OtO_special canon drupa englisch

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 3 Heard about the new communication channel? providers alike. That's the good news. The more challenging news: • Marketers need to drop their ideological misgivings and not rule out printing because they only ever encountered it at university where it was termed as "expensive", "dying" and "yesterday's news". The possibilities offered by programmatic printing should be explored, tested, and evaluated before print is rejected as an option. • Print service providers need to be open to, and adapt to, their customers' new marketing strategies. Print is becoming less and less of a mass marketing channel and its place in today’s world of marketing requires redefining. So, instead of seeing themselves as an ink-on-paper service, they need to see themselves as communication providers, who can offer their customers, i.e. marketing decision makers, high-quality, emotional, and tangible communication solutions. Print is the new digital channel. Recognising this opens up new opportunities for the future. Together with our platinum sponsor Canon, we want to support you on this opportunity-filled path for years to come. Yours, Joachim Graf Joachim Graf A lot has happened in the minds of decision-makers since we launched our Programmatic-Printing.de platform in 2020. Many (online) marketing managers no longer equate print communication with high costs and inflexibility – and not everyone in the printing industry sees digital communication as the downfall of Gutenberg's noble art. The combination of innovative digital printing technology, personalisation sys- tems, and automated end-to-end processes brings together the best of both worlds and creates something completely new. Programmatic printing is doing for print products what digital advertising has done for years: individualised mes- sages and personalised offers in real time. Such targeted communication is now also possible in the world of print advertising, creating a whole new performance marketing channel and new opportunities. Over the past four years, we have been able to report regularly online and in two printed specials per year in ONE- toONE, the magazine for new marketing management, on programmatic catalogues, individualised mailings, cross-me- dia shopping basket abandonment communication, and personalised parcel inserts and advertising flyers. This special features a selection of articles from four years of reporting on programmatic printing. Data-supported print marketing offers a wealth of new opportunities for communication managers and print service CONTENTS 04 The cross-media customer journey 06 Canon advertorial marketing collaborations Creative Futures – the new standard for successful print What online players need to pay particular attention to The future of brochure advertising is hybrid 26 Offer communication 30 Insider knowledge uncovered in print campaigns 08 Programmatic printing Chocolates, calendars, prize tickets: how to build customer loyalty Customer loyalty through advice The best prompts go to print 13 The Foodspring case 14 Target group development 18 Drive-to-store communication 22 Myths debunked POCO opts for postcards they're not true Ten preconceptions about print and why How brochures in parcels create added value A lot of room for growth Holidays through your letterbox 32 Programmatic printing 36 Vouchers and personalisation 38 Personalisation in B2B 42 5 steps to programmatic print mailings 44 Recalculated 41 Imprint Print vs. digital: which is more sustainable?

4 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 The cross-media cust RADIO/ TV POS SHOPPING CENTRE (CONVERSION) Web shop Click & collect PURCHASE DECISION/REGISTRATION Flyer Poster SEO/SEA E R T N E C S S E N I S U B PAID: RE-MARKETING DISPLAY/SOCIAL Cookie/consent man- agement ) I A D E M D A P ( I GDPR LANDING PAGE Push: content, mail, coupon, brochure, review, catalogue ... UNI QUARTER (OWNED MEDIA) TV/radio advertising - H G I E N L A I T N E D I S E R D O O H R U O B ) S S E N E R A W A ( RADIO/ TV Display/social ads programmatic Newsletter, posting, flyer, catalogue OUT OF HOME WEB SOCIAL MEDIA Customers can travel to a number of stations on their customer journey, interrupt their travel at any time and switch to other lines. Programmatic printing avoids the GDPR stops in the cross-media mix.

6 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Creative Futures – the new standard for print collaborations In a world where customer-centricity reigns supreme, an industry-wide initiative is re-imag- ining communication and collaboration across the print supply chain for the digital age to deliver tangible results for brands. This is the story of Creative Futures. P rint is one of the oldest communications tools in the marketing playbook but as the media landscape has evolved, it too has been through a digital transformation. Thanks to the high-tech innovations and printing capabili- ties at marketers’ disposal today, it’s now one of the most intelligent, data-driven, connected mediums for delivering customer-centric communications. But today’s customer journeys are fragmented, making print’s interplay with different media channels increasingly more important to seamlessly connect the dots of the customer journey. Various elements play a part in the end-to-end pro- cess across the print supply chain, including data, creative, personalization, technology, logistics, printing and measure- ment – but when the process behind the delivery of cam- paigns is disjointed, so is the experience for the end user. “Canon is completely dedicated to developing state-of-the- art digital printing technology that lends itself to delivering complete individualisation for customer centricity in print – but we also realise that technology is only one piece of this puzzle,” said Cathy Bittner, strategic business development manager, Canon Europe. “We need to collaborate with the entire supply chain to really understand what else effective communication requires and deliver it with partners.” This would only be possible through collaboration, so the first step was to get the right stakeholders on board. Creative Futures brings together experts from a range of disciplines in a state-of-the-art knowledge sharing experience to rede- fine what future collaboration could look like, while proving the power of personalised print in data-driven omnichannel campaigns. How could the essential cogs that drive omnichannel marketing work better together to deliver campaigns end-to-end? Was it possible to break down silos to redefine the role of print while re-imagining customer-facing communications for the future? “By breaking down silos, working together and learning from each other, this was our opportunity to re-imagine custom- er-centric communication for the future by combining creativity and new tech to drive real ROI for brands,” said Bittner. The starting point – proving print’s power These questions laid the foundations for an industry-wide campaign from Canon, in partnership with The Drum, to try something the print industry and it´s customers had never seen before; to explore what a new kind of collaboration could look like, and to drive new standards for what success looks like, when industry stakeholders work in a smarter, more connected way. The Drum, Canon and The Strategic Mailing Partnership (SMP) assembled an interdisciplinary team from across the promotional industry supply chain, including experts from creative agency Nutshell Creative, media agency Join the Dots, audience measurement JICMAIL, print management and marketing fulfilment provider Latcham, Royal Mail Mar- ketreach, behavioural analytics business Herdify and print mail automation start-up AutLay.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 7 “A lot of people talk about collaboration, but they don’t actually do it,” said Lucy Swanston, founder and managing director, Nutshell Creative and chair of the SMP. “As initial conversations evolved, we knew we had to get everybody in the supply chain behind this – the print service provider (PSP), research, data, creative and the media agency – to help. Never has anybody brought all those components together to truly deliver a campaign.” With a joint ambition to provide the best customer experience, the working group came together to explore and showcase this new collaborative way of working and uncover the opportunity for digital transformation in promotional customer communi- cation. “Together we leverage technology, expertise, data and creativity and position print most effectively in the channel mix,” says Bittner. “Doing so also allows us to maintain and grow print volumes for our industry.” The journey so far – showcasing brand stories With the Creative Futures team in place, we needed the right storytelling mechanism to prove that this new way of working would not only create better connections between the brand marketer, creative teams and print service providers (PSPs), but also deliver results? With ‘Creative Futures: the next chapter’, we launched a com- petition for one small UK business, who might have limited marketing resources, to put this collaboration into practice, and run a free omnichannel marketing campaign, including print. That business would gain support from the Creative Futures team to ideate, plan and run the campaign. This test-and-learn initiative will create a best-in-class example to inspire the marketing and creative industries on what’s possible with a customer-centric approach to planning cam- paigns, proving how the clever combination of data, creativity, targeting capabilities and personalized print can be used in the marketing mix to deliver measurable impact. “The competition has enabled us to start getting to know brands, making the connection to marketeers and understand- ing their requirements,” says Bittner. “We were delighted to have connected with many different types of SMBs from a range of businesses and industries.” The winner was Bower Collective; a brand that not only has a very strong sustainable product proposition and market opportunity, but also offers significant opportunities for per- sonalisation and audience insights by working with the Cre- ative Futures team in this way – something Bower Collective hasn’t had access to before. Its co-founder and chief executive officer Nick Torday com- ments: "This has been amazingly helpful to be surrounded with such expertise, learning so much so quickly about per- sonalised print and being able to pull so much energy and resource to make the campaign successful.” The Creative Futures team began working with Bower Collec- tive in February this year, bringing all parties together in a series of workshops to build a new campaign from scratch, learning and guiding the data, insights, creative, production and measurement to ensure the best results. “What an exciting vibe it has been when in this early planning phase to bring all this expertise to one table,” said Bittner. “This is the first time all members say they have been involved together at this early stage of the project. To get such positive feedback from all parties is incredible. It not only endorses the concept of Creative Futures but proves that we’re doing the right thing!” Where next? – key learnings for future collaboration This collaboration is already showcasing the power in bringing different ideas, skills and disciplines to the table from the outset, and breaking down limitations in current structures. This new way of working is a massive step forward for the industry by re-imagining how the supply chain can work to- gether in the future, with some key learnings: 1. Audience exploration – data insights and expertise have enabled precise definition of the target audience of highest indexing households based on demographic profiles and regionality. Bringing brand-specific segmentation based on where herd mentality is influencing product sales makes ac- quisition data work harder. This process provides substantially higher order values. 2. Creative customisation – involvement from the get-go en- abled creative designers to exploit thousands of variation possibilities at their fingertips, with a better understanding of how production technology enables unlimited personalisation and customisation. This means both imagery and messaging can adapt to defined profiles, exploiting all creative uses of clever personalisation, regionalisation, colour and design. 3. Seamless production – With production requirements and postage costs in mind upfront, working with the print ser- vice provider allows them to advise on the most compelling formats to fulfil the campaign brief, while demonstrating the best strategy for postal optimisation to drive cost efficien- cies. Close co-operation of printer and creative teams from the beginning helps cut out many iteration feedback loops. The campaign will go live in June, however, Canon will reveal more in Düsseldorf in May at the world’s largest printing show, Drupa. Stop by and visit us on the Canon stand, Hall 8A. Canon Europa N.V. Siemensallee 2, 85586 Poing Germany www.canon-europe.com

10 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Läckerli Huus: Christmas chocolates tailored to individual taste Every Läckerli Huus chocolate is different. But showing them all at once isn’t possible as space is limited in the company’s promotional pre-Christmas mailing. Wouldn't it be great to display each customer's favourite chocolate cre- ations on their mailing envelope so they see them straight away? Can it be done? The printing company Druckerei Kyburz in Dielsdorf near Zurich, which has 110 employees and specialises in direct marketing, works together with businesses and their agen- cies to develop solutions for this kind of special challenge. The family-run company responds to exactly such requests and can usually fulfil them. Läckerli Huus' special request is no exception. Kyburz uses programmatic printing to present each of the confectioner's customers with a fitting praline on their mailing envelope. The family business combined digital web printing with web finishing three years ago. “We’re now in a position where we can design, produce, and distribute print documents in a quicker and simpler way,” explains Christian Sager, member of the Kyburz management board. The individual steps are fully automated. Because digi- tal printing also allows data to be added at any time and assigned different instructions, each print product can be customised and adapted to individual recipients. Kyburz works closely with the chocolate manufacturer Läckerli Huus and its Zurich-based agency Focus Dialog. And they've been doing so for several years now. Each elaborately presented chocolate motif is therefore already available in Kyburz's image database. The images are high-quality photos of chocolates, which have been created from a number of lithographs. While individual motifs used to be sent to all customers in an envelope, the company now takes a more subtle approach with its printing partner. Customer data for the annual Christmas mailing is received via the Läckerli Huus CRM tool. Thanks to its customer da- tabase, the marketing managers at the over 100-year-old confectionery company know exactly who orders which chocolates. When customers purchase their chocolate crea- tions online, the order data is transferred directly to the CRM tool. Those who buy in-store often pull out their customer card, which they use to secure additional free chocolates, and this reveals their preferences. Customised to personal taste: Läckerli Huus selects the favourite chocolates of recipients to catch their eye – it's something that can't be overlooked.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 11 This data is then used to personalise communication: the envelope of the small B5 format brochure lets Kyburz and Läckerli Huus reflect the tastes of each individual customer. Recipients see their favourite chocolates straight away and then, after opening the envelope, they get to see the entire range in the brochure. This personalisation effort significantly increases promotional impact, “We have seen a massive increase in sales thanks to the brochure mailing,” says Jasmin Hasler, Marketing Communication Manager at Läckerli Huus. For the cover letter and greeting, Läckerli Huus initially divides its 10,000 or so customers who are to receive a Christmas offer into B2B and B2C clientèle. The next step is to adapt the title, address and image motifs to each individ- ual recipient – and employees don't have to do a thing. The programme carries out each step automatically. After this, the mailings are digitally printed and sent out. Customers usually receive their personalised Christmas mailing one to two months before Christmas Eve. This leaves enough time for all selected recipients to enjoy a treat in the run-up to Christmas. Indulgent Bakes calendar 2024: bring- ing the bakery home New year, new calendar: bakeries keen to invest in cus- tomer loyalty order the Indulgent Bakes calendar from Kyburz. The calendar is a special treat for regular customers. Throughout the next twelve months, they can enjoy daily pages, plan ahead, and bake according to selected recipes. As the printing company took over publishing the calendar more than 20 years ago, all content is created in-house. The promotional product is well received. According to Kyburz, around 370 bakeries order the four-colour calendar every year, which was once only available in monochrome brown when offset printing was used. Every bakery that is a member of the Swiss Confectioners‘ and Bakers’ As- sociation (SBCV) receives an order mailing together with an enclosed, custom sample for a personalised calendar. This is a complex process that involves taking a number of details into account. Since Kyburz opted for fully automated workflows, the process has become a lot easier. The in-house CRM software captures all relevant data and works hand in hand with the printer. Another advantage is that production costs are lower, which also has an impact on the price per calendar: bakeries pay between 2.35 and 2.85 Swiss francs per item, which is more or less the same amount in euros. The printing company used to face two major challenges during production. Firstly, employees had to customise the individual quantities for each bakery with the appropri- ate logos and different images of baked goods and cover letters. With around 370 bakeries ordering calendars, to- talling 76,000 copies, this was an effort that shouldn't be underestimated and one that was often subject to errors. The Indulgent Bakes calendar is a customer loyalty tool used by around 370 Swiss bakeries every year. Program- matic printing technology enables fully automated order processing.

