Variable Data Printing (VDP) might not be the latest shiny innovation to blast onto the scene. Still, it’s always been effective and profitable one – Keypoint Intelligence calculated an average profit margin increase of 10.5% for VDP jobs compared to static printing. VDP is also the sustainable choice and reduces carbon footprints compared to traditional carpet bomb marketing approaches.

So why aren’t more Print Service Providers (PSPs) already taking advantage of it? And why are some VDP service providers failing to effectively sell the value of VDP over generic printing to their customers?One answer may be that many Print Providers still don’t appreciate how accessible VDP technology is today, even to small print businesses with limited resources. Nor do they realise that VDP communications can be as creatively rich as static communications, with the bonus of much higher response rates that print buyers will pay more for!

They might not be able to face the inevitable effort and energy required to get VDP services up and running, but by the time they pull their heads out from under the sand, the competition will have grabbed VDP by the horns and passed them by.

Here’s why there’s nothing to be afraid of.

VDP Can be Just as Creative as Static Print

The print industry is a creative industry, not just a technical one, and when it comes to designing a VDP document, anything is possible, just like with a static document. In the VDP workflow, the designer leads the process, not the programmer. Along with their design skills, they’ll use their understanding of how to drive the design with data and logic to treat every person in the campaign as an individual.

Gone are the days when programmers and IT teams controlled the workflow and would ‘programme’ the print stream by printing the page background in batches before the variable data was computed, positioned, and printed over the top in designated areas.

Now, the designer can manage the entire process of laying out and designing pages on a desktop computer with unconstrained variability – images, texts, charts, styles, and more varying from page to page – to generate multiple versions of the same template automatically during the composition process. It can be done without even owning a print press.

Greater Response Rates

Like any endeavour that achieves higher results, VDP requires a bit more effort than regular static printing. You might need to train an existing staff member or hire someone new to use the VDP software and work with the data and logic.

That training stage is unavoidable with any new service you choose to provide. A VDP solution like XMPie that uses an end-to-end Adobe InDesign workflow is a huge advantage here since your designer will already be using it daily, and the learning curve will be reduced.

Start Small and Focus on Your Selling Strategy

Selling VDP is a different ballgame to selling print services as a commodity because, unlike static print, your customer doesn’t yet appreciate its value or potential.

So, start small. Take advantage of available training from vendors and industry. Take time to build a sales programme that explains the benefits of VDP and get to know your current customers; their industry, challenges, and customer-base, before moving on to your prospects.

At first, print buyers won’t appreciate the scope of what can be achieved, so they’ll look to you to advise them. You’ll need to understand the full scope of your VDP solution and how that functionality correlates to an opportunity for your customer. For every print job, ask yourself, ‘How can I help my customer improve the value of the communication and maximise the return on investment?”

Software doesn’t take up the room, and it doesn’t need air conditioning, but it does need the same amount of focus. It’s the lifeline of a profitable and competitive business, so take the time and effort to understand its features and capabilities.

Communication at Scale

A VDP solution should scale up or down as required depending on the client’s requirements, so don’t invest in all the bells and whistles when you’re just starting out. When you’re ready to push the solution past its original capacity, it will grow with you and maintain effective performance despite a steep increase in workload.

Whether communicating to a few individuals, hundreds of personas, or millions of clients, your capacity for scale and responsiveness to demand can be ready. No matter the campaign size, each customer will still feel they are the single recipient.

Personalisation Powers Sustainability

Adding VDP Services will not only improve your business operations and achieve economic growth. It will also reduce your business’s environmental impact because delivering personalised or targeted experiences to different audience segments across multiple channels cuts page volumes. In addition to offering more innovative print-on-paper services, you can expand into interactive online print solutions.

Online print documents are produced using the same workflow to print-on-paper but can take your audience beyond the basic reader experience. Interactive PDFS comprise dynamic elements within the document, such as links, buttons, videos, and more. For example, a savings account statement could include a personalised video statement to outline the data and a button link for the recipient to follow the call to action.

By publishing a PDF online, rather than printing it on paper, you will save on printing and postage costs, replace warehousing, avoid delivery delays, and reduce your carbon footprint.

Print and Beyond

A technology once solely used to personalise recipients’ names and postal addresses in print is now an essential tool helping printers futureproof their operations.

VDP is often the first step in a transformation from managing a straightforward print-as-a-commodity business towards offering higher-value applications that build longer-term and stronger customer relationships, including creative marketing services, digital or omnichannel campaigns, and customer communications management.

If you’re curious about the potential or VDP for your business, or if the limitations of your current solution are hindering your business growth, kickstart your transformation by trying out XMPie’s unlimited free trial version of its entry-level plugin into Adobe InDesign today.