In these days of intense competition, ideas on how to do things better, smarter, faster and with greater impact are wonderful career-advancing things. In our most recent ebook, we share 25 ways to use print on demand. Some of these ideas we have tried…some have been tried by others…and some are simply ideas.
While there are specific ideas for fundraisers and for commercial marketers, we suggest you read the whole book or all three blog posts because with a little tweaking, many of the ideas will cross over nicely.
Here are the next eleven:
- We finally solved the problem of producing customized materials for franchisees and retailers. We set up a web portal that featured relevant marketing materials that allowed the franchisee or retailer to customize their own materials, within limits of course, and to proof and place their order on the spot. Depending on the run, we would produce either on traditional presses or by print on demand. Most orders were for quantities that were most economical for POD. It ended up saving a lot of staff time, space (did you know 78 percent of marketing expenditures is currently sitting on shelves?) and hassle, and reduced the error rate to nearly zero. Accounting loved it because the system initiated the billing process at the same time it placed the order.
- Print on demand saved the day for us when we were testing a bunch of new products. We had focus groups scheduled in five cities, and we wanted the groups to see several creative approaches for packaging, ads and direct mail pieces. You can do some of this with projected images, but there is no substitution for hands-on, especially when you are dealing with direct mail. We needed 300 examples of each piece. Print on demand was the answer. With it, we were able to get very true color, two-sided printing and paper stocks similar to what we would normally use. We were also able to get it very quickly.
- You don’t always need to personalize to use print on demand. It saved our bacon when we needed mini-catalogs for a trade show and had only a few days to produce them. We just needed 500 pieces, an easy quantity for POD, even though there were many pages involved. The binding was done inline, which further cut time.
- We also did the invitations to that trade show on a POD system. Each one was personalized with an entry for a drawing to be held at the booth. The drawing tickets had numbers, but we pre-assigned numbers so we would know, later, who had been at the booth, even without asking visitors to fill something out. We used numbers to eliminate any appearance of favoritism—always a problem when there is a name on the ticket. Another feature on the card (not the ticket): the invitation carried a photo of the salesperson assigned to the company. The sales manager’s picture was on prospect cards (which were a different color). This allowed the personnel in the booth to quickly recognize our customers, even though they didn’t necessarily know them.
- We have a number of long-tail products. The audiences are very small, but each sale isquite profitable. Print on demand lets us print very high-quality, targeted pieces for customers and prospects in these narrow product markets.
- One of my friends does marketing for a Fortune 500 bio-research company who has some very large customers who get special pricing. While they can access product information with their special pricing on the web, they also print special catalogs for these premier customers. It’s easy and cost-effective with print on demand.
- Another friend markets for a large physician practice group. They have found that mailing reminders of time for tests like mammograms, colonoscopies, cholesterol screenings and other preventive measures improves the likelihood that patients will get these tests on time. Simple, personalized self-mailers do the trick (They have a POD partner that maintains data confidentiality standards required by HIPAA).
- When we start a major marketing initiative, we always put together a comprehensive marketing kit for our distribution channel partners. We tried communicating this information through email and the web, but we found that dimensional kits had a greater impact. By using print on demand, we are able to cut our cost per piece and still convey an impression of great quality.
- Real estate is a very competitive business these days, where every edge is important. A real estate agent who printed weekly or semi-weekly catalogs of all properties, with high-quality four-color photos would have that edge. With digital printing, updating is easy, and quantities of 500 or so can be printed for reasonable prices.
- People’s vacation dreams have vivid color. It makes sense for travel providers to stimulate those dreams with four-color brochures based on their travel history or known travel preferences: wine, golf, hiking, shopping. Digital color printing can make this happen.
- One of our sales friends got inspired to produce a personalized digitally printed calendar for her clients. She got busy and collected personal information (valuable additions to her sales database in any case) and produced calendars with their birthdays, favorite colors and key dates for their favorite sports, etc. One lesson she learned: there is such a thing as too much, and too much information will complicate programming.

