Credit card bills, healthcare statements, 401k communications—they’re all documents that arrive in the mail and must be opened whether a recipient wants them or not. An almost-guaranteed open rate makes these printed transactional materials prime real estate for sales communications and marketing messages.

"Since 95 percent of transaction documents are opened and read, they provide an excellent vehicle for reaching customers with other types of messages and information," states Barbara Pellow, group leader, InfoTrends, Inc. "Studies have shown that on average, a consumer will spend one to three minutes reviewing a bill—that is how much time the marketer has to capture the recipient’s attention when using the transactional document as a marketing vehicle."

For some years, we’ve covered the application of variable text and marketing messages applied to transactional documents such as bills and statements. Traditionally color cost and speed held back many from adding targeted messages to transactional documents or forced them to print only select areas with highlight color.

"Transactional printers have previously tried to include promotional messaging, knowing that consumers open and read their statements and bills. High quality inserts included inside the envelope have always been too easy to discard without reading," says Roy Eitan, product manager, HP Indigo Digital Press Division. "Transpromotional is new in the way the messaging is integrated into the statement document itself. Also, as Customer Relation-ship Management (CRM) systems con- tinue to advance, Transpromotional provides a new avenue to leverage data to create personalized offers that generate greater response," he adds.

Coupled with high-end variable data printing software and data mining, today’s high-speed continuous feed digital printing systems offer a viable, quick, more cost-effective solution for adding higher-quality color messages on traditional transactional statements. In late 2006 and into 2007, the new buzzword for the use of full color marketing messages on transactional documents—TransPromo—cropped up.

TransPromo Success
"Successful graphic communications service providers are translating the value of TransPromo into key messages that resonate with marketing executives," says Pellow. "In today’s environment, marketers are under more pressure than ever to deliver cost-effective marketing programs that drive business results. The savvy graphic communications service provider is working with clients to leverage digital technology that test, measure, and monitor trial programs and then fully implement comprehensive campaigns."

InfoTrends held its inaugural TransPromo Summit in August 2007 in New York City. Over 300 attendees from 15 countries attended sessions with analysts and industry leaders on the challenges faced by vendors, service pro- viders, and corporate users in the transactional printing space.

Targeted marketing messages bring in a greater response. TransPromo offers the optimal spot for a targeted, direct message. Direct marketing yields an average return on investment (ROI) of $11.65, while non-direct marketing yields $5.29. Alan P. Kuritsky, senior VP of sales and marketing, The Direct Marketing Association (DMA), explains this contrast. "Think of watching [or receiving] an ad in Boca Raton, FL, advertising a car that is designed to perform well in the snow. If they could target and focus their ad, the message wouldn’t be lost on the advertiser." The DMA is global organization of businesses and non-profits that advo- cates industry standards for responsible marketing and provides education and networking opportunities.

"The number one thing you need to do as a marketer is make a match of your marketing to the right person," notes Kuritsky. "The more narrow I try to get my target audience, the higher the price that individual gets for me [as an advertiser]; a better rate of return."

"While typical recipients spend some- where around 15 seconds looking at a direct mail piece, they spend nearly three times that time with TransPromo documents. And while recipients tend to discard direct-mail pieces, most save statements and other transactional documents," adds Guy Broadhurst, VP of Product Marketing, Océ North America, Production Printing Systems.

McGrew notes that TransPromo co-mmunication can play more than just a sales role. "TransPromo doesn’t have to sell. It’s the biggest mistake we make," she says. "We forgot one of the original tenants. We can use it for education about the business relationship we have with the customer." One example she points out is a heating bill that relays facts about the average daily temperature in a given month compared to last year. This type of element has a value to the customer but doesn’t necessarily sell something.

TransPromo Adoption
TransPromo has drawn a lot of interest, especially since the InfoTrends TransPromo Summit, notes Eitan of HP. "There is a great deal of interest, and HP is talking to customers and potential customers in several countries around the world about implementing trans-actional printing operations using HP Indigo equipment.

