Printing Direct Marketing with Production Inkjet

The current challenges with online advertising underscore the need for print including direct mail, on-statement marketing and point-of-purchase advertising to drive marketing return on investment. Inkjet is a key player in this mix.

Elizabeth Gooding talks to Rick Herlevic, Director of Plant Operations at Century Marketing Solutions about the introduction of an HP PageWide Web PressT230 inkjet solution into their direct mail/commercial printing operation. CMS is the in-plant arm of CenturyLink, and also has a sales force and an array of outside clients.

Inkjet Insight maps out I.T. Strategies North American print volume data to explore opportunities for production inkjet technologies. The map looks packaging, publishing, and document application categories. Production inkjet has been successful with applications that have light ink coverage printed on uncoated stocks … namely, transactional, direct mail, and some book applications. Many of these applications were converted from high-speed roll-fed toner devices and inkjet provided economic and process benefits and by adding color. Inkjet also provided the ability to add value to printed pages. It’s useful to look at the entire market to help put this area of success in perspective and to think about the requirements for expanding adoption.

Printing from the first tower allows ink twice as long to dry helping reduce roller build up and print defects in finishing.

Andy Gordon discusses the strategic role of production inkjet and the importance of developing a technology stack to drive business transformation. He discusses an NPR Freakonomics interview with Ford Motor Company’s CEO, Jim Hackett and the lessons to be learned that can apply to the printing industry.

If you are using inkjet coated or primed offset coated paper, different papers will have different porosity levels on each side of the sheet.

2019 Personalized Color Transpromo Promotion   US Postal service is encouraging mailers of color messaging to sign up for the discount mailing promotion.  They are offering an upfront postage discount to

Karen Weil, Director of Procurement for IWCO Direct, shares her impressions of Inkjet Insight’s market research on paper supply and her approach to securing paper for her client’s projects.

RISO, Inc. will be launching the T2 twin-engine cut sheet production inkjet platform at Chicago’s PRINT18. This printer is designed for the transactional, direct mail and the short run book publishing markets and can produce up to 320 color impressions per minute.

Highlights from the latest Smithers Pira report: The Future of Inkjet Printing to 2023 project that the value of the global inkjet market will rise at 9.4% over the next five years. As the global print market transforms, shifts in buyer demands—short runs, versioned and personalized products—and higher quality are aligning with the capabilities of inkjet. This is making it a key focus for technology developers. This analysis shows that inkjet will grow by deepening its penetration into existing markets and exploiting new emergent market opportunities through 2023.

Managing your workflow resources, understanding potential bottlenecks and the corresponding job attributes that will trigger them is essential to meeting SLA performance expectations in an inkjet environment. Tim Cooper of NCP Solutions, an OSG Company, provides expert insight on identifying constraints and measuring for success.

Mike Dietz, Executive Creative Director with IWCO Direct discusses best practices in designing for digital and approaches to customer education on the wonders of production inkjet.

The growth markets for production inkjet lie in the segments where creatives hold sway. If you want to grow pages in these markets, you will need to get designers on your side.

Mary Schilling discusses the opportunity for sheet-fed inkjet including the traditional barriers of paper, pricing and image quality. The analysis discusses the requirements for inkjet to compete with commercial offset printing.

Robert Clark of IWCO Direct discusses their experience migrating from conventional print to production inkjet. The pros far outweighed the cons, but that doesn’t mean the journey to inkjet came without a learning curve.

One challenge that companies new to inkjet face is to move customers from a model where they control paper buying to one where they are expected to choose from a list of approved papers. Another challenge is to get customers to send files that are designed appropriately for the paper selected and the device it will be produced on. One tool that can help with both of these challenges is what is known as a fingerprint file.