This is the third in a series of blogs based on Amware’s new eBook titled “Your Marketing Fulfillment Program Sucks: 7 Ways Poor Literature Management and Distribution Practices Undermine Your Marketing Results.”
Have you ever bought something and found it still new in the box a year or more later? If you’re like me, you probably put it away in a closet and forgot about it until it was too late to return it.
Annoying, isn’t it? You could have spent that money on something you would have actually used.
I hate to tell you this, but you may be doing essentially the same thing when it comes to your marketing collateral. At the very least, you’re almost certainly overspending on print production.
There are a number of reasons this can happen:
- You order more of a piece than you actually need. If you don’t track inventory usage patterns – who’s ordering what, how much, and over what period of time – you can’t accurately project what you’ll need in the future. When it comes time to reorder, you take your best guess or just add 10 percent to the quantity you ordered last time.
- You create a new piece that substantially duplicates the content of an existing one. In addition to having too many of some materials in stock, chances are good you have overlapping content among documents and pieces that just don’t get results. An in-depth evaluation of your existing inventory will help you see which materials you can consolidate, which ones you can eliminate and which need reworking to better meet their intended purpose.
- You use the wrong production process for the job. While it sometimes makes good business sense to use offset printing, don’t overlook the advantages of digital printing (DP). Because there are no expensive “make ready” charges, DP makes it cost-effective to print smaller quantities – even as little as one copy. That makes it the go-to technology for materials that change frequently, as well as those requiring personalization. You can even use it to essentially eliminate inventory and associated costs with on-demand printing – producing only the quantities you need, when you need them – which can save you as much as 40% of your print budget.
- You’re using multiple vendors to print, warehouse and distribute your materials. Why are you making your job harder than it has to be? Here are the benefits you could be enjoying by centralizing your print production and fulfillment:
- Using a single supplier lets you leverage economies of scale on materials and printing, as well as to save money on inbound freight, storage costs and outbound shipping.
- Having a single source means one point of contact and control, which makes it easier to communicate your needs, reduces the risk of mistakes and facilitates tracking.
- Consolidating print and fulfillment with one provider also speeds up production turnaround time, as well as freeing up time you formerly spent on vendor management to focus on your core responsibilities.
All of this sounds great, you’re thinking; but will it actually save my company money? In Amware’s experience, the answer is a resounding “yes.” By way of a real-life example, one of our clients saved 20 percent on their print budget by centralizing print and fulfillment with us and switching half of the company’s inventory to digital print.
If you’d like to realize similar savings in your marketing expenditures, contact Amware.
For more ideas of optimizing your marketing fulfillment, download our new eBook, “Your Marketing Fulfillment Program Sucks: 7 Ways Poor Literature Management and Distribution Practices Undermine Your Marketing Results.”
