by Jeff Gulley

Created on: January 13, 2009

In an age when most companies are looking for marketing and advertising that yields a higher impact on its audience, and when costs are being cut across the board, the printing industry is being revolutionized by an ever-increasing trend: variable digital printing.

There are three main markets where variable data can be applied to digital printing applications: direct mailing, transactional statements, and transpromo materials (sort of a hybrid of direct mailing and transactional statements).

Data entry and database storage is nothing new for most businesses, but larger enterprises have become wise to the new trend in customer communications and have begun using their databases for long-term marketing and advertising. To use a brief analogy, imagine you are applying for a new job: would you write "Dear Sir/Madam," as your cover letter salutation? Absolutely not! Not in this day and age of competition! Were you to write such a salutation on your cover letter, you might as well not have applied for the position at all. In today's job market, it is imperative that you research to the best of their ability whom exactly will be receiving the job application, whether it be the Human Resources Coordinator or the Manager of the company itself, and address your cover letter as such. This exercise shows diligence, research, and a basic knowledge of your target; it will also surely save your job application from relegation to the paper shredder.

Much of the same psychology applies to modern marketing and advertising techniques. With the advent of the Internet and email, the so-called Information Age has literally bombarded us with information on an everyday basis, most of it useless to most individuals. How many unsolicited advertisements for Cialis, or breast enhancement technology, or credit consolidation, etc., have you received in your email? How many of them have you actually opened and read? As humans, we have become so accustomed to such large waves of incoming information (which we know doesn't apply to us) that we usually dismiss it outright without giving it a second thought.

Most marketing departments have not been inactive in the face of such a trend, and thus the variable data printing industry has benefited. Variable data printing software applications such as GMC PrintNet T, XStream (now owned by Hewlitt-Packard), and Canon's PrintShop Mail have been on the market for over 15 years now, often selling at quite high costs. If a large enterprise company sees that

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