12 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Plus, order processing was also a considerable amount of work. Every year, around 1,200 bakeries receive an offer to order a calendar. According to Kyburz, this usually results in a response rate of 31 per cent. Until a few years ago, two sales employ- ees recorded each order manually and personally checked with the bakery owners, who they knew well thanks to long-standing relationships, to find out what they wanted. This approach proved no longer feasible when the two employees retired, taking their extensive knowledge of the processes with them. It was high time to make the ordering and production process future ready. Today, the Customer Acquisition team takes care of the connected CRM system. Every Kyburz em- ployee can see who has ordered and paid at any time. Anyone who hasn't yet responded receives a follow-up mailing. Once the order process is com- plete, it's time for production: after the bakery cus- tomers have checked and approved the calendar as a digital PDF, it is sent for personalised digital printing. The CRM tool carries out each step auto- matically. Bakeries often display the calendars on their coun- ters. Families in particular tend to pick them up. You might say that the calendar belongs to a different era, where it helped organise families with its sched- ule spreads, tips, and recipes. These days, mobile phones take over many of these tasks. But what they can't do is brighten up a wall, or provide new inspiration and food for thought through a physical presence in the kitchen. According to the printing company, this is why many customers have now come to expect the annual gift from their bakery to accompany them through the new calendar year. Sport 2000: gamification as a driver for customer visits Those who buy are rewarded – that’s the maxim of the Swiss retailer network Sport 2000. When custom- ers have paid for their purchases, the sports store sales assistant gives them a prize ticket alongside their receipt. It is up to each retailer to decide which customers receive such a prize ticket. Some retailers, for exam- ple, only hand out prize tickets to customers who have spent a certain amount of money. Whether they win a prize is a matter of chance: customers ei- ther draw a blank, which has a consolatory message attached to it, or an instant prize, which can consist of a voucher, a drink, or some chocolate. There is also the opportunity to win a grand prize by scanning the QR code shown on the ticket. This might be something like a season pass for a ski resort. Whereas previous printing technology meant that such prize lotteries were only economically viable if a million or more tickets were printed, it is now possible to produce smaller quantities without a problem. This is a key prereq- uisite for catering to specific segments and customer needs. Every year, the printing company Kyburz produces up to 53,000 tickets for around 150 different sports stores. Each retailer's name and address is printed on the four-section prize ticket, along with the respective main sponsor, which includes brands such as Head, Salomon, K2, and Stöckli. And no ticket is the same, each one is unique. This would be a major challenge for a print shop but it's a breeze for programmatic printing, where all the data is structured and channelled in the right direction. Kyburz doesn't have any insight into whether, and to what extent, the customized tickets boost customer loyalty. According to the company, each retailer ultimately tracks the advertising impact of their prize tickets themselves. One thing is certain though: the more customers come into a store, the higher the turnover. Customers who un- pack their ticket with their purchases at home and win one of the instant prizes will return to pick up the gift. The marketing strategy of attracting customers to their store through gamification pays off for the retailer. Instead of just presenting their customers with an advertising mes- sage, they involve them in a game. This approach also helps the sports retailers stand out from their competition. (Irmela Schwab) About Druckerei Kyburz Founded in 1972 in Dielsdorf near Zurich, the Swiss print- ing company Druckerei Kyburz is now a second-gen- eration family business. The company, which has a 130-strong workforce, specialises in direct marketing requirements. Mailings, brochures, and prize tickets are among its main business activities. Direct marketing, in particular, has seen a dramatic change in requirements in recent years. The market de- mands the processing of ever smaller print runs coupled with increasing expectations regarding variable data processing, individualisation, shorter production times, and more flexible processing – and everything still needs to be of the highest print quality. To meet these demands, Kyburz has opted for a fully digital pre-press process, as well as state-of-the-art inkjet machines (Canon ProStream 1800) and post-processing (creasing, perforating, die-cutting, gluing, varnishing, folding, cutting). This all allows Kyburz to produce highly bespoke print products that can be customised from the first to the last page. The high-speed inkjet process no longer requires printing plates. Every printed page is generated digitally. The state-of-the-art machines also offer speeds that ensure cost-effective operation, even for large print runs, and reduce the lead times that were previously required for repro and production of the printing plates. From a quality point of view, the machines are practically the same as those used for high-quality offset printing. Today's processes have definitely moved on from the basic black and white imprints that were often used to personalise printed matter in the past.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 13 THE FOODSPRING CASE CUSTOMER LOYALTY THROUGH ADVICE INITIAL SITUATION: Foodspring has been offering so-called functional food for nutrition and fitness-conscious consumers since 2013. The company had experimented with brochures in parcels in the past, but had to quickly learn that static flyers brought little success. Men and women, young and old, and athletic and less athletic people have very different ideals and pursue different goals. In the health and fitness sector, in particular, customers want individual advice. * Foodspring was looking for a solution with which each customer could receive individual advice, recipes that go with their order, and product recommendations tailored to them, in order to improve customer loyalty. SOLUTION: Together with the service provider Adnymics, the company designed dynamically produced brochures for parcels: each customer receives additional information on the ordered products with their delivery. With a personal approach, individual content and highly relevant editorial content, Foodspring extends its advisory nature right up to the point of getting into the parcels themselves. COURSE OF ACTION: With personalised brochures in packages, customers can be given relevant information to increase customer loyalty. * Each customer is addressed personally. * The performance of the brochures can be measured easily and precisely using an individual discount code. * Individually compiled content extends the aspiration of providing advice The brochure in the parcel becomes personally relevant and can be adapted internationally (7 languages, 11 countries). * A comprehensive brochure offers enough space to offer suitable recipe ideas and there- fore relevant content for shopping. RESULT: * Customers who received personalised brochures in parcels bought more: they had 25 percent more in shopping baskets than average. * 6 percent of new customers who received a brochure in their parcel with a voucher code after placing their first order redeemed it for another order in the shop. * The return on ad spend was 9 times higher than the costs. *Individual product recommendations are compiled to match the customer's surfing and purchasing history. * The just-in-time- printing fits seam- lessly with shipping logistics.

14 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Target group development The best prompts go to print W hat happens when poetry slam dynamics and artificial intelligence meet? The communications agency Stämpfli from Bern has tried it out. In two ‘Prompt Battle’ events, one last October and another this March, Stämpfli brought together 16 creatives and artists to compete against each other in a tournament-style for- mat, just like at a poetry slam. The task: to visualise different themes chosen by the audience in a matter of seconds. To do this, they used the generative image AI tool Dall-E. “The AI tournament made for great entertainment in the sold- out Cinematté cinema in Bern,” says Caspar Loesche, Head of Communications at Stämpfli. And not just for one evening either. Ahead of the Prompt Battle, the family-owned printing company, now in its sev- enth generation, tested out what can be achieved with AI in the field of customisation. Modern digital printing tech- nology makes it possible to transfer individual images via InDesign script and send them to print. “It only takes a matter of minutes,” explains Loesche. To promote the AI tournament

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 15 From prompted artwork to personally designed poster campaigns: generative AI has some wow moments in store for print products in 2023, the Swiss capital's emblem, the bear, was visualised in space. With the help of AI, the team created 700 motifs of astronaut bears, each in a different artistic style, which were then displayed on posters in Bern. For the second Prompt Battle in March 2024, the astronaut bear theme was then expanded into a space zoo concept and the community got involved this time too. Stämpfli employees created 175 different motifs at a specially set up prompt booth in the entrance hall of the company's Bern headquarters. Because the posters were labelled with the names of their creators, the motifs could be traced back to individual colleagues when the posters were finally displayed in the city. Which in turn caused the internal Slack chat to go wild! As well as attracting attention, the AI tournament also showed how the public can be involved in individual cam- paigns and how many different images it is possible to create. “A poster campaign, for example, can have different aspects to it and doesn't always look the same, but remains recog- nisable,” says Loesche. Another option could be to call on k c o t s r e t t u h S ; i n i l l e b r e P e e h c M i l : e g a m I

16 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 the creators who helped create the motif, “Find your poster and win!” continues Loesche, taking the idea further. “It's a fun way to move between digital, print and community.” He doesn't see the divide between analogue and digital as prob- lematic, under the proviso that “Individual components have to be able to function independently of each other as well.” Stämpfli began building up internal knowledge a year ago. In several brownbag sessions, individual employees reported back on where they were currently at regarding AI and what challenges they were facing in their areas. “Design- ers described the current situation in image generation, the image department talked about image processing, develop- ers spoke about coding, and the editing department about text work. This helped us create a foundation to build on, and we’re now integrating AI into our day-to-day work and have set up several projects to develop further applications." Technical implementation of the Prompt Battle campaign Stämpfli produced posters and flyers to advertise the Prompt Battle, featuring the individual AI-generated images created by its employees. The flyers and posters were prepared in InDesign and then merged with the AI-generated images via script. This was then exported as a PDF with several hundred pages. While Stämpfli printed the smaller flyers directly on a Canon varioPRINT iX3200 sheet-fed inkjet press, the larger A2-format posters were outsourced to a partner. To show customers from publishing houses, associations, and businesses that use advertising how to play with new technologies, Stämpfli presented this success story at its half- PROMPT BATTLE PROMPT BATTLE PROMPTED BY LINDA PROMPTED BY LUKAS Printing company Stämpfli organised its first Prompt Battle in October 2023 to play with generative artificial intelligence. Participants competed directly against each other in a creative duel format using descriptions (prompts) for AI images. Stämpfli employees themselves used prompts to create images of a space bear for the advertising posters, which could be seen throughout Bern. The second battle in March featured a variety of space zoo-themed images. The AI-generated advertising posters also featured the names of their respective creators.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 17 yearly customer event ‘IMPULS’, a barcamp for association communication, back in March. One thing Loesche and his colleagues are certain of is that “AI will influence, change and even revolutionise communication and marketing.” The Prompt Battle is intended to show how to get the best from analogue and digital worlds, from retro and avant- garde. Ultimately, the traditional medium of print has also evolved as a result of digitalisation. Printing hundreds of images, as was the case with the Berne bear, is no longer a major hurdle. “It creates new opportunities for businesses that address their target groups with their own customer magazines, but also for publishers in terms of personalising their printed products according to target group segments and therefore approaching them in an even more appre- ciative way,” says Loesche. “The format is genuinely fun and makes you want to work with AI,” he adds. There have even been approaches from companies that want to use this type of competition internally to introduce AI in a playful way and tackle reservations. And even in the case of a digital prompt battle, voting is still deliberately analogue, with printed voting cards. That print is a form of meaningful communication is some- thing that Stämpfli already realised in the run-up to the IMPULS customer event. Around 1,000 invitees were able to register via postal and digital mailings. However, they could only explicitly decline by sending a return card in writing. “Surprisingly, many made use of this option. Most even wrote a personal note,” reports Loesche. This further reinforced Stämpfli's strategy of providing a variety of communication channels. “If I want to communicate quickly, I do so via the digital channel. If I want to say more, I choose print,” explains the head of communications. For him, the most important thing is to move away from an either/or mentality. Approaching individual target group segments in a personalised way The printing company has been working on the future-rel- evant subject of individualisation for some time. A good 20 years ago, it published a magazine for a customer event that included the recipient's name and pictures of the event in the editorial. That was of course a comparatively bigger un- dertaking in the days before programmatic digital printing,’ explains Loesche. Kuoni: creating travel offers for different preferences The international Zurich-based travel company Kuoni has also turned to Stämpfli to take the pressure off its central marketing department. The main aim is to flexibly adapt window advertising and flyers in its 80 travel agencies ac- cording to location and season. Each branch is able to decide for itself which offers it wants to display. Stämpfli has devel- Schöne Ferien, schön günstig. 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Buchungscode: AGP80132. *Angebote sind in Powersearch buchbar HT_AGP_Aldiana Club Costa del Sol_JUL/AUG21 [d] Travel provider Kuoni's branch managers can use Stämpfli's personal- isation tool to create their own travel offers, thereby significantly re- ducing the workload of the company's central marketing department. Using their customer database, they can tailor individual offers to the preferences of their respective customers, and these are then printed by Stämpfli. oped a personalisation tool for this purpose: relevant texts and images are put together using a specific Kuoni layout and then sent directly to print. “We then send the printed offers to branches within just a few days,” explains Loesche. This approach doesn't just significantly reduce the workload of travel agency marketing departments, “Businesses with multiple branches, such as insurance companies, restaurant chains, and pharmacies, can use personalised printing to create a variety of different offers, targeting their customers’ tastes with pinpoint accuracy.” (Irmela Schwab) Project brief: travel offers Client(s): Kuoni Target group: B2C Service provider: Stämpfli AG Project brief: prompt battle Client(s): Stämpfli AG Target group: B2C Service provider: Stämpfli AG