"The market is adopting TransPromo, and we are seeing the fruits of these efforts everywhere," notes Broadhurst. "The financial services, insurance, telecommunications, utilities, and service bureau markets are the sectors most likely to benefit by leveraging the TransPromo opportunity. Anyone who issues invoices or statements has a prime opportunity to transform statements and revenue-recovery documents into personalized marketing vehicles that drive new revenue streams."

DMA members report back some great successes in the use of Trans-Promo. "If TransPromo is done correctly—in a tasteful, colorful, and exciting way—and they don’t overdo it, there are some stunning responses," says Kuritsky. He says one third of marketers are implementing TransPromo and another third are considering it. That leaves some room for the DMA and other organizations to stress the benefits of the TransPromo model.

Rising postage costs are a key driver of TransPromo marketing. "[They can] mail less and move marketing messages from direct-mail into a regular statement, allowing you to up-sell, cross sell, and save postage," states Chris Reid, Global Solutions Manager, InfoPrint Solutions Company. "We’re seeing service bureaus as the first to jump in," he notes that marketers are making big investments in data analytics and data mining.

"Transpromotional advertising via billings and statements has been around for many years," says George Carranza, VP Sales and Marketing, Delphax Technologies, Inc. He says several customers benefit from Delphax’s productive systems in this segment. "One example is a banking application that reaches out to most banking consumers in North America. Using variable data, this commercial printer adds messages on unrelated but targeted product offerings. These transpromotional offerings have proven very effective and have been an important source of revenue to our commercial print customer."

Customers are responding to Trans-Promo with interest, but are cautious of over-hyping, says Jan Van Laethem, marketing manager, Single Pass, Agfa Graphics. "For a transactional printer seeking diversification and a growth path into more profitable applications than straight statement printing, this is the way to go," he says. "The print buyer suddenly sees a cost center getting the potential to become a profit center."

To get started in TransPromo, an understanding of digital color printing is necessary, says Frank Jacobs, marketing communication manager and product planner, Xeikon Digital Printing Solutions. "It all starts by understanding color. Transactional printers are used to handling the data part in B&W and need to learn how to print full color when moving to TransPromo. Direct-mail printers are better positioned to adopt full color digital technology but are often not equipped with the necessary tools/knowledge to guarantee data integrity and accuracy."

Environmental Push
Many industries are pushing for re-duced environmental impact. TransPromo places marketing materials that may have traveled in a separate mailer in the past right onto a transactional document. "It’s all about making smarter print material—that’s the core of Trans-Promo—sending the customer something that is completely relevant to them," says McGrew.

She notes that the green element of TransPromo is a value proposition for print service providers to use. At the same time, she does note that it may lead to a reduction in printed pages over time. "Over the next 25 years, we’ll see a decline in printed pages, but the value of those pages will in-crease greatly," says McGrew.

TransPromo Tools
"The TransPromo market isn’t a chicken and egg conundrum," notes Pellow. "Digital color presses are clearly an enabling force in driving the TransPromo market." Organizations can now affordably colorize critical transaction information and key promotional messages to capture a customer’s attention. There are a number of new digital color print engines as well as enhancements to existing printers that are making it easy for organizations to colorize documents."

Presses employed to handle high volume production and variable elements include those from Agfa Graphics, Canon U.S.A., Inc., Delphax Technologies, Inc., HP, InfoPrint Solutions Company, Kodak, Océ North America, Ricoh, Xeikon, and Xerox. We had a chance to speak with some of these manufacturers to get their take on TransPromo.

Agfa Graphics
Launched in February 2007, Agfa’s :Dotrix Transcolor is designed specifically to handle document printing applications ranging from transactional printing to direct-mail, in full color. "For the TransPromo market this machine is an excellent fit, with a print quality that is more than market-compliant, a matching productivity, and a cost of ownership that makes business-sense," says Van Laethem.

