Trans-Promo to Go

By Guy Broadhurst

Trans-promo, the term, the concept, the processes, and the technology behind it have gone from provoking a "What's that?" blank stare in 2005 to being a buzz-word in 2006 to an acknowledged application of vast potential today. It is a ways from being mainstream just yet, but given the pace of technology --and the cashflow trans-promo can deliver-- it is a "next big thing" kind of concept  that is rapidly becoming a reality.

Trans-promo rests on the fact that pretty much everyone opens and reads their bills and statements. The companies issuing those bills and statements have a vested interest in getting a bigger share of each customers' wallet and trans-promo is premised on the hope that if they make the right offers to those customers, put them on the statement where they are highly likely to be noticed, then some percentage of those customers will buy something. And while a lot of hard data is yet to arrive, most of the anecdotal data indicate this is absolutely true. Already, companies that have adopted this strategy are finding their statements are becoming marketing vehicles and turning cost centers into profit generators.

Don't genericize me

Of course most credit card companies have been adding marketing offers to statements for years, but the offers have been totally generic. People in Washington state get the same offer with their Visa statements as I do in Florida. Trans-promo goes a giant leap further and makes the messages on the statements relevant, based on customers' purchase patterns and known interests. This raises the ante from the generic "stuffers" that make a quick trip from envelope to circular file. According to InfoTrends, 63% of consumers say they would prefer to receive trans-promo statements versus statements with generic stuffers.

Color and relevancy

Trans-promo also adds color, which the stuffers had, but when you combine color text and images with relevant messages you have a winning combination. The challenge for the service bureaus and data centers producing the statements has been how to bring color to traditionally black and white statements --and to do it affordably. Highlight color is one approach and it works well for many applications, especially when the colors can be readily changed and custom color matching enables companies to eliminate the need for shells pre-printed with corporate colors. The ideal is full color, but it has always been expensive and the cost of printing in full color was prohibitive for statement applications. Then there was the speed issue. Full color digital presses simply can't produce millions of statements in narrow print windows unless many machines are used at once.

The Right Color, the Right Speed

At Océ, we've often talked about Job Appropriate Color,  which means using the right amount of color for a given application while still being able to meet the demands of tight print windows and rigid SLAs. And this is precisely what trans-promo printing requires. It can mean printing black-only on some pages at very high speeds, black and a spot color on others at slightly lesser rates, and full color where it will be most effective, and at a significantly higher speed than other machines. Our customers around the world tell us they need this kind flexibility to meet the needs of their customers. They say the existing traditional full-color digital presses cannot run fast enough or economically enough for the majority of trans-promo applications. To meet those needs we developed the VarioStream 9000 family which can be field-upgraded from black only to full color printing.

Beyond the Ordinary

But our customers said they needed still more. So we have taken that technology a big step further with the new ColorStream 10000, which is being introduced this week at Graph Expo in Chicago. It delivers black-only, multiple spot colors, and graphic arts quality full-color printing, all at top-rated speeds. It uses Graphic Arts Plus dot modulation technology to enrich color images with crisp graphics and smooth gradations for illustrations and photos. It supports almost any kind of stock, from lightweight to newsprint to heavy and glossy substrates. We know from our customers, though, that those capabilities must be supported with the high monthly print volumes trans-promo applications require. So to meet the demands of the trans-promo market, the ColorStream 10000 is the only full-color continuous feed printer that can power through five million images a month, double the capacity of any other system in its class.

I think of it as trans-promo to go --to go faster, with more color and more capabilities-- that meet the needs of a dynamic range of applications in direct mail and transactional service bureaus and corporate data centers. And then there's the commercial printers who can use the power of this new class of machine to change the way their business works and the range of jobs they can take on. It's really much more than a full-color press, it is a full- performance digital printing system that takes business beyond the ordinary.

But don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself if you are at Graph Expo. And think about how it can change the way you do business and how it could help you take advantage of the verdant market for trans-promo printing.