Kaizen

Kaizen (Japanese for "improvement") is a Japanese philosophy that focuses on continuous improvement throughout all aspects of life. When applied to the workplace, Kaizen activities continually improve all functions of a business, from manufacturing to management and from the CEO to the assembly line workers.

Kaizen can be applied to any process and continuous improvement should always be the goal. When applied to Variable Data Printing we must ask ourselves some key questions. How do we increase response rates? What will achieve the best ROI? Is our offer good enough? Could the design be stronger? Is the data good? These are all key factors in the success of any variable campaign.

In a recent marketing campaign for Velocity Print Solutions, our goal was to enrich our client database, as well as, collect data on new prospects. In our initial mailings, we offered entry into a gas card drawing in exchange for answering a few short questions. Responses from our initial campaign (1.1%) were lower than expected considering we were not trying to sell anything, rather just improve our database. When looking at marketing there are 3 main components: the data, the design and the offer. In this case, we believed our data was strong since it was largely existing clients. So we needed to look at the design and the offer. What we ended up coming up with was a revised design that was not so wordy and changed the offer to a new Ipod Touch. Our next mailing went to the same recipients and the results were dramatic. What we experienced was an almost 400% improvement in responses and valuable client data.

Variable Data Printing can produce amazing results, but, it does take some effort. To achieve the dramatic improvements over static mailings you must be willing to put your project in a constant state of Kaizen. Even Velocity, who handles variable data campaigns for our clients on a daily basis, has sent mailings with less than stellar results. Just adding a level of personalization will not guarantee the results and you must be willing to make adjustments as you move forward. Talk with your variable data provider and discuss your goals in advance of your next mailing. They should be able to provide great insight from past experiences and help you achieve your goals.