Welcome to the Dove Direct Print and Marketing Blog. Today's post, "Digital Printing Delivers Speed and Versatility," uncovers how digital printing's adaptability helps to create an agile marketing paradigm. Approaches to marketing in the 21st Century have shredded historical marketing ideologies replacing most with a greater emphasis on customer satisfaction. Thanks in part to the bevy of data and real-time analytics that help structure and direct the acceleration of the decision-making process. In short, digital printing aids a relatively new marketing paradigm called Agile Marketing.
In the print world, all-new digital printing technologies are well-positioned to operate in an agile marketing environment. That means all marketers, whether solo entrepreneurs, C-Suite executives, content creators, document designers, print buyers, and commercial printers, can leverage this new model and digital printing technologies. This means that the complete array of print's creative output, including specialty or custom colors, substrates, textures, shimmering ink applications, die cuts, and more can be integrated into an agile marketing paradigm.
The agile marketing construct is coming of age due to the customer's desire to have marketing materials personalized. It also takes into consideration the customer rapidly changing their interests or mind at any given moment. From an agile viewpoint, both the digital and print world can accommodate changing customer interest on the fly with digital software and hardware, which marketers can utilize throughout the creative development cycle.
Quote of the Day: "Build something 100 people love, not something 1 million people kind of like." — Brian Chesky, Co-Founder & CEO, Airbnb
What is Agile Marketing?
You can define agile marketing as a calculated, long-term operation employing a superior technique that manages and improves how a brand, marketer, or marketing team achieves work completion. This methodology demands a comprehensive strategic vision, including a short, medium, and long-term marketing blueprint. Agile marketing represents a diversion from traditional marketing in a multi-faceted, far-reaching manner. It incorporates targeting continual releases, calculated experimentation, and a rigorous commitment to consumer audience gratification.
That said, a more simplistic definition of agile marketing removes the tempting ability to take the easy road with all eggs in a single marketing basket. Under the agile marketing umbrella, creative concepts and marketing campaigns launch, test, and continuously improve to establish the most effective approach. Agile marketing's success reflects the versatility of digital constructs. To that end, we note that industrial/commercial inkjet digital printing fits the bill for an agile marketing ideology.
Inkjet Printing and Agile Marketing
When we look at a typical marketing calendar, we know that many organizations release products regularly. It's a process that goes back many decades. However, today's customer set is increasingly demanding, which places organizations in a quandary with having to deliver multiple product sizes, flavors, colors, and specific product variables. In addition, brands and marketing teams are investing in multichannel or omnichannel marketing initiatives. The latter channel focuses on providing a seamless customer experience, other than just being on every available medium the brand's budget can afford. These challenges represent the tip of an iceberg and one that product marketing teams face daily. More importantly, these challenges fit into the wheelhouse of the digital printing process and are tantamount to achieving agile omnichannel marketing.
Digital Is Best for Short Runs
Digital printing provides the ideal cost-effective solution for testing marketing campaigns and limited time-sensitive releases. The benefit of small product launch initiatives is to produce a desire to complete the sale before the offer ends. This process incentivizes consumers to act with the understanding that the offering will not last forever and may become unavailable. Digital printing's speed allows for the real-time creation and output of labels, packaging, signage, and promotional collateral. Fast is not synonymous with identifying speed, particularly in the science of printing speed; instead, it refers to the speed at which personalized collateral can be output. For effect, and clarity, think of the actor Matt Damon in "The Martian." When Matt's team had to return to space to rescue him, the NASA team said he would be lifting off of Mars' surface as the fastest man to ever launch in a spaceship. In this example, "fast" translates into a quick and cost-effective proposition to remove a man from Mars and place him in a ship while traveling at the speed of 17,000 miles per minute. In the print world, fast means the creation of one solution for one customer.
Digital printing's on-demand process removes the need to create multiples, thereby reducing waste as new data analysis suggests that priorities and designs will evolve. Another significant aspect that digital printing affords is the just-in-time delivery method, which eliminates the need to carry inventory, reducing security issues while releasing valuable resources for other projects.
Digital Printing Solutions are Trackable
Most marketing professionals are now of the mindset that real-time data results make up the how, why, when, and where of it all and that those data points outline the actual definitive results of any campaign. The notion of using "instinct" to calculate the success of a marketing campaign is over. Data tracking results are easier to deal with using digital print collateral. Personalized, individual targeting afforded via variable data technology by an inkjet printer brings this process to fruition. Moreover, marketers can print multiple QR codes, website URLs, or PURLs on various media to assess buyer interactions with particular product offerings, sales timelines, branding, and placements.
Under the digital printing conclave, marketers and brands can now monitor and track QR scans or website visits. Through real-time monitoring, marketers can ascertain the value of the call-to-action. They can determine its effectiveness and ability to engage. In addition, when observing customer interactions from the point of purchase perspective, or point-of-sale displays, these data points can uncover critical insights to either improve or change the marketing campaign, allowing for better-targeted marketing campaigns in the future.
The Net-Net
We can use many examples from the technological digital printing world that provide a wealth of strategic and efficient methods to produce an agile marketing construct. As technology evolves, savvy brands and marketers are already hunting for the subsequent consequential change, which the consumer will drive. Digital printing is a significant contributor to the agile marketing paradigm. Thanks to the efficiency digital printing provides, it should be a no-brainer to begin including print as an integral part of the agile marketing mix. Thanks for reading "Digital Printing Delivers Speed and Versatility!"
Let's have a conversation about integrated business solutions and how they can help grow your business, change behavior, and improve the customer experience. Let us show you how to improve your document processes to optimize your workflow, reduce your costs, and maximize your organization's printing, letter shop, and mailing capabilities. Dove Direct has an official USPS certified bureau located within our offices to save you time and money. We can even create a demo file for you. For more information, call Carla Eubanks at 404-629-0122 or email Carla at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Dove Direct, your Atlanta based print and mail solutions provider, offers organizations end-to-end data, printing, and mailing solutions:
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