First and foremost I consider myself a direct marketer.  It also happens that I work for a commercial printer - PrintingForLess.com.  Being a marketing person at a commercial printer has given me some valuable insights into the manufacturing process – and how marketers can better work with their printers to minimize costs.

Our marketing team recently created and printed a double-postcard prospecting piece.  During the printing process, complaints started coming from our bindery that the piece was difficult, required multiple passes through the various fold, ink-jet, and tab machines and even required a manual hand fold – which on a large mailing quickly became painful. 

If I been a normal print customer, I would have incurred additional ‘custom’ charges on a piece that didn’t really need them. In this particular case, the additional charge would have been 23% more.

After consulting with our manufacturing team, we looked at redesigning the piece to better flow through our existing equipment and manufacturing processes.  We came out with a piece that had the same impact and communicated the same message, yet was much more efficient to produce on our printing equipment. 

I strongly recommend consulting your printer to see if there are specific formats that are more cost effective.  I don’t know of any business owner that wouldn’t like to reduce their marketing costs for the same response.      

Most good printers rarely say ‘no’ to a print job – no matter how complex.  And I’ve seen a lot of wild and creative pieces we’ve printed here are PrintingForLess.com.  But there are definite cost savings you can enjoy with a little pre-press consultation.

By: Jared Tanner, VP Marketing PrintingForLess.com