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 19 E very customer who enters the store counts as a suc- cess for Sabine Rittmeyer. “I can't influence whether a visitor becomes a buyer, but I can make sure that people know about POCO and enjoy coming to any of our 127 stores across Germany,” says the furniture store's head of marketing, describing her job. This, however, is now present- ing her with completely new challenges. Last April, Deutsche Post discontinued its ‘Einkaufaktuell’ promotional brochure mailing. And this had a major impact on POCO. The furniture retailer from Bergkamen in North Rhine-West- phalia is looking for alternatives to reach households. Up until that point, Rittmeyer sent out around 15 million unaddressed brochures with the ‘Einkaufaktuell’ mailshot. “Printing and distributing around 400 tonnes of paper per advertising week has been our main drive-to-store strategy until now,” explains Rittmeyer. And it has worked well: according to her calculations, the lion's share of POCO sales comes from areas where brochures are distributed. This reliable advertising channel is now a thing of the past. The POCO head of marketing anticipates significant losses for the furniture retailer, “Without our advertising arriving in letterboxes, we won't be able to reach as many households.” In any case, reach has steadily declined in recent years as consumers have become increasingly averse to anonymous letterbox advertising. Increased costs and a subsequent drop in demand from companies were also the reasons why the ‘Einkaufaktuell’ service was discontinued. Alternative options are limited in some regions. The adver- tising brochure could be sent by addressed post. But the cost of doing so speaks against it, as it is much more expensive than booking an insert in ‘Einkaufaktuell’. So what now? Sometimes solutions come out of the blue. POCO has been working with Canon as a provider of digital printing and scanning solutions for years. The Krefeld-based company suggested sending personalised postcards to existing cus- tomers. The technology behind this: programmatic printing. This kind of direct marketing strategy wasn't what Sabine Rittmeyer initially had in mind for POCO. Her drive to keep reaching many people in one go, and to innovate at the same time, is now well served by the new approach, “We were immediately sold on Canon's smart, fast solutions.” Printing is carried out by the digital printing company DPG from Nuremberg, while the start-up AutLay from Cologne enables automated and customised product recommenda- tions based on individual purchase histories. It's a partner- ship that works, “It's not so much the technology itself, but the people behind the technology who know how to use it effectively,” says Rittmeyer. “We didn't originally want to pursue a one-to-one strategy; we decided to do so because the providers convinced us.” Since the beginning of April, around 11,000 selected ex- isting customers in the Bavaria test area have been receiv- ing mail from the furniture retailer. In addition to a general y a b a x i p ; e m a o L : e g a m l I

20 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Hey Boris, herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Kauf deines Boxspringbetts. Hol dir den neuen Look in dein Schlafzimmer! Wir freuen uns, dich bald wieder in unserem POCO-Markt begrüßen zu dürfen. Viele Grüße, Dein POCO-Team Schwebetürenschrank Coupon 20% Rabatt* Coupon 20% Rabatt* Nachtkonsole Hey Mandy, Hey Mandy, Einkauf %% vielen Dank für deine Treue. Als Dankeschön kannst du bei deinem nächsten vielen Dank für deine Treue. Als Dankeschön kannst du bei deinem nächsten Einkauf 20% Rabatt* auf fast alle POCO-Artikel sichern. Verantwortliche Stelle: POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH, Industriestr. 39, 59192 Bergkamen. Sie haben das Recht auf Auskun” , Berichtigung, Löschung und Einschrän- Wir freuen uns auf deinen nächsten Besuch in unserem POCO-Markt. Wir freuen uns auf deinen nächsten Besuch in unserem POCO-Markt. kung Ihrer Daten gemäß der Art. 15 bis 18 DSGVO. Näheres entnehmen Sie bitte unserer Datenschutzerklärung auf https://www.poco.de/pages/datenschutz. Ihre Daten werden von uns auf Grundlage eines berechtigten Interesses gemäß Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f DSGVO zu Werbezwecken verarbeitet. Sollten Sie keine Informationen und Angebote Viele Grüße, Viele Grüße, mehr von uns erhalten wollen, können Sie bei uns der Verwendung Ihrer Daten für Werbezwecke widersprechen. Bitte senden Sie Ihren Werbewiderspruch per E-Mail Dein POCO-Team Dein POCO-Team unter Angabe Ihres Namens, Ihrer Adresse und des Werbemittels an folgende E-Mail- Adresse: info@poco.de. *Nur gegen Abgabe dieses Mailings. Einzulösen bis XX.XX.2024 ab einem Einkaufswert von XX Euro. Nicht kombinierbar mit anderen Rabattaktionen. Nicht gültig für Onlineartikel und Hot Deal Artikel. Pro Person und Einkauf nur einmal einlösbar. Verantwortliche Stelle: POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH, Industriestr. 39, 59192 Bergkamen. Sie haben das Recht auf Auskun– , Berichtigung, Löschung und Einschrän- kung Ihrer Daten gemäß der Art. 15 bis 18 DSGVO. Näheres entnehmen Sie bitte unserer Datenschutzerklärung auf https://www.poco.de/pages/datenschutz. Ihre Daten werden von uns auf Grundlage eines berechtigten Interesses gemäß Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f DSGVO zu Werbezwecken verarbeitet. Sollten Sie keine Informationen und Angebote mehr von uns erhalten wollen, können Sie bei uns der Verwendung Ihrer Daten für Werbezwecke widersprechen. Bitte senden Sie Ihren Werbewiderspruch per E-Mail unter Angabe Ihres Namens, Ihrer Adresse und des Werbemittels an folgende E-Mail- Hey Susanne, wir vermissen dich! Besuch uns doch bald mal wieder in einem unserer POCO-Märkte. Unser Sortiment bietet viele schöne Artikel für dich. Viele Grüße, Dein POCO-Team Pendelleuchte Boxspringbett %% Adresse: info@poco.de. Hey Susanne, Kom mode POCO feiert 35 Jahre. Feier mit uns! JUBEL- JUBEL- %% POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH|Industriestraße 39|59192 Bergkamen Boris Mustermann POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH|Industriestraße 39 ∙59192 Bergkamen Musterstr. 1 Mandy Musterfrau ANGEBOTE 12345 Musterstadt Musterstr. 1 12345 Musterstadt DAS GANZE JAHR Tapete POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH, Industriestraße 39 in 59192 Bergkamen POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH, Industriestraße 39 in 59192 Bergkamen %% POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH | Industriestraße 39 | 59192 Bergkamen Susanne Musterfrau Musterstr. 1 12345 Musterstadt %% %% Verantwortliche Stelle: POCO Einrichtungsmärkte GmbH, Industriestr. 39, 59192 Bergkamen. Sie haben das Recht auf Auskun‘ , Berichtigung, Löschung und Einschrän- kung Ihrer Daten gemäß der Art. 15 bis 18 DSGVO. Näheres entnehmen Sie bitte unserer Datenschutzerklärung auf https://www.poco.de/pages/datenschutz. Ihre Daten werden von uns auf Grundlage eines berechtigten Interesses gemäß Art. 6 Abs. 1 lit. f DSGVO zu Werbezwecken verarbeitet. Sollten Sie keine Informationen und Angebote mehr von uns erhalten wollen, können Sie bei uns der Verwendung Ihrer Daten für Werbezwecke widersprechen. Bitte senden Sie Ihren Werbewiderspruch per E-Mail unter Angabe Ihres Namens, Ihrer Adresse und des Werbemittels an folgende E-Mail- Adresse: info@poco.de. POCO has defined seven personas for sending personalised messages to its customers, including Boris, Susanne, and the couple Mandy and Dennis. 1. Single urbanite Boris likes to do his own home improvements and is therefore interested in things like flooring and kitchen worktops. 2. Susanne likes high-quality furniture. POCO offers her modern box-spring beds and matching decorative items on her personalised card. 3. Mandy and Dennis are interested in low-cost items from the POCO range. brochure, which features products from the company's ex- tensive range across several pages, POCO has also opted for a personalised postcard. The DIN long format card features the name and address of the respective recipient as well as three to five products tailored to their needs. Rittmeyer scrutinised her customer database for this pur- pose. Geo-marketing is used to identify the areas where POCO customers live. The individual buyer groups that predominantly live there are then identified with the aim of formulating individual trigger messages to attract cus- tomers to the stores. The app and the completed purchase contracts provide the head of marketing with data that links each customer to their purchase history. The marketing de- partment uses this data together with socio-demographic characteristics to derive seven fictitious personalities, known as personas. “There's Boris, for example, a single urbanite who enjoys DIY, and Susanne, who wouldn't necessarily shop at a dis- counter but appreciates quality and individuality,” says Ritt- meyer. “Then, to give another example, there's the persona duo Mandy and Dennis, who have a fairly limited family income and are primarily interested in bargains.” Rittmeyer is confident that their cluster strategy works. “Statistics show that we humans aren't as unique as we think we are.” This is why mass media, from brochure advertising to radio and TV, have been the POCO manager's first choice until now. “A one size fits all approach has worked really well for many years.” The step towards one-to-one marketing is new territory for the retailer. But trying out new things is also part of the furniture chain's tradition, according to Rittmeyer, “‘We are open to innovation and excited to see what happens when we combine the best of print and digital worlds in a way that works for us.” The furniture retailer is teaming up with Canon at the world's largest print media trade fair, Drupa, in Düsseldorf, to showcase an in-store experience where

