulfillment samples, including a calendar, FunFlip promotion and more.

To experience the XMPie Innovation Showcase for yourself, stop by XMPie booth #1117 at Print 09 from Sept. 11-16.

How Do You Charge for VDP Work?

Contributed by Murray Miskelly, Fuji Xerox New Zealand

What do I charge for a VDP job? This is a common question in the minds of many service providers. This is a difficult question to answer as there are many factors that impact the answer including complexity, number of components and value of the campaign.

One thing you want to ensure is that if you are not making a healthy profit on the variable component of the job, you are at least covering your investment. This includes your software purchase price, as well as maintenance and support charges. Calculate those costs over a three year period and determine what you need to charge per month to cover your investment.

Obviously, this is a very simplified way to look at it, as simple jobs may not allow enough scope to cover this additional cost, but it is important to bear this in mind when quoting a job. The more jobs you do with the product, the more economical it becomes.

Now look at the jobs you are producing, and if you can improve the end product to better suit the customer, thus increasing their return on the piece. If this is the case, does the project warrant an additional charge for your skills and investment?

I was discussing a job with a client recently that related to printing tickets for an event occurring every couple of months. The end client wanted 2,000 people to attend the initial event, paying $15 per ticket. They had run the event before and had sold out previously, so there were only a couple of options where a VDP piece would add more value per unit. One, that the total number of tickets produced be less (as the percentage uptake be greater with targeted content), or that there be a way to get the recipient to also look at registering for future events (a concept that hadn’t been used before). If using variable data does not raise the value of the piece in your customer’s eyes, you can’t charge for it.

Also, consider the actual cost of preparing the piece. If using a product from the XMPie range can streamline the production schedule, then that too can be counted as a benefit of the system.

This subject extends even further into other aspects of the print business. If you look at the cost of having a pre-press facility with software to handle most common applications used by the design community, and allow that if you (legally) update them every eighteen months to keep up to date, then the investment is also quite substantial. And if you divide that amount by the number of chargeable pre-press hours then, again, you have to allow quite a tangible amount just to cover this component.

A deeper discussion would look at the tangible returns on our printed piece, and how to measure the response of it so as to calculate the return to the client.

Simple though this sounds, I have talked with a number of companies who have not calculated their software investment. To continue the discussion amongst yourselves, feel free to visit the XMPie Facebook Fan Page. It is open to all!

Tech Tip: Find/Replace on the uDirect/uCreate Palette

Have you ever had to replace placeholder text with your ADORs in numerous places throughout a multi-page document — for example, FIRST and LAST and ADDRESS1 Content Objects? If so, a simple solution lies in the uDirect/uCreate Palettes. The uDirect and uCreate palettes feature a command called “Find and Replace” that will allow you to quickly and automatically replace the placeholder text with your ADORS.

To use this command, turn off any data source. At the bottom of the palette, below the checkbox for “Highlight Dynamic Objects”, change the data source drop-down box option to “None”. The “Find and Replace” command will now be available on the palette menu. Selecting this command opens the Find and Replace dialog box. Choose what to find in the drop-down list. If you choose Text, type the text you are looking for in the box below. If you choose Content Object, select the content object from the drop-down list below it. If you are replacing text in your document, check Match case and Whole word as needed. In the screen shot below, you’ll see an example. Here we chose both options since word ‘first’ could potentially be in several places within the design. Select the Content Object you want to place and if you want it placed in the entire document or the selected text box. Click Replace and you’re done. Repeat those steps as needed.

Customer Spotlight

XMPie PersonalEffect user Magjak Printing Company recently created a highly effective, personalized direct-mail campaign for Club ABC Tours, a travel membership organization that provides travel support to more than 250 destinations around the world, to help the organization acquire new members and incent travel among its current members.

The travel stimulus themed direct-mail piece was designed to encourage recipients to travel, despite the stressful economic climate, by pointing out the outstanding values delivered through the buying power of travel clubs. The highly creative, data-driven mailer featured three types of cover designs, which changed depending on who received it. One included a personalized image of a suitcase with an airline baggage tag, featuring each recipient’s name and a destination that he/she would be most interested in visiting based on previous trips. Another version displayed an image montage of locales the recipient would most likely want to visit. A third design displayed a more subdued graphic with trip recommendations. The cover themes featured a travel message that varied depending on whether the recipient was a current or prospective customer. The mailer also included a fully personalized correspondence, featuring offers ranging from two-for-one membership rates to discounts on trips.

To ensure the greatest campaign success, Magjak strategically leveraged data that Club ABC Tours had about its existing customers and prospects, mining for the highest-value targets to generate the most significant results. Not only did the campaign bring in nearly $500,000 in new revenue and bookings in the first month, more than 10 times the organization’s initial investment, but it also successfully recruited nearly 150 new members in that same time. Download PDF file to view images of Magjak’s campaign for Club ABC Tours.