"In the case of transactional printing we can match the cost of pre-printing in offset plus B&W personalization straight away," says Van Laethem. "If you add the bonus advantages of full digital color to this, you can see that this opens up a straight replacement model. At the same time there is a growth path towards TransPromo at an equally interesting cost figure."

Highlights of the :Dotrix Transcolor include 484-page-per-minute speed in full color, variable; a printing width of approximately 24.8 inches, which allows for three-up printing; and the ability to print on a wide selection of papers, from low-end to sophisticated. "Obviously print quality remains related to paper quality," says Van Laethem, "yet on the modest substrates used, for example in the transactional market, the quality is already quite remarkable."

The device supports common prepress formats such as PDF, but is also IPDS FS45 compliant. Van Laethem notes that this is in full color at full machine speed. Intelligent Printer Data Stream (IPDS) is IBM’s host-to-printer data path. Van Laethem says much of the complex variable data of a Trans-Promo document would jam up the machine with plain PDF workflow. IPDS can handle the challenges of a database publishing solution, and is a format that many of the leading presses now handle.

In the coming year, Agfa expects to release productivity increases, ink developments, and further system compatibility with front-end workflows and back-end finishing solutions, says Van Laethem.

Delphax
Delphax offers the CR Series presses for creating TransPromo documents. "Our CR Series digital presses range from 1,100 images per minute (ipm) to 2,200 ipm and all are capable of producing TransPromo output," says Carranza. The presses handle Post-Script, IPDS, AFP, and many other file formats. Carranza says, "With 600x600 dpi and 2,200 ipm, Delphax offers the highest quality, fastest speeds, greatest productivity, and the lowest total cost of ownership in the industry." Currently Delphax is working on proprietary upgrades to their offerings.

"Our commercial print customers that best advantage themselves in this space use sophisticated relational databases that personalize advertising messages based on previous purchases and demographics," adds Carranza. "Delphax supports the above by making frequent and large promotional printing jobs productive and economical."

Hewlett-Packard
HP’s Indigo w3250 rollfed press and Indigo 5500 cut-sheet press are both utilized for producing TransPromo documents. "The HP Indigo press w3250 is the only digital press combining the quality of offset 4-7 color printing with the flexibility of digital for the Trans-Promo market," states Eitan. "It is a rollfed press that prints at 136 four-color A4 ppm and 272 two-color ppm."

"HP Indigo technology is also the only digital press technology capable of printing true Pantone-licensed spot-color inks for important brand colors," he adds. The HP Indigo press w3250 prints on a wide range of media, including stocks as light as 27 lb. text.

InfoPrint
"I’m glad to say we led the way with the speed and quality of the InfoPrint 5000 [color printing system]," says Reid. Since its announcement in February 2007, Reid says revenue and placement expectations for the InfoPrint 5000 were exceeded, and the device offers full color at very high speeds with very good quality. The inkjet device uses dual engine technology to process 210 feet-per-minute or 916 full-color letter-size ipm in two-up tandem duplex mode.

In September 2007, the company launched InfoPrint Color Solution for the InfoPrint 5000 and 4100, the first open standards-based, end-to-end AFP color solution for transaction and direct-mail printing. Highlights include AFP Consortium color management support and a newly launched InfoPrint Developer Program for future compatibility across vendors.

"As we roll out new hardware technology we’ll also be rolling out new software and services to help customers meet their goals in TransPromo," Reid adds.

Kodak
Kodak’s equipment options for Trans-Promo include the Nexpress and the Versamark, devices capable of handling IPDS. "For everything a customer wants to do, we probably have three ways to do it," says McGrew. Printer selection is based on, "variables like print volume and color quality requirements," she adds.

"We have to talk about what level of color requirements your marketing department has and if it is appropriate to the billing department." She notes that volume and throughput are usually where a printer selection begins on the billing side, the direct-mail side is typically more concerned with color.

