Print on Demand Programs

Clients send us batches of prospects — some every week. For each one we print a personalized letter on demand, match it with the static pieces the program calls for, a brochure, a reply card, an insert, assemble the package and mail it. Every file goes through CASS and NCOA and gets presorted first, and the whole cycle runs continuously for as long as the campaign does.

The same arrangement works for anything printed in volume and sent out over time. A catalog, a viewbook or a brochure goes to the existing list in one mailing on day one. After that the rest of the run is held here, and a copy goes out to each new prospect as they come in — from the same inventory, in the same envelope, without anybody on your side having to remember. The big drop and the trickle are one program.

The hygiene matters more than it sounds, because it happens every weekrather than once at the start. Addresses go stale continuously, and a program that cleans the file each cycle keeps its deliverability and its postage rate where they started. One that cleaned the list in January is paying for January by November.

The file is not only names and addresses either. On these programs each piece carries its own phone number, so when a prospect calls, the client knows which mailing produced the call — response management, in the trade’s phrase. It turns a campaign from something you hope is working into something you can read a number off,variable data doing something useful rather than only putting a first name at the top of a letter.

Nobody on their side lays out a postcard, checks a postal requirement or takes anything to the post office. They send the week’s names. The mail goes out.

It works because the pieces are already settled: the design qualifies for the rates it should, the addressing is set up, the permit is ours if they want it, and the presort happens here. See mailing for how those decisions get made the first time.

An order arrives, we pick it, pack it, label it and ship it. That is the whole shape of it, and the only question is where the order comes from.

From your own people. Several clients have a storefront set up on MyPrintCentral, so branch offices, reps and regional teams order what they need from held stock without going through head office. The order lands with us and the carton goes out to whoever placed it.

From your customers. Orders placed on a marketplace or on your own website reach us — one at a time or as the week’s batch — and we print what needs printing, pack it to survive the carrier, ship it, and return the tracking wherever your storefront needs it, so your customer is notified without anybody on your side touching the order.

Either way it is a different job from warehousing: picking one order rather than drawing down a pallet, packaging that survives a courier rather than a forklift, and putting fulfillment data back into a system we do not own.