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 21 Autlay Digital Print Group “We enable completely new communication concepts as no data preparation is needed for templates.” Sven Müller, CEO AutLay “The more print can be inte- grated into marketing auto- mation, the more it will gain momentum.” Andreas Röhm, Head of Sales, Digital Print Group The Cologne-based technology start-up AutLay was founded in 2019 as a spin-off from the University of Co- logne; Sven Müller and David Schölgens are its founders and managing directors. Since 2022, Autlay has offered a SaaS solution that enables retailers to design and send fully automated print mailings at the touch of a button, using their own corporate design and, as the young company promises, “without long leads or complex design processes and with a transparent cost structure.” An innovative layout engine forms the core of the print mailing software. Individualised print mailings can be created in seconds by using white space-minimising algorithms in combination with around 50 metrics to quantify aesthetics, typography, and cost-effectiveness – and no templates are needed. Find out more at: https://www.autlay.com/ The Nuremberg-based Digital Print Group has been active in the market for over 20 years and is a pioneer in the field of digital printing. Headed by managing director Oliver Schimek, the company invested in high-speed inkjet printing back in 2012 (the first system from manufacturer Canon in Germany) and even had the name ‘inkjet pio- neer’ trademarked at the time. Today, the company has two high-speed inkjet printing systems in use, the Canon ProStream 1000 and the Canon ColorStream 3500. The print service provider prints products including books, loose-leaf publications, catalogues, technical documen- tation, magazines, and vouchers, and also offers print on demand and large-format printing. In 2023, the Digital Print Group added programmatic printing to its services, as this allows printing processes to be automated and optimised for faster, more cost-efficient and personalised production of print materials. Find out more at: https://digital-print-group.de/ printed advertising material interacts with digital screens. “We want to use innovative, modern marketing tools to inspire our customers long-term and secure their loyalty,” says Rittmeyer. The results of the first test run, which POCO and Canon are currently conducting, will also be presented during the eleven-day fair. Rittmeyer can envisage sending out half a million postcards in future if the pilot project produces a good response rate. “Mass advertising still works for us at POCO,” Rittmeyer emphasises. Direct marketing additionally enables her to create multiple customized offers that each fit on a postcard. “We trust that we don't have to produce hundreds of offers because we know our customers so well that we can address them with their core interests.” Footfall analysis is used to determine how many visitors come into a store in response to such an offer. Rittmeyer can see the success of her strategy from the number of visitors in store. Marketing, Purchasing, and Sales work closely together to turn visitors into buyers. These departments ensure that both the products and the shopping experience are a hit. The POCO app shows this success: when customers scan and pay via the app, data and preferences are collected. Marketing expert Rittmeyer also benefits from this informa- tion. The personas are regularly reviewed in individual areas and optimised where necessary. “The print mailings have already become a popular project for us,” she says happily. In the end, every challenge has its upside. (Irmela Schwab) About the company The German furniture store POCO, based in Bergkamen in North Rhine-Westphalia, has been part of MW Holding, which also includes XXXLutz, since 2018. The company name goes back to the retail entrepreneur Peter Pohl- mann, who founded the discounter in 1989 under the slogan ‘Beautiful interiors for affordable prices’: POCO is an acronym for ‘Pohlmann & Co’. In 2008, POCO merged with the furniture chain Domäne. There are therefore two centres for managing outlets: the former POCO head office in Bergkamen and the former Domäne head office in Hardegsen. Today, the company operates 127 furniture stores, along with six regional warehouses, and offers a wide selection of products. These include: furniture, kitchens, household goods, gifts, carpets, floor coverings, electrical appliances, wallpaper, and paints.

22 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Myths debunked Ten preconceptions about print and why they're not true Print isn't popular, it's old-fashioned, expensive, and offers zero interaction – these are just a few commonly held preconceptions. But are they true in the age of programmatic printing? P rint? Isn't that the analogue medium that our parents’ generation have always used? With its complicated production process, rigid deadlines, tedious pre-press, lengthy layout processes, and outrageously high costs that only pay off with huge print runs? And what an absolute nightmare if a mistake creeps in! Once the machinery gets going, it's almost impossible to stop. When businesses pro- duce a catalogue, brochure or flyer that doesn't take off, their budget is irretrievably wasted. Plus, they only realise that when it’s too late anyway as success can only be measured weeks later. It's unsurprising that many digitally socialised marketers are unfamiliar with the topic of print. But actually, programmatic printing is radically changing the rules of the game. Print has become an extremely flexible medium that can be seamlessly integrated into digital customer journeys. So, it's time to dispel the biggest print myths.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 23 of media, you have to stand out. That's where print comes in. Print stands out. Print represents high quality. Print is a premium medium and anything but ordinary. Myth 2: Print is the opposite of digital Myth: Print is analogue. In an age when all processes are fully digitalised, print always involves a media disruption that makes everything more complicated. Reality: In actual fact, print now behaves more like a digital medium and can be seamlessly integrated into any mar- keting campaign and any digital customer experience. It is triggered via digital touchpoints, controlled via the market- ing automation engine, personalised using CRM data and assets from the CMS and DAM, processed in the lettershop, and measured using analytics software (with individualised elements such as QR codes, coupon codes or TinyURLs). No matter whether it's a complex campaign or a simple trigger mail, print now feels like a digital medium to marketers. Print also fits seamlessly into the customer-side of the customer journey. Online behaviour is taken into account and reactions are assigned to profiles using individual char- acteristics. The result is a seamless, cross-media multichannel experience. Myth 3: Retailers are phasing out print Myth: German retailers Rewe and Obi have discontinued their brochures in recent months – so print is clearly not working. Reality: It is true that both retail chains are currently ex- perimenting with saving money when it comes to their brochures. But a closer look reveals that it's less about the medium and more about the advertising concept. Classic brochures are the epitome of one-size-fits-all advertising. A few gardening products, several tools, some building materials, bathroom fittings and floor coverings – there's bound to be something for everyone in a DIY store brochure. It doesn't matter whether the recipients live in a detached house or a flat, whether they're planning a car port or ren- ovating the kitchen, whether they're woodturning bowls in their hobby workshop or simply looking for new cushions for their garden chairs. This one-size-fits all approach is ex- pensive and inefficient. Digital media can do things better and that includes print! People can be addressed just as specifically and personally using programmatic printing as they can with digital advertising media. The advertising is targeted and relevant, and losses due to non-selective marketing are avoided. Plus, it’s possible to use pretty much the same marketing mechanisms that are also used for digital marketing. So, in this respect, the end of advertising brochures is more an end to a one-size-fits-all approach than it is to print media. k c o t s r e t t u h S , t o h S - l e x i P : e g a m I Myth 1: Print is old-fashioned Myth: Whether you're a boomer or a young GenZ, a signifi- cant proportion of life is now digitally organised. Analogue stops along the customer journey are a thing of the past. Reality: It's a fact that almost every customer journey has at least one digital touchpoint on the way from finding information and inspiration to making a purchase. Many customer journeys are actually purely digital. In this sense, digital life isn't modern any more, it's just normal. But if you want to attract attention, you have to be un- conventional. If you don't want to get lost in the daily flood

24 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Myth 4: Print isn't environmentally conscious Myth: Direct mail that you throw straight into the re- cycling bin after a quick look – now that's an obvious, painful waste of resources. Print isn’t eco-friendly. Reality: This myth is particularly persistent and dif- ficult to dispel. There is of course no denying that paper production consumes a lot of resources, es- pecially wood, water, and energy. And on top of that, there is the energy required for transport too. Environmental organisations therefore estimate an equivalent of 20 grams of CO₂ for a simple letter by mail. There’s no question about it: less is more. What isn't taken into account, however, is that an email also consumes CO₂. A fair calculation, includ- ing the cloud and internet infrastructure involved, puts the CO₂ equivalent at around 10 grams per email. While this is half the amount, the calculation also makes it clear that the address distribution list for an e-mailing only needs to be twice as large or sent twice as often for the benefit of the email to be cancelled out. Because the conversion rate of e-mailings often achieves less than 10 per cent of the print conversion rate (see Myth 10), most e-mailings are at a clear disadvantage. However, most recipients ‘feel’ that a print mailing is a bigger waste. Only raising aware- ness can help here. Myth 5: Print is hard to automate Myth: Print always requires a typesetter and a de- signer. After all, you can't scroll on a sheet of paper: texts and images have to fit perfectly. Also, people portraits need to face into the page and the layout has to be a varied mix of portrait and landscape for- mats, eye-catchers, and small list articles. The digital world, on the other hand, makes things much easier: text can be as long as you want it to be, images can be enlarged as desired and, if necessary, viewed by scrolling sideways. This makes it easy to automate display ads, online stores, and emails. Reality: Quite apart from the fact that the appear- ance of online advertising should never be left to chance, print mailings, postcards, flyers, brochures, and entire catalogues can also be designed and tex- ted using automated and tailored processes. Depending on requirements, this simply involves adding individualised content using email market- ing templates. In many cases, the same software can then be used to generate a print-ready PDF for the lettershop instead of an email. But even much more complex tasks, such as designing customised catalogues with different highlight products, portrait and landscape formats, and different text lengths, can now be fully automated. AI systems with large language models such as ChatGPT can shorten texts to any length and software with a basic design capability, combined with a basic layout grid, ensures visually impressive results. Print can also be seamlessly integrated into any digital market- ing process. A mailing can be triggered, produced like an email, forwarded to the lettershop as a PDF and then sent out from there. Myth 6: Print advertising doesn’t reach people Myth: Lots of letterboxes have signs saying ‘No junk mail please'. All these households will therefore never see print advertising. Reality: This is a completely false narrative. An addressed item delivered by post is not regarded as advertising / junk mail, but as personal communication. In other words, posties will always drop any correctly addressed item through the letterbox, regardless of any sign. And it gets even better: a letter doesn’t require the recip- ient giving consent either. While GDPR-compliant consent has to be obtained for almost any other personal contact (including text messages, instant messaging, emails, and phone calls), anyone can be contacted by post. Myth7: Print is slow and complicated Myth: Target group segmentation, variant creation, layout, postage calculation and mailing slot allocation, coordination of printing company and post office, proofreading, print approval, shipping, delivery and checks ... it can take days to complete a print mailing. Reality: Programmatic printing actually dramatically re- duces the time and effort involved. Specialised service providers, lettershops, and printing companies take care of the entire process. There are campaigns, for example relating to shopping basket abandonment, that run on a daily basis. The work involved for the marketer is minimal because the marketing automation software transfers print-ready PDFs to the service provider. Layout work, print approval, and proofing are therefore no longer necessary. Coordina- tion between the mailing service provider and the printing company also takes place as part of the process. However, the high level of flexibility involved means that dispatch quantities can't be planned precisely. Daily dispatch can even be subject to considerable fluctuations. To ensure effective operation despite this, it is advisable to plan a second campaign so that free shipping slots are always optimally utilised. For example: The main campaign targets shopping basket abandoners on a daily basis. The shipping quantity can't be precisely predicted. So an addi- tional campaign to win back old customers is set up to fill up the remaining quantity of the shipping batch. However, it remains true that the response time to print is different. While reactions to an e-mailing usually fade after

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 25 two to three days, print has a more lasting effect. Reactions can often still be measured after 14 days. The slow effect of print can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. In any event, it has to be taken into account when evaluating the effectiveness of campaigns and the validity period of offers and vouchers. Myth 8: Print ends up in the bin unread Myth: Anyone who finds a promotional mailing in their letterbox, perhaps even despite having a ‘No junk mail please’ sticker, is very likely to throw it in the bin unread. The sender could therefore have saved themselves both work and money. Reality: Exactly the opposite is true. Postal advertising isn’t just thrown away before it can have an impact. The most powerful effect of programmatic printing is the fact that it always sends relevant advertising that is precisely tailored to carefully selected recipients. This alone is generally enough to make recipients interested in the advertising. But print advertising also has a quick and direct effect beyond this. For example, calls-to-action and advertising messages can be printed on envelopes so that they will always be seen. Postcards and self-mailers even offer consid- erably more space for this than a letter. People are unlikely to throw a postcard into their paper recycling bin without looking at it first. This all allows the impact of the campaign to unfold without a letter having to be opened. But the reverse strategy also works: a neutral envelope without an obvious sender's address will always be opened. If only because many banks and insurance companies also send their confidential letters like this. It is a relatively simple way of making sure that print advertising is always seen and achieves its purpose. Myth 9: The success of print is difficult to measure Myth: Digital marketers are used to quick and precise anal- yses that provide exact information about the achievement of specific KPIs. That's virtually impossible with analogue media like print. Delivery and opening rates can only be guessed at, interactions can't be attributed. Reality: In the past, it was indeed only possible to determine vague key figures or the overall performance of a print cam- paign. Circulation, the number of readers, and advertising impact were usually ascertained via reader surveys and projections. Exact figures? Not a chance! This is all significantly less true for programmatic print campaigns. Print can hold its own when compared with e-mailings. In fact, print has an advantage: Spam rules at provider or company level and user-specific filters make the delivery rate of an email incalculable. The privacy functions of many email clients have made it impossible to reliably measure opening and click rates for emails, and the number of emails deleted without being read is incredibly high. It's different with print. The likelihood of delivery is almost 100 per cent when the correct address is used. Opening rates are similarly high, reaching almost 100 per cent when the print item is designed appropriately (e.g. as a postcard or self-mailer –see myth 7). Direct interaction can also be measured with precision. Using individual URLs, order numbers, discount or QR codes, every interaction can be precisely measured and assigned to the right user. In this sense, print is barely any different from email. The real challenge is less about the technical side of things and more about getting recipients to interact. That's why every mailing should have a strong call-to-action. This might be a competition, a voucher or a discount code. But it could also be a useful service (an AR product view, a download, a free in-app purchase) or a useful link that can be accessed via QR code. Myth 10: Print is expensive Myth: Print costs a lot compared to e-mailings. Paper, print- ing, and shipping generate such high costs that a print campaign invariably loses from a cost perspective. Reality: Needless to say, the costs of a print mailing can't be argued away. But any serious comparison can't be based on expenditure alone. Ultimately, it's the return on adver- tising spend (ROAS) that determines whether a marketing measure is (too) expensive or not. The most recent CMC Print Mailing Study in May 2023 shows how well print performs in this respect. Promotional mailings to existing customers of online retailers achieved an average conversion rate (CVR) of 5.4 per cent. In addition, existing customers who received a print mailing spent an average of 10 per cent more than their previous order. This puts the return on advertising spend (ROAS) at 901 per cent. Based on a shopping basket of 82 euros (before returns), every euro spent on a print mailing generates 9.01 euros in revenue. In contrast, the conversion rate for an e-mailing often has a zero before the decimal point. The ROAS is corre- spondingly low. Depending on the average shopping bas- ket amount and the work involved, an e-mailing can even become marginally unprofitable, as the following example calculation shows: E-mailing: With a circulation of 10,000 emails and a CVR of 0.5 per cent, 50 shopping baskets are checked out. Assuming an average shopping basket value of 100 euros, a margin of 25 per cent, and costs of 300 euros for the mailing, the shop will ultimately earn just 950 euros. Print: The print run is again 10,000 copies, the CVR is 5.4 per cent. The average shopping basket value is 110 euros and the margin is again 25 per cent. The mailing (postcard) costs 0.60 euros per item – so a total of 6,000 euros altogether. Despite this, the online store makes a profit of 8,850 euros. Without any extra effort. (Dominik Grollmann)

26 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 e w e R : e g a m I Offer communication The future of brochure ad- vertising is hybrid Hybrid advertising models are becoming increasingly popular in retail communication, while purely digital approaches remain the exception and print brochures continue to dominate. Finding the right mix is key to reaching shoppers now and in the future. U ntil recently, at least every second household in Ger- many received a Rewe brochure every week. This came to an end in July 2023. The supermarket chain has saved on printing and distributing 100 million leaflets per month. And it isn’t alone in its actions. Ikea discontinued its iconic catalogue back in 2021, Obi followed suit, as did Mäc Geiz and Manufactum. The fact that retailers are moving away from print bro- chures is put into perspective when you take a look at the figures. For example, at those of Media Central, the leading distributor of unaddressed household advertising material. It works with 100 companies and sends out 15 billion brochures for them every year. In 2016, the figure was less than half that. “If you look at all marketing contexts properly, printed

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 27 household advertising is still the absolute number one in retail communication,” says Dirk Seidler, Head of Key Account Management at mgo360, the marketing service provider of Mediengruppe Oberfranken. According to Seidler, it isn't just the sheer distribution that speaks in favour of this, but also the attitude of consumers. He refers to a study by the newspaper associations BDZV and ZMG, which conducted over 2,000 online interviews on the shopping habits of Germany's consumers in October 2022. The result: 40 per cent of those surveyed said they would prefer continuing to receive the Rewe brochure in print, while 27 per cent preferred its digital publication. And the younger the respondent, the more likely they were to favour the digital version. Those under 30 mainly wanted to receive retail offers online, while those over 50 had little interest in digital brochures, according to the study. In figures, it looks something like this: According to the latest Deutsche Post Dialog Marketing Monitor, around 850,000 companies in Germany send advertising mail di- rectly to households via their letterboxes. That's almost 30 per cent of all companies in Germany. Of course, this refers to advertising material in general, not just retail brochures. Nevertheless, the sheer number of companies makes one thing clear: Ikea, Rewe, and Obi are still exceptions, albeit extremely prominent ones. If first movers have a strong market position like the companies mentioned, this could lead to uninformed copying by others and therefore actually trigger a trend. Seidler believes this would be a mistake, “It would be foolish to play one channel off against the other. Choosing between print and digital isn't the answer. Target groups are different from each other. While printed bro- chures are the right medium for many, others are better reached online. It isn't the channel that is decisive, only the communication goals.” Even Rewe is still printing brochures Rewe is an example of how these goals can differ, even within a company. The supermarket chain justified its deci- sion to stop printing brochures with the saving of “73,000 tonnes of paper, 70,000 tonnes of CO2, 1.1 million tonnes of water, and 380 million kWh of energy per year”. Lionel Souque, CEO of the Rewe Group, is equally assertive in formu- lating the chain's sustainability goals, “Rewe is now leading the way in its sector. This step not only massively reduces our carbon footprint but is also another milestone in the context of our climate targets.” The Rewe supermarkets want to establish an image ad- vantage over competitors for their higher-priced range of branded products and score points with less price-sensitive target groups. However, this halt to printing does not apply throughout the Group. The Rewe brands Penny and Toom are continuing to promote their products to households the traditional way, while digital distribution is intended to help increase sales. The tool of choice, WhatsApp, has already won many other supporters among German retailers, including Aldi Süd, Edeka, and the print-averse Rewe. Stefanie Holl, Head of Cross Channel Marketing at Toom, explains the decision as follows, “By expanding our digital services like ‘Click & Collect’ and launching the Toom app, we have already taken key steps to engage with our customers in their digital lives. So, we are delighted to now be taking a logical step forward with our WhatsApp service and offering our customers further added value.” Lionel Souque, CEO of the Rewe Group, comments on similar lines, “We are rethink- ing and reorganising our offer communication with the future in mind. We want to reach customers of all ages in a more modern and targeted way via the media they actually use.” WhatsApp messenger as a corporate channel? Doesn't that have data protection implications? The key point of GDPR in this case is user consent, which retailers obtain outside of the WhatsApp environment via their own website or app. So anyone who receives a brochure from a company like Edeka, Rewe, or Aldi Süd has knowingly requested it beforehand. And made a considerable effort to do so. It doesn't just take one click, like when subscribing to a newsletter (which ac- tually takes two clicks anyway). First, the customer has to visit the company website or install / open the app, then scan a QR code or start a chat in the app to access a URL that leads to the WhatsApp channel. Once there, a chatbot starts a dialogue, which is actually pretty straightforward and involves simple confirmation and entry of a postcode, but the effort it takes to get this far is considerable. And that's not the end of it. The next step is to select the closest store locations. And that can cause errors. If the AI isn't set up correctly, branches 300 km away from the entered postcode may well be displayed. And then all that work is in vain. Even if the nearest branch is displayed correctly, the link still ‘only’ leads to a 1:1 view of the brochure, in other words, in the format of a mobile phone screen. An in-built magnifier would be useful in view of the miniature display, but there isn’t one yet. You can however use pinch-to-zoom. WhatsApp as a private haven How users feel about their beloved WhatsApp chats, how- ever, is very clear. The aforementioned BDZV/ZMG study (Media Monitor Handel) also analysed respondents' attitudes towards the meta messenger. That it is one of the most popu- lar apps in Germany is beyond all doubt. However, according to the study, WhatsApp is also one of the country's most used media in general: 88 per cent of study participants used the messenger in the month prior to the survey, 90 per cent of these used it on a weekly basis. But the messenger is seen as a private channel. 85 per cent do not want to see any advertising there. And even more

28 BUSINESS GUIDE ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 problematic is that 77 per cent are concerned about data protection on WhatsApp. Only 4 per cent would use it to make direct purchases. So, it could prove to be quite a chal- lenge for retailers to build up a proper reach via WhatsApp, despite its vast number of users. Not least because the read- ing experience on mobile phones is far from inspiring. Small numbers next to small photos, not to mention the size of descriptive texts. But it has to be remembered that these are just the first attempts to establish a new advertising channel. Last De- cember, Rewe also started using Instagram to encourage users to shop by showing discounts and price reductions. A ‘savings assistant’ regularly shares the latest offers via the Rewe account. “The new digital service means that Insta- gram users can now easily access our weekly app coupons on their smartphones and experience the benefits of the Rewe app,” says Dr Jan Flemming, Media Director at Rewe. Instagram acts as a link engine for the app, in which dis- counted products are presented separately and are clickable, which makes things much more user-friendly. One click and the item is added to your shopping basket. A feature that printed advertising can't offer, of course. Matthias Leibe, Head of Marketing at the non-food discounter Mäc Geiz, points out another advantage of digital retail communi- cation, “Promotional offers and discounts can be commu- nicated much faster online. This allows us to adapt our of- fers more flexibly to customer needs, something that isn't possible with print brochures due to the long lead times.” cent prefer the online option. Almost half take advantage of both analogue and digital retail offers. Programmatic printing as an alternative So, print rules? That's definitely still the case, as a recent study by Cologne-based market researchers confirmed. According to IFH Media Analytics, the relevance of print brochures for consumers rose by twelve per cent last year and that of insert advertising in advertising supplements and daily newspapers by four per cent. There is therefore no sign of a decline in relevance. Apps with discount offers, on the other hand, only gained two per cent more attention. At the same time, the high proportion of customers who access both types of advertising can't be ignored. Not even by the market leader for printed household advertising. “If we look ahead,” says Ingo Wienand, CEO of the Media Central Group, “we can see that print and digital media can com- plement each other and that digital measures can usefully support or replace brochures, for example in areas with a high advertising refusal rate.” The company has founded two subsidiaries for digital retail marketing: Offerista and Yagora. Media Central is supporting 1,000 companies group wide in this transformation, “It isn't an either/or situation for us, but a geo-intelligent optimised combination of all market channels. Added to this is the high proportion of households in large cities (over 50 per cent in Munich) that refuse to receive advertising and the amount of waste caused by leaflets that are thrown away unread. But according to a recent GfK study, a third of the population in Germany is only prepared to engage with flyers the traditional way. And only five per Put into practice, it could look like this: Netto, the Ger- man subsidiary of the Danish Salling Group (the one with the black lettering), only distributes flyers in Berlin that are printed on both sides and have a QR code that leads to the online brochure. The app, website, and social media are being used more and more to promote offers. Rising prices are changing channel usage Gedruckte Prospekte 22% Anzeigenblätter, Tageszeitungen 54% 10% 14% 54% 10% Angebots-/Prospektapps 14% 36% 12% Preisvergleichsseiten 13% 45% 12% Online-Auftritte von Händlern 12% 43% 12% Suchmaschinen 12% Blogs, Foren, Inﬂuencer 4% 24% 9% 52% 13% Saldo +12 +4 +2 +1 0 -1 -5 Angesichts der steigenden Preise im letzten Jahr verglichen mit einem durchschnittlichen Jahr habe ich… häuﬁger genutzt. gleich häuﬁg genutzt. seltener genutzt. Source: IFH MEDIA ANALYTICS, study “UPFLIFT Consumer Insights on 360o offer communication; Graphic: Hightext Verlag Rising prices have led to a shift in the use of channels: printed brochures and advertising leaf- lets/daily newspapers are now used more frequently on bal- ance, blogs/forums/influencers less frequently.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 BUSINESS GUIDE 29 The brochure format consumers prefer (consumer attitudes in the case of REWE) 9% do not look at oﬀers in brochures for 27% it doesn't matter 24% preferably in a digital brochure 40% preferably in a printed brochure Source: Media Monitor Handel; Graphic: Hightext Verlag 16-29 years 30-49 years 50-69 years 70+ years 53% of the population 47% of the population 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 A large proportion of respondents currently prefer printed REWE brochures. Obi isn't doing away with print entirely either, even though it has stopped printing brochures (which saves an 8,000 metre tower of paper for each issue). The DIY chain is now using programmatic printing as an alternative. Selected target groups receive personalised print mailings from time to time. Director of Customer Management John Krieger explains, “Programmatic printing offers us the opportunity to activate customer segments using high-quality communi- cation, based on individual customer journey behaviour – in other words, whenever the message is sufficiently relevant.” The hope is that the printing measures will be much more effective. The HeyObi app is also central to the new offer strategy. Once users log in, it clearly lists the offers available at their chosen branch, ready for purchase. There are also special price advantages exclusively for users of the app. Local retail via 1,400 platforms However, neither WhatsApp or Instagram brochures reach customers automatically. Advertising is necessary. Media Central has developed its own geo-media scoring model to reach only those consumers who are most likely to become buyers of the advertising retailers. “Based on a multi-stage analytical process,” explains Wie- nand, “customers receive an evaluated area unit and a rec- ommendation for integrating this into a local advertising area. The model uses distance parameters, target group potential, and competitive strength to assign a score value to a small-scale area unit – Germany wide. This can, for ex- ample, be done for each 5-digit postcode or on the basis of micro-geographical KGS14PLZ data. Each relevant area unit is assessed to determine its suitability for the advertising medium.” The score is then applied by Media Central sub- sidiary Offerista, which specialises in hyper-local internet marketing. Wienand explains, “With an almost infinite variety of channels with different pricing models, no programmatic connections and no standardised formats for presentation, it is almost impossible for retailers to present local offers in a cross-channel-optimised way. Offerista's Offers Unlimited product takes care of the customer's advertising message, from creation to delivery across more than 1,400 platforms at the same time.” Brochures won't disappear altogether How far will this transformation to digital retail marketing go? Will print brochures disappear after all? As it stands, marketers and their service providers are still favouring hybrid implementation. However, if printing and distribution costs continue to rise, the sustainability card is likely to be played more and more often. But if the forecasters at the Cologne-based EHI Retail In- stitute are to be believed, this won't be the case any time soon. The Marketing Monitor 2022-2025 predicts that print will still be widely used in food retail in three years' time, albeit to a far lesser extent than today. The forecast is that print-based media will fall from 58 per cent in 2022 to 36.2 per cent, while digital media will grow from 16.9 per cent to 31.8 per cent. The situation looks different for the categories hobby & leisure, fashion & accessories, and DIY & home furnishings. More than half of those surveyed by EHI could imagine doing without print in these sectors, and more than two thirds regarding hobby & leisure. (cg)