Kodak offers the Market Mover program and a dedicated team to help its customers, typically Nexpress customers, market TransPromo. The program consists of online research, templates for open houses, and ideas for approaching new and existing clients about what they can do with digital printing and variable content. In addition, Kodak offers more hands-on customer training for Versamark customers and those printing into the 100’s of million pages a month.

Kodak is planning big announcements for Drupa 2008, where they will celebrate 40 years of work with continuous inkjet technology. In the next six to nine months Kodak will give a view of next generation continuous inkjet technology, other new products in the inkjet space, and some market specific revenue stream options.

Océ North America
"Any Océ digital printing system could support the variable data personalization required for TransPromo marketing pieces. System choice simply depends on what the customer wants—full color, highlight color, monochrome, speed, cut sheet, continuous feed, etc.," notes Broadhurst.

He says that Océ’s systems are not limited by proprietary data streams. "All popular file formats can be accepted by the systems, either through built-in capabilities or easy upgrades to support a particular format."

Broadhurst says producing millions and billions of pages requires planning; robust, flexible equipment; application design expertise; and complementary software tools. "Given these requirements, Océ leads the market with a product strategy that combines long-term investment protection with flexibility to meet emerging requirements. A scalable product family approach enables customers to enhance speeds, and add color and/or MICR capabilities using the same machine."

"In addition, our industry-unique Job Appropriate Color strategy is well suited to the evolving TransPromo market, because it enables print-to-mail operations to use just the right amount of color for every application," says Broadhurst. "In a TransPromo context, this means customers can design their applications to highlight the promotional message and completely change the color printed on the next TransPromo job using the same piece of equipment. Then, they can print traditional B&W statements without changing anything in the customer’s workflow."

Xeikon
"All of our digital color presses—Xeikon 4000, Xeikon 5000plus, and Xeikon 6000—are capable of producing Trans-Promo marketing pieces," says Jacobs.

Xeikon presses accept all current file formats—PostScript, PDF, PPML, EPS, TIFF, JPEG, DCS, and IPDS. Jacobs highlights the fact that the X-800 digital front-end (DFE) can handle transactional IPDS and graphical datastreams.

"In the TransPromo market, most of our users choose our highest speed offering, the Xeikon 6000," notes Jacobs. "The Xeikon 6000 is capable of printing two-up at 39 feet-per-minute, simultaneously on both sides of a substrate, and up to five colors per side."

Xerox
In the past, the limitations for Trans-Promo were speed for color images and photos to be integrated into transactional documents, notes Scott Wagner, manager, worldwide marketing, continuous feed products, Xerox Corporation. "It requires a print device that can handle those variables." He notes that Xerox’s color lineup has robust controllers that can process TransPromo documents, providing high quality color without compromising on throughput speed.

Available in Europe in the first half of 2008 and in North America in the second half, Xerox’s new 490/980 Color Continuous Feed Printing System boasts a speed of 493 ipm in simplex and 986 in duplex. The device uses dry toner, xerographic imaging, and flash-fusing technology. Toner adhesion without heat or pressure allows the device to print on a wider variety of media.

At $1.8 million per engine, Wagner says that the 490/980 Color Continuous Feed Printing System is currently the, "fastest toner-based full color printer in the world." He adds that the press has gotten excellent feedback at beta sites globally.

Wagner says the value proposition service providers can communicate about TransPromo is that the presses have, "the ability now to move from a multi-step process to a single step process all in a single pass on plain white paper." You can now eliminate the supply chain of partially preprinted material.

Making It Work
TransPromo presents an opportunity to extend marketing and branding to a rapt audience. "TransPromo provides an opportunity to blend marketing messages with those must-read transaction statements, invoices, confirmations, benefits explanations, and other notifications to influence behavior and ultimately drive business volume," says Pellow.

The trend will continue to catch on as more technology enters the market to bring more efficient TransPromo activity at a reduced cost. "There is no question that TransPromo implementation carries an incremental cost, but many marketers are finding that their ROI for TransPromo communications more than offsets this cost," adds Pellow.