The term “Web to Print” typically conjures up images of emailing a file to a professional to have it printed. Traditionally, these were often marketing materials such as business cards and brochures. Today, Web to Print solutions have evolved into much more than a printing service — enter Web to Print 2.0.
Web to Print 2.0 shatters the stereotype and shows the breadth of this solution’s capabilities.
Let’s take a look at what today’s Web to Print solutions look like and how they can help you streamline your marketing activities, going much further than just printing capabilities.
What Is Web to Print 2.0?
Today’s sophisticated Web to Print solutions provide a single source of truth for all marketing materials and other important collateral. This is critical because, without a central location for these documents, you risk sending out obsolete or outdated content.
For example, let’s say your marketing department just updated a product brochure. However, a prospect contacts your sales department requesting this information, and the one they had on hand was the outdated version. Unwittingly, your sales rep sends this brochure to the customer, resulting in a lost sale because the document was missing critical information – information that was in the latest version.
A Web to Print solution alleviates this problem and ensures that everyone in your company always has access to the most up-to-date materials, regardless of where they are located. Web to Print goes beyond on-demand printing. It involves customizing your marketing products for a better experience for your prospects and customers. It’s also about creating a better experience for your internal teams by improving the way you manage and store important sales and marketing documents. This is accomplished by using a digital storefront to house all commonly used documents.
From enterprise organizations to the remote workforce, Web to Print solutions are beneficial regardless of company size or type.
Web to Print Essentials
Still, not all Web to Print solutions are created equal. When searching for the best Web to Print system for your company, look for a few critical capabilities.
API Integration for Your Existing Systems
Application Programming Interface (API) connectivity enables your organization to integrate your existing point of sale (POS) or customer relationship management (CRM) systems directly with your Web to Print software.
This creates an automated workflow that enables any changes in the CRM or POS to feed directly into the Web to Print solution. Any changes that you make to a document will be immediately reflected in your Web to Print system’s digital storefront.
Triggered Marketing for Email and Print
Personalization is key to making clients feel like their needs are being met. To truly create a customized experience for prospects and customers, you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing. Instead, you’ll need the ability to customize your materials with variable-data printing. A Web to Print solution enables you to do this seamlessly.
For example, let’s say you run an insurance company and you have a prospect who is looking for boat insurance. A brochure that includes information for all your offerings, such as auto and home insurance, may be a catch-all for your business, but it’s not likely to keep the attention of a prospect with a very specific need.
Rather, you can simply enter the prospect’s information into your CRM, and your Web to Print solution will start providing that prospect with content specific to their needs – in this case, boat insurance.
Access to Up-to-Date Addresses
You can use the triggered marketing capability for direct mail in addition to email, and this process is completely automated. Once you upload your contact lists into your system, a Web to Print service will send the list through the National Change of Address (NCOA) system to make sure all addresses are fully up to date. If not, the system updates this address automatically using information from the Postal Service.
Web to Print Helps You Deliver the Right Content at the Right Time
With a Web to Print solution, every piece of collateral can be 100% unique, from the location to images to the content itself. Web to Print 2.0 utilizes the power of data to result in relevant information for its intended audience.
Some of the capabilities of this personalization include:
Variable Mapping
Today’s Web to Print solutions provide geo-location software that enables you to include maps within your direct mail content. This is beneficial, say, if you have a physical storefront and a prospect just moved into your neighborhood. By sending them material about your company, complete with directions from their exact location to yours, you’ve just eliminated the guesswork for them and increased your chances of gaining a new customer.
Variable Images
Let’s take the case of our insurance company. If your prospect who is looking for boat insurance is located in Florida, you can present them with a brochure that has palm trees in the background.
You could also include different logos on each particular piece. For instance, you can include different logo colorways or some with taglines and some without. The choice is yours. Every single piece of content provides your customers with a truly personalized experience.
Variable Content
This capability is effective in distributing content to your various buyer personas and audience segments. Perhaps you have content that is targeted toward small businesses. Those that fit that category will receive different content than those in enterprise-level businesses.
Web to Print solutions integrate seamlessly with your organization’s CRM or POS systems to enable seamless variable-data printing.
Maximize the Power of Data With Web to Print 2.0
Web to Print 2.0 maximizes the power of your data so each piece is unique to your prospects. This modern approach ensures that you always have the correct data you need to get valuable content to your prospects and that everyone within your organization is on the same page.
Today’s Web to Print solution simplifies various parts of the marketing process. Printing is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. From email and direct-mail services to personalized content and up-to-date addresses, this solution helps keep your content current and relevant.
United Mail bridges the gap between you and your audience by providing a central location for your valuable materials. Request a demo today and see for yourself how it works.