30 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 What online players need to pay particular attention to in print campaigns Insider knowledge uncovered Cross-media campaigns show promise. If you want to supplement your on- linechannels with programmatically printed media, you should be familiar with their peculiatiries. P rogrammatic printing can be a useful addition to your own email and banner campaigns. Basket abandoners, for example, can be sent a reminder email by default – but they can also receive a printed and individualised letter when the basket value has reached a particular sum. However, those who venture into print realms from the online world will sooner or later come across the differences between the two media genres, print and online. To help you avoid this "we do everything completely differently" growing into a problem, we reveal eleven secrets of this mantra for the printed world that you should definitely know: (dog/jg) 1 Purchase history instead of clicks 2 Postal delivery time A commendation engine spits out its recommenda- tions online based on clicks. Anyone who plans programmatic print campaigns can also give purchase recommendations, but will need to read them out of the CRM sys- tem based on the purchase history of the intended recipients. Unlike emails, letters take time. At Deutsche Post, Dialogpost (dia- logue mail) takes four days from the date of delivery. Delivery is usually from Tuesday to Saturday k c o t s r e t t u h s _ r a y a b n a g u U : e g a m I 3 Postage optimisation 4 Exploitation of postage scales "Dialogpost" is an offer from Deutsche Post. It can be used to send a standard letter of up to 20 grams from as little as 32 cents per unit. However, there need to be at least 5,000 units. First trick: with "Dialogpost Easy", you can ship from just 500 units, but at a price of 52 cents. Second trick: if you manage to send 200 units to the same lead region (the first two digits of the postcode corre- spond), you will pay the normal Dialogpost rate. If you do not reach the relevant minimum quantities, you can pay the corresponding additional amounts. With trigger mail- ings, the exact shipping quantity cannot be reliably predicted with accuracy. For this reason, postage scales cannot always be used optimally. Remedy: a second existing customer campaign uses the free "slots" and thereby saves the scale. This way, the company saves money and at the same time achieves an additional marketing effect!

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 5 Alternative postal service providers 6 Haptics 31 Letters can also be sent via, for example, Pin Mail AG, TNT, UPS or other postal competitors. Another alternative is Mail Alliance, a consortium of regional postal ser- vice providers. It may be worthwhile here to obtain an alternative offer. Printed material can be held in the hand. Paper type and paper thickness – all this can form a part of the customier expe- rience of your print mailing. The design of the envelope and gamification of the mailing through the use of scratch-off panels, folds and flaps also play a role. 7 Resolution 8 Measurability Printed media require a higher resolution than the on- line world. While a monitor or smartphone display is completely satisfied when an image has a resolution of 72 dpi (dots per inch), that image will need to be 300 dpi when printed in order to look reasonable. The smartphone resolution of 1280x720 pixels fills a monitor area of 45x25 cm but only results in a printable image of 11x8 cm. Unlike on the Internet, the customer journey in printed media cannot be measured directly. Special land- ing pages and increased traffic following a mail- ing allow conclusions to be drawn. In programmatic print mailings, however, individualised QR codes and personalised links can be used to create meas- urability. 9 GDPR 10 Lettershop The crucial advantage of print (in addition to higher at- tention) is that you can also send mailings to recepients without having their GDPR consent. Programmatic campaigns can be set up via data providers that offer additional data on addresses, such as household income. Gender (and, to a limited extent, age) can also be gleaned from the first name of the addressees. Unlike in an email campaign, you usually need a dialogue service provider or a letter shop to produce your print mailing. They feed in your data, print it, and take care of the delivery by post. Competent service providers can be found in our specialist directory starting on page 26 as well as in the business guide. 11 Opening rate In the case of classic e-mailings, the subject line is key for determining whether an email gets opened at all or gets deleted unread. Print does not offer this possibility. However, you have another tool for fine-tuning: the envelope! You can place an initial message there (preferably the promise of a benefit) – or can deliberately opt for a completely neutral design. One advantage of the latter approach: banks also send sensitive post in neutral envelopes, which is why almost every recipient opens such letters. You also achieve an opening rate of 100 percent with postcards. Well, of course – how can you not open it? But seriously, though: hardly anyone throws away a postcard without at least glancing at it. In this respect, the 100-percent opening rate is not a cheap gag but a real opportunity to place a message that always gets seen.

34 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 1. ‘Rebooker’ Post-holiday is pre-holiday. “Customers who booked a holiday with us a year ago frequently book again,” says Albert Ulmer. He is responsible for customer relationship management (CRM) at the Swiss tour operator Hotelplan Group, which offers holiday apartments and houses under the Interhome brand in several European countries, includ- ing Germany. In his role as ICT application engineering manager, he and his team design software that bundles different customer data – and provides a clear overview of the information it contains: Who booked when? Where did they go? With how many people? And for how long? Ulmer and his stakeholders use this valuable information to derive targeted marketing measures for postal mailings via programmatic print and email campaigns. The ‘Rebooker’ advertising medium has proven to be the most effective tool. This personalised 12-page holiday catalogue presents existing customers with four potential next holiday destinations completely tailored to their per- sonal taste and delivered to their letterbox by post. “We achieve the highest conversion rates from this advertising media,” says Ulmer. The advertising material doesn't have to be created from scratch every time: the building blocks for personalised postal advertising are already in place. First there is the data. The information that determines which customers qualify for the Rebooker promotion comes from the in- house booking system and is selected from the marketing database using a specially developed CRM toolset. Ulmer describes the booking system as a single point of truth structure where all information comes together. All customers who last booked a holiday with Interhome between one and five years ago are automatically selected. “People like to stick with what they know – if they like something, they'll come back,” says Ulmer. The programme also excludes all customers who are currently in the process of booking. The aim is to gain a better understanding of customers and their consumer behaviour and to use this to create incentives for them to book. According to Ulmer, a certain amount of finesse is required to reach customers effec- tively, “Building up unnecessary advertising pressure by sending too many mailings is a no-go.” Other pitfalls in- clude cheap or easily creased paper and sending the same offers to everyone. Interhome therefore prioritises the use of high-quality paper for its advertising, with customised images that a transparent envelope makes visible from the outside as soon as the customer takes their post out of the letterbox. “If just a single element isn't right, the campaign can come to nothing,” warns Ulmer. He is keen to meet customer tastes one hundred per cent of the time. “We The Hotelplan Group achieves the best conversion rates using ‘Rebooker’. It understands the customers, sets the right incentives, and isn't pushy.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 35 usually manage 70 to 80 per cent, so we're pretty close.” He brings everything into play. According to the Hotelplan Group manager, if customers don't book, it may be because the motifs haven't met their taste. In such cases, the system compiles new motifs for the next mailing. Ready-made templates are available for the content. The cover letter in Word format is also available in relevant languages, including those for German-speaking countries. “There are several differences between High German and Swiss German alone,” explains Ulmer. Once the appropriate templates have been selected, the names and addresses of the relevant customers are automatically added. The programme also adds four suitable destinations from the data pool using a recommendation engine based on the ‘other customers also buy’ model used by Amazon. In sum- mer, the holiday properties are highlighted with an orange background, in winter with a blue one. The individual data and templates are automatically used to create advertising material that can be printed both in-house and by external providers. The costs per mailing are low. As the main work is carried out by the programmed CRM and document system, the only costs involved are for production and postage, and these are in the low single-digit euro range per item. Rebooker mailings are sent to over 60,000 Interhome customers in Europe each year. The mail reaches them approximately one month before the booking date, which the software determines according to customer behav- iour. “Some customers like to decide early, others at the last minute, and our system takes both into account by identifying the optimum mailing date,” explains Ulmer. The system reminds customers about the mailing once via email, then it is time to measure the advertising impact. If customers book two to four weeks after receiving the Rebooker advertising material, the CRM expert marks the campaign as a success. Ten or so years ago, when the company was still creating customer letters without the help of data science and pro- grammatic software support, employees did everything by hand. “Finding specific individual offers for each customer isn't possible using human resources,” says Ulmer. Instead, many customers were sent the same messages and images, which were delivered in opaque envelopes. “‘The advertising impact was of course much lower as a result.” However, the key thing is that customers have something they can physically hold in their hands, in this case the brochure. “Print stands out and conveys appreciation to customers,” explains Ulmer. “Emails, on the other hand, are less well received, partly because they are more likely to get lost among the volume of other messages in inboxes.” Whether in print or electronically, the prerequisite for both measures is that customers have given their consent to receive promotional emails. “The directive from our parent company Migros is not to send anything if consent has not been expressly given,” emphasises Ulmer. 2. ‘Welcome home’ A warm welcome home! When customers arrive back home from their holiday, they appreciate a little something in the post from the Interhome Group – that's how the marketing strategists at the holiday property agency see it. The ‘Welcome home’ advertising media also involves the CRM team using pre-selected customers from the CRM database, this time those who have just stayed in a holiday home. A personalised code with a lucrative discount offer is aimed at tempting the homecomer to book their next trip while they still remember their (hopefully all-round enjoyable) holiday. Someone has thought about me! The ‘Welcome home’ flyer always has a friendly feel. A ready-made PDF template serves as the cover letter. Variables such as name, address, and the most recently booked holiday destination are customised directly via the CRM software. In the left-hand corner is a photo of the holiday accommodation the customer has just returned from. “The image connects with emotions that bring hol- iday memories to life,” says Ulmer. Together with the dis- count code, these happy feelings can prompt recipients to spontaneously book another holiday with Interhome immediately after their return. As with the Rebooker advertising material, the CRM tool automatically selects eligible customers. Ulmer in- cidentally doesn't need the help of artificial intelligence, which is currently being trialled in many marketing campaigns. “Our campaigns are simple, straightforward processes. Human intelligence is more than enough.” (Irmela Schwab)

