Bringing your marketing campaign in-house might seem like more work. However, in terms of cost-savings and time, such a move can bring significant competitive advantages.
The printing in-house of brochures, fliers and other bits of the marketing mix means that you no longer have to wait nervously for your colour printing to come back from the print shop. Colour laser printers now offer professional quality reproduction in large runs at an affordable price. An in-house production process is also much more flexible because marketing material can be printed-to-order and can be fine tuned as the marketing campaign is rolled out and feedback comes in.
Printers on the market costing less than €1,000 vary in terms of pages per minute and dots per inch. As far as manufacturers go, the price per copy metric is a contentious issue as this varies depending on the percentage of a page covered and the print quality. Depending on the demands of an office, all the printers Smart Company looked at will do the business and happily deal with flyers, manuals and other high-colour marketing-related documents.
‘What most people don’t realise when they buy a printer is how much it can be used for,’ said John Purdy, managing director of Ergo. ‘Most of the products around will let companies box above their weight and compete aggressively,’ he said. ‘The more affordable printers that could be used for in-house marketing cost well below €1,000. However, the devices themselves are fairly dumb, so it is vital to have the right software to fully utilise these printers,’ said Purdy.
Perfect printing
HP Colour Laserjet 3500N
The HP LaserJet 3500 series printer is designed for desktop and simple network use. The professional print quality makes for good colour accuracy. The 3500 prints up to 12 pages per minute in colour and, with four print cartridges is apparently easy to maintain. HP’s smart printing technology monitors toner levels for an accurate supply status that is displayed on the control panel. A software-based toolbox provides easy access to important information. The power of 64Mbyte of RAM as standard will ensure that documents are effectively processed and can be managed from the Windows and Apple Mac OS products. The range of printing media options available for the 3500N allow for a diverse selection of plain and specialty papers, card stock, labels and envelopes.
Canon Image Runner C 3200
With the ability to attain speeds of up to 32ppm for colour, the Image Runner RC3200 performs admirably as the centrepiece of Canon’s ImagePlatform line. This compact colour laser printer has 768Mbyte of RAM and a 40Gbyte hard disk as standard. An optional fax board allows for the transmission of documents at three seconds per page.
In addition to colour copying and printing, the C3200 can also be transformed into a communications hub for sharing and managing information in the office. It can distribute scanned data to multiple destinations, including e-mail and Internet fax addresses, network folders and document management applications such as Canon’s own ImageWare. This cost-effective machine is capable of providing the versatility and productivity that is usually associated with heavy production devices. The compact CLC3200 can be configured exactly as required. Separate print and scanner modules offer a choice of copier only or a combined printer/copier system.
Oki C5200n
With built-in networking, the new Oki C5200n allows workgroups to print both colour and mono documents on one compact machine. This printer has colour balancing technology for the colour on the pages that come out at a consistent speed of 16ppm. The C5200n offers reduced running costs, increased print speeds along with template manager software that allows you to create a wide range of documents. A ‘flat paper path’ allows printing on media up to 203gsm paperweight and up to 1.2 metres long. This is more than most of its competitors. The printer has one-year limited warranty with the possibility of overnight exchange and has a space-saving footprint for desktop use
Xerox Phaser 8400
The Phaser 8400 exploits solid ink technology, an alternative to laser printing, which Xerox says makes for truer and more consistent images in a more environmentally friendly way. This printer offers 600 by 600dpi on full page colour at a speed of up to 24ppm. It is built around a high-speed 500 MHz PowerPC processor that can fit up to 256Mbyte memory. A booklet printing facility reduces the size of each page by 50 per cent and prints two pages per sheet in the correct order so the document can be folded and stapled to form a booklet. Automatic two-sided printing allows for printing on both sides of the paper without any time-consuming reloading of sheets.
The PrintingScout software bundled with the Phaser 8400 provides on-screen instructions for when the printer needs attention or throughout the entire print job. Multiple jobs can also be lined up at the same time job using the pipelining feature. An automatic colour correction procedure applies the best print method to each element on a page in order to eliminate compromise between text and graphics quality.
Laying The Page
The basic ‘how-to’s’ of design such as using colour and type fonts correctly, avoiding graphic overload, and simplifying the message are essential to producing compelling marketing material. Otherwise, the reader gets distracted or bored and your message has not been communicated effectively.
Despite the advances made in desktop publishing software and image manipulation software, there is no replacement for solid design skills when putting together brochures, newsletters and advertising material.
Copy preparation is a skilled job that, when done properly, ensures that the later stages of creating your in-house material goes smoothly. Poorly prepared copy can delay the roll-out of a marketing campaign and add costs to the production process.
There are a few fairly well-known professional software packages used for putting marketing material together. Page layout packages such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe PageMaker and Quark Xpress are all ideal software programs are used to create a page structure for high-quality publications. Image creation and manipulation packages such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro are commonly used to alter and edit graphics and photographs.
Creating a visual house style and deciding on a standard logo ensures the uniformity of marketing material and is one of the most important steps when implementing an in-house design process. Using strong visual language and creating standard corporate identifiers will add a common look and feel that is essential to solid marketing campaigns.
Mass Mailing The Market Personally
Despite the incessant flow of junk e-mail pouring into already stuffed inboxes, permission-based e-mail marketing remains a valuable tool. By leveraging the benefits, a large targeted audience can be reached with the latest details on new products and services.
The primary cost saving comes from buying a software license outright rather than paying recurring fees. Also, instead of paying an external firm to update the contact list, e-mail marketing packages can be used instead.
E-mail marketing tool SpinnakerPro, developed by Limerick-based Narragansett Technologies, is one product that helps effectively use the inbox as the delivery tool for marketing services and solutions.
Some e-mail users like to get no frills plain text e-mails. SpinnakerPro can deploy html and text at the same time to users depending on their state individual preference. This piece of software also allows people on a database to opt in and opt out of mass mailings as they see fit. Contact details from external databases can be synched to keep data up-to-date.
SpinnakerPro’s bounceback management system processes incorrect and out of date contact information. It also distinguishes between ‘soft bounces’, for example, if the person is out of office, and the ‘hard bounces’ that arise in the case of an invalid e-mail address.
The package can be used to cross reference results with previous campaign results and to come up with valuable statistics such as the number of e-mails opened and forwarded. It can also calculate the number of clicks that go through to a particular URL on a website. These results can be utilised to create effective follow up action plans for the marketing campaign.
Messages can also be personalised based on known characteristics such as ‘name’ or ‘products owned’. High-volume of e-mails can be scheduled to leave at the most effective time and so reducing pressure on company servers.
From a design perspective, features in the package allow for the creation of
professional content without any html expertise. Users of existing design tools such as Macromedia Director can also paste content directly into SpinnakerPro.
Notably, SpinnakerPro ensures that e-mails comply with recent permission-based marketing laws and best practice within the industry.
16/08/2004
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers