Printing is expensive! That’s the conclusion of every family that decides they’re going to have customized Christmas cards made with their photos on the front. It’s also the conclusion of every start-up company that realizes they need to put out a piece of printed collateral to introduce people to their services. Whether that collateral is a catalog of products, a booklet containing case studies, or simply a postcard mailed to addresses within a geographical range, the managers in charge of the project inevitably come up against this challenge.

The dilemma created by this challenge may be a minor inconvenience to the family creating Christmas cards to mail to family and friends, but it’s a much more serious matter to the company looking to establish a great reputation with its audience. Here’s how Spectra helps clients solve this dilemma and create great quality printed materials at affordable rates.

The Right Equipment

Great printing is only possible with great equipment. The most amazing designs, color combinations, fonts, and other details are less than eye-catching if they are printed on inferior equipment. Sometimes the issues are obvious:

• Inconsistent colors on different runs of the same materials. This is a frequent issue with traditional printing equipment, as slight variations in ink condition result in darker or lighter colors on later runs.
• Misalignment on the page. This may mean that black and color ink do not match up perfectly, or printing may be crooked on the page instead of straight.
• Fading, flaking, or smudging ink. Cheaply printed materials may arrive in the mailbox with deteriorated print quality, especially if they were affected by moisture or high temperatures during transit. In addition, ink can come off on the recipient’s fingers, giving your organization a negative first impression right off the bat.

Other problems are less obvious, but still have a negative impact on your branding. By using some of the modern era’s most powerful, precise, and consistent digital print equipment, Spectra makes sure that your printed materials don’t just match what you had in mind. Instead, they look and feel even better!

The Right Expertise

Just as great design is useless without great print equipment, great print equipment is useless without the knowledge necessary to use it to its full potential. The printing, finishing, and binding machines in the Spectra print division are run by industry veterans who are thoroughly trained to get the best possible results. 

There’s no substitute for practical experience, and in the world of printing, that’s especially true. When reviewing designs, an expert print manager can tell what will work and what will come across looking not quite like it does on the computer screen. They can make subtle adjustments to printing equipment to enhance the final product and give it a “pop” that sets it apart from the competition…and from the rest of the materials in the recipient’s mailbox.

The Right Extras

When you decide to partner with Spectra’s print division to produce materials to represent your organization to the world, you get access to advanced print techniques that not all print shops can offer. Many of these techniques, like ultraviolet, raised, and metallic inks, add a level of quality and style to printed materials that elevate them and, in turn, the image of the organization in the mind of the one reading the materials. 

While it’s not really an “extra,” there is another area in which you’ll save money by working with Spectra that won’t necessarily show up on your balance sheet. That’s the avoidance of mistakes. Our printing experience helps us identify and avoid common errors while creating materials, and we supplement that experience by implementing quality control checks throughout the process. When printing personalized mailers and other materials, we use a proven barcoding and serial numbering system that keeps documents connected to the envelopes and addresses that they go with. 

The Right Mailing System

Finally, once those beautiful, effective materials have been printed, there is one more critical step: getting them into the hands of the audience! High mailing costs can cut deeply into the profits created by a marketing campaign, especially if printing costs themselves were high to begin with. 

With Spectra as your print and mailing partner, however, you get the opposite: low printing costs plus low mailing costs. How do we do it? A large part of the answer goes back to experience. We build on our decades of history working with the US Postal Service, using specialized approaches like commingling and bulk mailing to cut costs wherever possible. Equipment again comes into play, with tools like the PitneyBowes Connect+ postage meter allowing us to execute large volume mailings with maximum efficiency.

Don’t Waste Money On Print

You’ll be surprised at the affordability that Spectra offers. But the affordability doesn’t come from the use of cheap materials, cheap equipment, or an inexperienced team. Rather, it comes from a long list of efficiencies that are gained through experience and knowledge of the industry. We know how to get things done the right way and save time and money while doing it. 

The savings become even greater if you choose to utilize Spectra’s fulfillment division as well. Many of our clients use the Spectra print facility to create printed materials to accompany shipments from our fulfillment facility, keeping all the activities for a complex project under the same roof and managed by a single team. Time and money that are often consumed by coordinating the work of multiple service providers are thus freed up to be used in other, more profitable, ways.

More information on Spectra’s top-tier print facility is available on our website, where you will find demo videos, case studies, and the opportunity to schedule a consultation with one of our print experts. Find out just how easy it is to submit your designs, get your materials printed at high quality, and get them into the hands of your audience, all at costs that you didn’t know were possible.