What is Variable Data Printing?

Variable Data (Increase ROI "Return On Investment" for your marketing dollars)

• Variable Information Printing (VIP), Personalized printing, Variable Data Printing (VDP), Customized printing, Database Publishing, or however it is called, refers to the printing of unique documents in one print run.
• This is done by merging information from database records with a static document design. VDP is the most important driving factor in digital On Demand Printing. it allows you to not simply print identical copies, but to print a targeted message!
• Personalized Direct Mail campaigns, like this promotional piece for a particular car brand, are the most popular application of variable data printing.
• Most people know about Variable Information Printing because they will have seen transactional documents, such as bank statements, credit card bills, or investment performance reports. Others have received Direct Mail pieces telling them something like "Congratulations John, you are already a winner!" Serial number printing on bills and receipts, expiration dates on products, billing statements ? All have been printed for many years.

Variable Data Printing Options?

• Transactional or statement printing
  In the early stages of the VIP market, only a small elite was involved with personalization, mainly in high volume transactional applications. Today, this is still a well know form of variable data printing. These jobs, with serial number printing on bills and receipts, expiration dates on products, billing statements, provide personalization or customization usually only in Black & White. Often, the documents are a combination of offset printed forms, where the data is imprinted over it.
• Basic MailMerge
  When Microsoft included its MailMerge function into the feature list of Word, personalization was brought to reach of the masses. MailMerge offers personalization on a very basic level. There is no optimization, wich translates in network congestion. For smaller jobs, such as for jobs of less than 50 records, the congestion will not be a big problem. But for jobs with 100 or 1,000 or 10,000 or more records, that is simply unacceptable. Still, with this common MailMerge tool, the first commercial print providers started to sell variable data jobs to a wider group of customers, and other companies started to produce personalized mailings. Today, MailMerge is used primarily in the office market.
• 1 to 1 Marketing applications
  With the arrival of digital color presses it became possible to do variable imaging. This meant that VIP offered great opportunities in marketing and other non-statement printing applications, like brochures, catalogues, color newsletters, offers, etc. Because Quark Xpress was a popular lay-out application in the graphic arts industry, it was only a matter of time before Quark Xtensions for variable information printing appeared in the market and spread VIP awareness in the designer's world.
• What type of products are personalized?
  Today, a wide variety of variable data print jobs are being produced. By far the most common applications of VIP are in Direct Mail, with personalized mail shots, or one-to-one marketing campaigns, produced and sent out for the purpose of selling a product or informing specific groups of people. But next to this main usage of VIP, a growing number of customized documents, labels, tickets, valuables, gift certificates, books, magazines, newsletters, order forms, packaging materials, catalogues, manuals and brochures are being produced. The use of variable images is growing steadily, and printer manufacturers are keen to show this to the public at large. Variable bar code printing is gaining ground, especially due to the rising popularity of postal bar codes.