But while marketers are increasingly finding uses for variable data printing, periodical publishers aren't so bedazzled yet.Imagine picking up a magazine and being shocked to see your name and your neighborhood splashed across the cover. Subscribers to two niche magazines last year got to experience just that when they encountered this exciting—and perhaps creepy—use of an emerging publishing technology.
VDP (variable data printing) uses a digital press to incorporate content—text, graphics and layouts—stored in a database to create customized documents. Instead of printing 10,000 of the same exact covers on a traditional offset or gravure press, a digital press can print 10,000 slightly (or wildly) different covers.
Also known as one-to-one marketing, database marketing and personalization, VDP is similar to the mail-merge feature found in word processing applications, only it's a mail merge on steroids.
Widely used in transactional printing such as bank and credit card statements, VDP is increasingly being used by direct-mail marketers to deliver customized marketing messages to consumers.
A customized message tailored to an individual's interests and information is more relevant. The more relevant the message, the more likely it is that the consumer will respond. A higher response rate usually means increased profits. When VDP personalization is done right, response rates and profits can increase substantially.
Click here to read more about trends in variable data printing.
For example, instead of mass mailing a postcard to "Resident," the name of the recipient can be used in the address and in the text (including headlines). Instead of using only boilerplate text, information specific to the consumer (such as their town or the name of their pet) can be included. Instead of using the same images, variable photos can be swapped in to coincide with established parameters or rules (such as age, gender, ethnicity, breed of dog).
Although rarely done, personalized magazine covers such as those for Reason or National Relocation and Real Estate magazines may offer an early glimpse of things to come in periodical publishing.
"It's still in the experimental stages," said Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, an analyst at TrendWatch Graphic Arts. "It's where variable data on the commercial side was five or six years ago. They [publishers] haven't quite figured out where it fits."
Referencing the TrendWatch report, "Variable Data Printing 2005: Publishers," Tolliver-Nigro said only 3 percent of periodical publishers see variable data printing as a sales opportunity. The special report, compiled from twice-a-year market research, also noted that only 2 percent of periodical publishers see their use of VDP increasing in the next year.
Personalization Gains Importance
Personalization is nothing new in the magazine industry.
Frank Romano, professor emeritus at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology), cited a number of periodical personalization examples. One includes the use of ink-jet technology in Time magazine to add local contact information on preprinted advertisements for mufflers.
"Ink jet has been used for personalization for the past 20 years," Romano said. "Donnelly (RR Donnelley) pioneered the concept to a large extent when it integrated addressing at the end of the bindery line. No longer did you have to put mailing labels on magazines. Which is why so many magazines have that terrible white rectangle on the front."
Next Page: Publishers look for profitable uses.
Romano said there are a number of barriers to wider and more sophisticated use of VDP by publishers. While speed, binding and cost are factors, he said publishers have yet to come up with truly creative and profitable applications.
"We haven't found a lot of applications out there where I want to personalize the cover," Romano said. "However, I think there are other applications beyond the cover. There is no reason why I can't do one sheet and then glue it in and that sheet can be personalized to me.
"That to me is part of the future of the magazine industry," he said. "The only way to make that magazine relevant is to now bring some information into the magazine that's unique to me, the reader. And that's easier to do now that you have such wonderful bindery systems that allow you to combine sheets and signatures into a finished publication.
"It's not so much the magazine's database," Romano said. "It's what the magazine can do with a combination of databases." For example, he suggested that a magazine could personalize advertisements by incorporating purchasing information from the advertiser or by demarcating by region. "The question is, can you take it to the next level?"
Catalogers Are Adopting VDP More Quickly
"Catalogs are a bigger opportunity for variable data than magazines are," Romano said. "In the United States, the top 34 magazines are all hybrid [printed using both offset and gravure presses]. Catalogs are the same way. There could be versions of the catalog. But more importantly, why don't I do the cover which is personalized to you, only with products that would be of interest to you because of what you bought before, and do that as a wrap-around cover?"
Tolliver-Nigro agreed that catalogers are far more interested in VDP than magazine publishers are. Referencing the "Variable Data Printing 2005: Publishers" report, she said 7 percent of catalogers see VDP as a sales opportunity.
"If it's [a catalog] more targeted to me, my order might go up from $30 to $120. There's a very clear payoff there. Where with magazines, the payoff is not as clear," she said.
"As a world, we are going toward a more personalized model of everything," Tolliver-Nigro added. "You go to Amazon.com, you get, 'Welcome back, Heidi Nigro. Here are some select things just for you.'
"Everything is geared around customization and personalization these days. Customers have come to expect that," she said. "Publishers, like everybody else, have to look at that trend and say, 'How does that affect me?' That's just good business."
