What's Hot in DM?
To get the story from the trenches, PrintMe! Spoke with Louis de Bellefeuille, sales director with Transcontinental’s direct mail and sheetfed operations in Toronto. Transcontinental is among the largest producers of direct mail in North America with operations in Montreal, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dallas and Los Angeles.
How’s the Direct Mail (DM) Business Doing?
Direct mail is alive and growing. It’s an interesting part of our business because it does have vibrancy. Marketers are looking at more targeted solutions, they’re looking, in some cases, at reducing page count in some of their catalogues and looking at direct mail to do some individual campaigns. So we, as a business unit, are really benefiting from the fastest growing part of the print sector.
With the Move towards One-To-One (1:1) Marketing, is a Lot of Working Moving to Digital Colour Printing Technologies?
There’s no question the trend is towards 1:1, but that’s not just digital colour. We do a lot of digital in the lettershop, with monochrome laser equipment, either roll or sheetfed. If you look at more progressive full-colour versioning to a particular target audience, that’s an area that’s definitely growing. And if you look at industry statistics, it will continue to grow faster than regular direct mail printing.
What Types of Campaigns Are Using Full-Colour 1:1?
Where we see it as a key trend is retention versus acquisition. The 1:1 is driven by data and through multi-media, multi-channels, where you’re really integrating the DM massaging with the Internet.
Are You Selling More than Printing Today?
When we talk with agencies and brand owners we don’t simply talk about direct mail solution, it’s really about the integration of media, and the Internet is the biggest one.
Everyone was worried about how Internet would impact print-and direct mail in particular. Quite frankly, it’s helped us grow
In parts of our business we’re able to partner with providers that really specialize in the e-mail portion of it. What we do now, and it’s not uncommon in our proposals, is talk with specialist providers and includes those services in the total solution.
Does Personalization Still Present a Wow Factor for Clients?
The stuff you can do with 1:1 is quite interesting. Today there’s so much data available, now there needs to be more done with the data to make it valuable, and that we handle through Transcontinental Database Marketing, where we do analytics and predictive modeling.
That’s the first step, and with that powerful data you’re able to massage some very interesting stuff that’s proven by response rates to be a much better return on marketing dollar than conventional lettershop.
Are You Losing Print to E-Mail?
Initially there was some of that, what we’re hearing from marketers today is, “How can I link my DM to our call to action.”
It’s the same with e-mail. People don’t talk about this anymore because that’s not very relevant to a good e-mail campaign-it’s what information did they get out of it? That’s where the direct mail has complemented programs.
There are so many moving parts today, it’s more complicated than it’s ever been. And it’s probably the most interesting time for marketers that there’s ever been. PM!
Published in PRINT ME! (2007 Edition), a Canadian Printer project
