Personalized Print And Digital Marketing Yield Savings For Agencies, Insurers

The second category is marketing or promotional collateral, including: direct mail, pre- and post-sale brochures, and other sales collateral, such as enrollment kits, point of purchase materials, event-related collateral and inserts.

The third areaagain, one that is likely to apply to all insurance and financial services organizationsis business communications. This category includes the basics: presentations, training manuals, letters and memos, and business cards.

The fourth category, publishing, may or may not apply to every section of the industry. Publishing can be books, three-in-one documents, magazines and newspapers.

Product information is the final category, and it includes product marketing, product manuals, packaging, tags and labels.

The power behind digital marketing and personalized print lies in its ability to integrate the information, printing and fulfillment into documents that your organization already has developed, enhancing their value by adding elements of personalization to intelligently target messages and graphics.

An additional advantage to the digital marketing and personalized print is that any application can be developed to include automated distribution using a Web-based interface. A Web-based interface is one way to create a catalog of company collateral and instead of printing large numbers of documents that will have to be warehoused and distributed. The documents can be printed on demand, thus eliminating document obsolescence and decreasing turnaround times.

Printing documents on demand creates the opportunity to pick and choose electronically what goes into the individuals packet of documents. The distribution of documents is not restricted to printthey can also be distributed in electronic form to a variety of channels. This process eliminates the need to handpick and pull documents, thus reducing human error.

While the cost of setting up any new technology can be significant, a successful personalized marketing campaign can pay for itself. Until recently, very few companies had the capability to effectively use this technology, with prohibitive costs for software, programming and lack of experience standing in their way. Now, specialized communications firms have stepped in to close the gaps, providing expertise and training on the software.

Through outsourcing the digital marketing and personalized printing, a company can eliminate the high costs associated with the printing process. This includes costs associated with large traditional print runs, distribution and storage of hundreds of thousands of documents, and document obsolescence.

These facts alone can be the justification that is needed at a corporate level, not to mention the opportunity to increase response rates, leading to more qualified leads and the generation of additional sales.

As the state of the economy continues to struggle and consumers become increasingly savvy, the need to reach consumers in a new and innovative way becomes increasingly important. Digital marketing and personalized printing provides such a way.

For members of the insurance/financial services industry interested in saving time, increasing response rates and targeting their communications to their consumers, the potential of this new digital direction is just beginning to be realized.

is president and COO of The Consolidated Companies, Reno, Nev., which offers specialized print and digital marketing services to the insurance/financial services industry. He can be reached at [email protected].

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, October 31, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.