Consider a scenario involving a print services provider and their client. The client needs to conduct a marketing campaign, so they design a postcard, send the design to their print provider, and after a bit of communication, the project is printed and mailed out to the intended recipients. Another marketing campaign successfully executed.
But while this activity may be labeled a success, in reality, there could be many missed opportunities along the way that could have made it much more successful. In addition to that, the “snapshot” of a single marketing campaign doesn’t tell us anything about the relationship that the client and their print provider have before the project or after it.
Transactional Printing
A print provider that thinks primarily in terms of “transactional” business is available to handle your projects when you send them their way, but there’s not very much connection between projects. There isn’t very much communication between you and your print provider when there is not a specific project that you’re working on together.
Some clients are satisfied with this approach. After all, it gets each job done, and it’s easy to write each job off as a success and start thinking about the next thing on the list. But there are also problems with the transactional model that waste money and leave valuable opportunities unconsidered, like ripe apples just hanging on the tree while no one notices them.
Lack of Historical Knowledge/Context
When you approach a print and distribution provider to handle a project on a one-off basis for you, you must supply them with all the information they need to manage the project successfully. The technicians managing the project will have very little background on your organization and no awareness of how the project is related to others that you might have conducted in the past.
Even if you use the same print provider for multiple projects, there could be different team members involved each time who don’t necessarily know what their company has done for you in the past. In any case, each project is treated as an independent workflow and doesn’t have any context other than what you specifically provide.
Maintain Continuity in Marketing
Consider the alternative to this scenario. A print provider that functions not on a transactional basis, but more like the in-house print department that your organization would love to have but just can’t put in place. That ideal in-house print department would always be closely connected to the rest of your organization, and the projects they created for you would take into account the organization’s mission, themes, focus, audience, and branding.
That’s the kind of relationship that we maintain with our print and distribution clients. At Spectra, we aren’t just interested in being available when you need to print a postcard and mail it out. Instead, we want to be the partner that you consult with to strategize about how you can build on the success of your last campaign. We talk about the specialty printing techniques that we offer in our print facility that would be perfect to catapult your next round of printed collateral past your competition. We brainstorm with you about how you can use expertly printed materials to enhance what you’re already doing to communicate with your customers.
Your Print Department
These important conversations are ones that will never happen between you and your print provider if your relationship is limited to a project request and a billing statement. Just like your theoretical in-house print department, the Spectra team educates itself on your organization as we work with you, incorporates your values and priorities into each project we handle, and supports you with great ideas about what we could do together.
Mailing Advantages
If your print and distribution provider never talks to you about mailing discounts, there could be several different reasons. The organization may not have enough volume with the Postal Service to win discounted postage rates, or they may not have the equipment necessary to sort projects for maximum efficiency. Most often, however, it’s simply a result of the transactional print relationship.
In brief, if the client doesn’t ask about mailing discounts, there’s not much reason for the print provider to bring up the topic and discuss what options are available. That’s more of a discussion that would be had with an in-house print department whose goals are fully aligned with those of the organization: goals like saving money on direct mail campaigns wherever possible.
At Spectra, we make sure each of our clients knows that we are looking out for them in the area of postage costs. We keep rates low by using special methods to combine mail pickups and sort campaigns in a detailed way that saves the US Postal Service time and effort.
Print and Mail Expertise
The question may arise in your mind: How can a single print services provider maintain such a close long-term relationship with multiple clients at once? It’s not easy, and that’s exactly why so few outsourced service providers do it well. At Spectra, we have worked for over two decades to be a team that is able to give each client the attention they deserve, not just while a project is in progress, but in between projects as well. We’re proud to say that each of our clients feels like they are our most important client, and they benefit from the print expertise and advice that we are able to give them while they plan, execute, and follow up on their campaigns.
Find out just how beneficial a relationship like this could be for your organization. Give up on the old strategy of knocking out one project after another, starting from scratch each time. Instead, enjoy the streamlined, powerful approach that Spectra offers. The result is a partner that does more than you thought possible to help your organization grow, and flexes to meet your needs as your customer base increases and your print needs increase as well.