36 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 VOUCHERS AND PERSONALISATION HOW BROCHURES IN PARCELS CREATE ADDED VALUE Supplementary brochures, vouchers and discount codes are a fre- quently used marketing tool. But they only become really good if the advantages of print and personalisation are cleverly combined. VOUCHER 20% DISCOUNT V ouchers are a tried and tested tool in online marketing. No wonder, because around 75 percent of consumers are interested in the vouchers, according to an exclusive survey conducted by marketing research company Splendid Re- search for ONEtoONE. There is a simple reason for the success of brochures enclosed in parcels: * The recipient receives it at the exciting moment of unboxing. * It offers a haptic experience. * It is understood as a thank you and not as a clumsy advertisement. All of this means that the recipients of a package brochure are very open towards it and it does its job well. So far, there has been one major disadvantage: brochures in parcels are printed. Therefore, it was barely possible to person- alise them. With a view to the printing technology, these days are long gone. Customised brochures for parcels are no longer a challenge; companies such as Adnymics specialise in this task. What is more difficult is to answer the question of what good supplementary brochures have to achieve, and how they can be used correctly. Supreme discipline: Customer loyalty The most important of all brochures is undoubtedly the voucher. It gets the most attention. However, especially when a scattergun approach is used to offer the discount, the voucher can easily do more harm than good. It is better to do it in a controlled manner and strategically. Then, difficult tasks, such as creating loyalty among completely unknown guest customers, will also succeed. This can be done with a simple "persona-based" concept. For

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 37 example, a furniture retailer could differentiate be- tween the following: * Sven, the young student who moves into his first flat andfurnishes it in a practical way. * Anja, the fun-loving single who likes to invite friends over and decorates her flat in a creative fashion. * Daniel, the brand-conscious metropolitan who is at the beginning of his career, has more money than time, and attaches great importance to design. * Tina and Axel, who have just moved to the outskirts of the city and started a family there. Unknown customers are now matched to these "personas". To do this, surfing behaviour, search terms, products purchased and viewed and other data are analysed: * Certain products areclearly bought by certain groups of people, others overwhelmingly. A scoring value expresses the probability. * An analysis of the first name allows conclusions to be drawn about age. * An address analysis allows an assessment of the living and income situation. In the next step, the marketer develops at- tractive offers for each type of person. Sven, the student gets pragmatic things. Maybe a reading lamp for his bookshelf. In any case, a nifty product that almost anyone can use. Dec- orative items are offered in Anja's brochure. Daniel receives a designer pencil sharpener and Tina and Axel get amusing sets for their dining table. Good vouchers are not bad for sales Rules: The offer is attractive for almost everyone in the respective target group. The offer perfectly represents the retailer's concept and range. The offer is not free. However, the price threshold that is chosen is low. But above all: it is a fantastic offer. This product at this price – you won't get it in any other way. Important: Even if the clamp lamp for Sven usually costs three times as much – Sven has to pay at least 3 euros. This is very attractive, but it's not a gift. This allows the pure bargain hunters to be automatically sorted out. It's not just about the symbolic price, it's about the customer being ready to do something, also revealing information about themselves. For exam- ple: opening a customer account, specifying their date of birth, the size of their flat or what style they prefer – for example, by choosing from one of the topic catalogues that the retailer has prepared for his persona. The whole campaign costs about five to ten euros per customer. But in contrast to the widely distrib- uted voucher code, the dealer gets well-qualified customer contact for this money. THE AMBIENTEDIRECT CASE TO CUSTOMERS WITH STYLE INITIAL SITUATION: AmbienteDirect is one of the leading online shops for design products in Germany. The shop, which was founded in 1998, supplies more than 400,000 customers with furniture and accessories. Itis a matterof course for AmbienteDirect to present its products in a high-quality environment. However, the production costs of a conventional catalogue only pay off at high response rates. Am- bieteDirect looked for a clever solution. SOLUTION: The retailer uses the valuable unboxing moment by intelligently add- ing a brochure to the parcel. Customers are addressed in a customisable way with individual product recommendations that match each buyer's personal style. The design is also adapted to the customers. In order to be able to measure the success of the added brochure, AmbienteDirect references personalised landing pages (PURLs), on which each customer can find their product recommendations in the shop. COURSE OF ACTION: * Seasonal highlights or accessories are presented that match the current purchase. * Individual product recommen- dations are compiled in line with surfing and purchase history * Each customer is addressed personally. * The just-in-time printing of the brochures fits seamlessly with ship- ping logistics. * With personalised landing pages (PURLs), the success of the product selection can be measured accurately (service provider: Adnymics). * Individualised incentives increase willingness to act and make success measurable. RESULT: The conversion rate of the brochure vouchers was up to 250 percent higher than for comparable advertising measures, for example via email. 6 percent of customers called up the personalised URLs (PURLs) and then went on to call up 96 percent more pages than is usually the case, on average, for AmbienteDirect. This resulted in an eleven-fold return on ad spend.

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 39 Approaches to personalisation in B2B Role/department - Role-speciﬁc text and images - Role-speciﬁc page personalisation - Regional image worlds and address - Department-speciﬁc product oﬀers via customisation - Use local address for branch ﬁnder/service ﬁnder Company - Sector-speciﬁc images - Sector-speciﬁc product oﬀers - Sector-speciﬁc event letters - Company anniversaries - Company-speciﬁc product oﬀers via mass customisation Personalisation Person - Show personal data - personal salutation - Gender-speciﬁc images - Gender-speciﬁc address - Gender-speciﬁc product oﬀers - Birthday/anniversary cover letter - Personal product recommendations Processes Marketing, sales R&D imagery and appeal - Oﬀer action tools, tutorials, webinars and 1:1 services Source and graphics: HighText Verlag Task Task planning - Praise for taking part in an action - Send conﬁrmations - Reminders of expiring appointments - Reminders of upcoming service appointments - Notiﬁcation that product is available again - Write to shopping cart abandoners - Conﬁrm debits - Reminders for unﬁnished registrations - Carry out reactivation campaigns W hen it comes to personalisation, the B2B market still has "a lot of room for growth", as Absolit Man- aging Director, Dr Torsten Schwarz, euphemisti- cally explains. His study on the personalisation measures of German companies concludes: only one third of channels are personalised. Of the seven channels enquired about for the customer dialogue (email, print mailings, website/shop/app, social ads, programmatic, messenger/SMS and in-store/POS), just slightly more than two channels (2.4), on average, have ads displayed in a personalised manner. Email is the clear frontrunner – almost all respondents (93 percent) rely on customer-centric communication here. Less than half of the respondents use any of the other channels for individualised customer dialogue – in the case of print mailings and catalogues, this figure is just 45 percent. More than half of the companies only deliver content that is tailored to the addressees in online channels. Dr Torsten Schwarz sighs: "Even large companies with appropriate human resources fail to exploit a lot of potential. Not to mention the continuation of personalisation from the online to the offline world, and vice versa. This is extremely

40 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 negligent when you consider that personalisation is one of the key strategic success factors for companies today – whether in lead generation, customer acquisition or customer loyalty". B2B companies in particular have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to personalising their customer communications – especially when you look at the channels outside their own website. Ulrich Gursky, Head of Communications at SSI Schäfer Shop, is the exception here. With its programmatically produced catalogue, the B2B dispatcher won business directory Versandhausberater's Catalogue of the Year award (ONEtoONE 1–2/2022). Ulrich Gursky does not understand the reluctance of the B2B industry to use personalisation: "In my view, the scattergun approach is no longer suitable if you want to be able to compete. It is also no longer contemporary. For us, the focus is on relevance. The more relevant I come across as to my customers, the better. This is nothing new, but the current state of the art in terms of technology offers increasingly better possibilities here". After all, B2B customers nowadays expect personalisation of advertising measures and personalised offers in online shops – almost all respondents to the B2B e-commerce business cycle index (e-KIX) of IFH Cologne agree on this. From a company perspective, personalisation works on several levels: personalisation is seen on the one hand as a special service that makes shopping easier for customers, and on the other hand, as an important strategic instrument for optimising the relationship with customers. The mantra "B2B becomes B2C" is misleading B2B companies are often advised by service providers, agencies and consultants to orient themselves towards B2C companies when it comes to personalisation. According to a study by Linkedin marketing think tank The B2B Institute, 73 percent of the 1,600 B2B marketing managers surveyed worldwide believe that the creative campaigns of B2B brands can increasingly compete with those of consumer brands. More than two-thirds (65 percent) of respondents agree with the statement that purchase decisions in the B2B sector are just as much determined by emotions as in the B2C sector. Around two-fifths (40 percent) are increasingly focusing on storytelling, emotions and humour in their campaigns. But this mindset leads people astray. Unlike in the B2C sector, B2B companies need to focus not only on just one customer, but also on the needs of different stakeholders. While B2C users buy for themselves, for their family or friends, B2B marketing is aimed at various employees in a company who acquire resources and products for that company. As a rule, more than one person is involved in such decisions, which means that several target persons in different roles need to be taken into account for B2B marketing. In marketing for a marketing software product, for example, these may include IT managers and decision makers in the legal division in addition to marketing decision makers. B2B marketing must address all these groups of people equally. The target group is thus more complex than in B2C commerce. p o h S r e f ä h c S I S S : e g a m I "In my view, the scattergun approach is no longer suitable if you want to be able to compete". Ulrich Gursky, the marketing manager at Hagen Grote GmbH, introduced the program- matic catalog at his former employer SSI Schäfer Shop The advantage of this is that the points of contact for personalisation in business-to-business markets are also significantly more diverse than in end-consumer markets. On the other hand, B2B communication has a more difficult data situation than B2C commerce, which also makes personalisation using first-party data more difficult. While in B2C commerce data can be collected on a massive scale via private devices, this is much more difficult in the case of end devices used for business purposes. Furthermore, the use of private and business devices is often blurred today. This makes the clean separation of relevant data more difficult, especially for providers who simultaneously address both B2B and B2C target groups. Zero-party data instead of first-party data Data-based and automated processes as well as personalisation – which are commonplace in the B2C

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 41 sector – are gaining in importance in B2B marketing, as a study by Innofact on behalf of Munich-based management consultancy Cloudbridge Consulting shows. Accordingly, marketing automation and the digitisation of marketing and sales are among the most important issues that companies will be dealing with in the coming months. However, these urgently require B2B companies to build up more data knowledge, as Robin Heintze from Morefire emphasises. "An understanding of how to obtain data, how to process and merge it, needs to be developed. This competence is still lacking in many companies". Also, the infrastructure is often not prepared in advance, and there are many data silos. "Companies need to work very intensively on this so that marketing and sales can make better decisions based on data". Sales staff would therefore also have to understand the added value of data and learn to operate a CRM. B2B companies have to collect a great deal of information that is relevant in the long term for a good customer relationship: What is their business model? Which systems and machines are used? All this data needs to be collected and maintained. Quite a lot of data cannot be tapped via first-party data systems, as often works very well with classic B2C online shops. Instead, you have to get the customers to bequeath the data themselves as zero-party data. Where potential buyers have an interest in optimising processes, creating preferences and generating wish lists, this also results in data sources that can be used for personalisation – on the website, shop or procurement system and likewise in email mailings, print mailings and catalogue communications. The second approach to a good stock of customer data is via one's own sales. As Laura Ameskamp, COO of the B2B online marketing agency Kyto, points out: "In the past, the value of sales staff was also measured by the experience and customer contacts they brought to the table. This knowledge can be reproduced in a CRM". Everyone then knows in theory what topics the customers are interested in, which facility they used, when the next trade fair visit is due, or, on a quite personal level, what their children are called. "This makes some traditional sales processes more replaceable and creates new opportunities". Opportunities to reduce the room for improvement in B2B personalisation. (jg) Impressum Publisher: Hightext Verlag Graf und Treplin OHG 82234 Weßling Mischenrieder Weg 18 Phone +49 / 89- 57 83 87-0 Fax +49 / 89-57 83 87-99 www.onetoone.de Notice as per Section 8 (3) of the Bavarian Press Law The owners of HighText Verlag Graf und Treplin OHG, with 50 per cent of shares each, are Joa- chim Graf (editorial and advertising responsibil- ity) and Daniel Treplin (both journalists, based in Munich); Commercial Register Munich HR A 72216 Publisher (responsible for content under press law) Joachim Graf Editorial team: Redaktion @onetoone.de Dominik Grollmann (Editor-in-chief ) Christian Gehl, Irmela Schwab Further contributors: Sebastian Halm, Susan Rönisch We welcome your input: Editorial advisory board for programmatic printing: Timo Wägelein, Johann Schmidbauer, Sarah Kreutzer, Timo Raabe Powered by DDV advisory board: Prof. Dr. Bernd Skiera ( Goethe University Frankfurt), Boris von Nagy (German Dialogue Marketing Association / DDV), Martin Aschoff (Agnitas AG) ONEtoONE is a partner of the German Dialogue Marketing Association. DDV members receive ONEtoONE issues free of charge as part of this partnership. Topics and content that are rele- vant to dialogue marketing and the DDV are published in a designated section of ONEtoONE. Media team: Media @onetoone.de Dagmar Kraux, Elke Lange, Nadina Rizvanovic, Markus Strasser Reader service: Leserservice@onetoone.de Bianka Matthies Graphics: Grafik@onetoone.de Gertrud Graf Copy editor: Katrin Haase Printing Printed at Drupa 2024 on the Canon ProStream 2000 Publication frequency: 6 issues per year Prices: Single issue: EUR 7.90 Annual subscription: EUR 88.96 Prices incl. shipping, incl. VAT. ISSN: 2568-5635 The Drupa Special is a compilation of articles that have appeared in the programmatic printing special issues of ONEtoONE since 2020. All articles on this topic are also availa- ble at www.programmatic-printing.de Christian Gehl Editor Dominik Grollmann Editor-in chief

42 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 5 STEPS TO PROGRAMMATIC PRINT MAILINGS by Christof Förtsch (Managing Partner, IRS) and Frauke Schobelt Programmatic print enables the fully automated creation of printed mailings that are individualised and compatible with dialogue post. The good news: Many online retailers and DEFINITION MEASURES 1 You determine the type of mailer you're going to use to address your customers and on what occasion. In practice, the following measures have proven to be effective for getting started: • Large postcard for winning repeat business with last purchase date and product mailers already have all the necessary data for a quick • Large postcard for new customers after registration and easy pilot run. Despite the great successes (see “How to calculate program- matic print” from the 1/2020 issue), many companies shy away from planning and implementation because they find the topic too complex and time-consuming. Piloting a in the online shop with voucher based on the value of the goods and other emotional images depending on customer master data • Event-triggered large postcard with product recom- mendations (e.g. birthday, vouchers) • 6-page self-mailer with the last item purchased and 2 to 3 matching accessories/additional items (e.g. programmatic print mailing can be quickly and easily incor- “Complete Your Style!” in the fashion sector) porated into the sender's planned dialogue post activities by • 6-page self-mailer with the last item purchased displaying some of the classic dialogue post mailings as a hy- per-personalised variant with specific purchase recommen- dations. This then also becomes the basis for meaningful A/B tests, which in turn enable the programmatic print and appropriate service offers , incl. coupon code for next purchase • 8-page A4 catalogue excerpt, enveloped with specific purchase recommendations and top seller offers that result from recommenda- mailings to be rolled out successively and precisely. It is best tions in the company's own web shop to start with a non-binding initial consultation with one of the programmatic print specialists (see supplier listing). They will then be happy to explain the necessary steps to you in detail. m o m c o o c t . o o h t o p h k p c o k t c s o i / t r s o i / t r c o e t V c p e V U p f r U u f S r u © S © e g d a m B l i I . : :

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 43 2 3 TRIGGERS SYSTEM SETUP 4 The sending of a dialogue post mailing is always prompted by The client does not have to spend a lot of time something. This prompt can be based on the marketing plan (e.g. seasonal advertising) or it can be activated automatically by external factors (e.g. birthday or product purchase). Where the prompt is automatic, this is called a trigger. Possible triggers when getting started: • Integration into classic advertising material planning and replacing existing dialogue post mailings with greater individualisation/personalisation • Selecting a sub-target group from the email newsletter recipients • Birthday and anniversary mailings • Addding value to transactiondocuments (e.g. displaying points earned, customer loyalty programmes) • Later, if necessary, mailers to people who have abandoned items in shopping baskets 5 DATA ACCESS Once a programmatic print workflow has been set up, there is no need to provide any further graphic services before the actual dis- patch. This is programmatic at that point, and you also save costs for creative work. Programmatic print ensures that the dialogue post-enabled mailings are configured fully automatically. setting up the system either. Some providers offer a cloud-based solution that makes it particularly easy to get started. The data is processed by GDPR-compli- ant data centres in Germany. A third-party data processing agreement secures the whole thing legally, just like with a classic dialogue mail service provider. PRINTING & DISPATCH With the right machinery, specialised print shops and mailing service pro- viders can provide you with specific and clear, com- prehensive offers. It is often the case that the senders do not even know that their printing partner has long been able to meet the requirements for programmatic print. If this is not the case, the programmatic print partner will also help here ; they will set up the workflow with you, as they will know suitable print shops from other projects or even In the premium systems, this also includes the generation of the offer this service themselves. Editor's tip: Just take product data for purchase recommendations. another look at our supplier directory. Here, too, starting to cooperate with the programmatic print specialists is very easy: Product data: Use of an existing e-shop to fully automatically access the price, text and image data via the article number, or delivery of the article data as csv or xlm or later, if necessary, access to existing PIM, MAM and ERP systems Recommendation data: clustering of customers according to master data criteria or geodata, evaluation of the last purchase from the ERP, use of the next-best-offer recommendation from the shop system, e.g. as a cxv or xlm export. Later, potential expansion of the recommendation engine and the marketing automation system to include print output.

44 BUSINESS GUIDE ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Recalculated Print vs. digital: Which is more sustainable? The bottom line is that print campaigns are not only more efficient, but also more sustainable than their digital counterparts, as is revealed when we take a closer look at the matter. W hether on holiday, when shopping or with advertising: more and more customers are attaching importance to sustainability. This essentially includes the three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle. Wherever possible, resources should be conserved and things reused or – if there is no other way – then at least recycled. So long as this concerns tangible things, at least, it is very easy to understand and generally also feasible one way or another. Things get more dificult when comparing services. It is not always clear at first glance which resources are used. And it gets particularly complicated when digital services come into play. Who could say from the very outset whether streaming music or old-fashioned CD distribution is more favourable from a climate perspective? Marketers and consumers face a similar question when it comes to whether advertising on paper or in digital media is more sustainable. Can a piece of paper that is viewed briefly once end up being more sustainable than an electronic mailing? At first glance, paper is clearly at a disadvantage – after all, it has to be thrown away. And as soon as we do that, something inside us screams out: "Waste!" With a digital medium, hoeever, who thinks about how many resources have been wasted up until the point when an unread mail (hopefully!) gets deleted from an inbox? Manufacturing: How resource-hungry is paper? In fact, paper production carries a burden because it consumes a lot of energy and resources. For its production, wood is generally ground (cardboard) or boiled (graphic paper) in order to obtain the cellulose fibers contained within it. These are then suspended, compacted in a sieve and dried. Wood, water and energy are the main raw materials for paper production. How much of them are needed can be seen in the 2022 study Updated Life Cycle Assessment of Graphic and Tissue Paper by Germany's Federal Environment Agency: ● 3 tonnes of wood per tonne of paper. Wood is harmless from the point of view of its carbon footprint. It is a renewable raw material that is cultivated sustainably in Germany. This means that just as many trees are planted as are cut down. Papermaking uses residual wood, which cannot be used for higher-quality products. However, it is not possible to cover the entire demand for wood from domestic stocks. The fibre mass (not the wood) is also imported. However, the PEFC and FSC certification systems are also there to then ensure sustainable forestry. ● 10 tonnes of water per tonne of paper. The water demand in paper production is not insignificant – but has fallen sharply in recent years. At the beginning of the 1980s, it

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 BUSINESS GUIDE 45 was still around 25 litres; it is now at eight litres per kilogram of paper. In a modern operation, 80 percent of this can be cleaned and returned to the operational cycle. However, what is even more crucial than the losses at the papermaking factory is the consumption of so-called "virtual water". This is fresh water that is consumed throughout the production chain – from the tree to the plant distribution centre. One tonne of virgin paper comes to about 10,000 litres of water. One should still note that while the raw material wood is relatively unproblematic from an environmental perspective, water and energy consumption are the critical factors. Recycling ensures a good lifecycle assessment ● 13,000 kWh of energy per tonne of paper. The paper industry is the world's fifth-largest industrial energy consumer. To produce one tonne of paper from virgin wood fibres, as much energy is required as to produce one tonne of steel. Although consumption has fallen sharply in recent years, it is still at around 2,650 kilowatt hours per tonne – and that's in the plant. The total virtual energy consumption, though, from the forest to delivery, is estimated by the Federal Environment Agency to be higher and amounts to approx. 13,000 kWh per tonne of paper. However, these figures underestimate one essential factor: paper can be recycled at a high quality. Around 78 percent of the cellulose fibres used in Germany do not originate from virgin fibre production and are instead obtained during recycling. And their production is far more resource-efficient: only 1.12 tonnes of waste paper, 2,250 litres of water and 4,200 kWh of energy are consumed for one tonne of recycled paper. If one combines the resource consumption of virgin and recycled fibres based on the recycling rate for graphic paper, the actual resource consumption for one tonne of k c o t s r e t t u h s _ h s u p a m : e g a m I

46 ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 Carbon footprint of digital vs. print mailings Media channel CO₂ emissions for production and shipping per unit (1) Conversion rate (2) 10g 0.5% 6.8% Email Classic print Programmatic print 20g (for standard letter) 20g (for standard letter) Shipping quantity for conversion = 1 200 units 14.7 units Total CO2 emissions 2,000g 294g 13.6% 7.4 units 148g (1) Internationally recognised estimate according to (among others): RENN Regionale Netzstellen Nachhaltigkeit https://www.nachhaltiger-warenkorb.de/klimabilanz-e-mail-vs-brief (2) According to: CMC Dialogpoststudie 2021, https://www.collaborativemarketingclub.com/cmc-print-mailing-studie-neukunden Costs/benefits of different output channels Media channel Print run Email 10,000 Conception, art work, programming €2,500.00 Shipping costs or postage for postcards €100.00 Postcard printing costs €0.00 Total CO ₂ (20 g/letter) 0kg CO₂ compensation (€23/ tonne) €0.00 Marketing investment for 10,000 units €2,600.00 Conversion rate CVR 0.5% Shopping baskets sold 50 Shopping basket value (average) €100.00 Cost per order (CpO) €52.00 Revenue earned €5,000.00 Profit margin from sales 25% Profit from sales €1,250.00 Profit after deduction of marketing investment €-1,350.00 ROMI (return on media investment) €-0.52 Classic print Programmatic print 10,000 €5,000.00 €2,800.00 €250.00 200kg €4.50 10,000 € 7,500.00 €2,800.00 €500.00 200kg €4.60 €8,054.60 €10,804.60 6.8% 680 €122.00 €11.84 €82,960.00 30% €24,888.00 €16,833.40 €2.09 13.6% 1,360 €122.00 €7.94 €165,920.00 30% €49,776.00 €38,971.40 €3.61

ONEtoONE Drupa-Special Programmatic Printing 2024 47 paper is 870kg of waste paper, 660kg of wood, 4,000 litres of water and 6,100kWh of energy, or a CO₂ equivalent of 850kg. This means that the following resources are consumed to produce one A4 letter (quality: 80g/m2): ● 3.3 grams of wood ● 20ml of water ● 30Wh energy ● 4 grams of CO₂ equivalents Comparison with digital media But aren't four grams of CO₂ still a lot compared to a purely digital email? After all, apart from a tiny amount of electricity, a digital message consumes no ressources at all, can be transported over any distances, no matter how far, and can be deleted at any time in just one swipe. But this is not entirely the case, however. Ultimately, a computer or a smartphone is also required to receive an email. Production of a laptop alone can consume up to 20,000 litres of water (across the entire production chain). A laptop is admittedly not made exclusively for receiving emails, and certainly not for receiving just a single email. However, just in terms of water consumption, a laptop would have to receive a staggering 1 million emails during its entire lifetime to reach the same value. This is unlikely to happen. What's more, the laptop not only consumes water during production, but also requires energy for operation. And the email is not only received on a laptop, but is also written on a computer and distributed via the Internet, as well as many routers, servers, mobile radio antennas and Wi-Fi access points. Energy and resources are consumed everywhere. And there is another crucial difference: a sheet of paper is produced and printed once – after that, it no longer consumes any energy. An email is completely different: as long as it is stored somewhere, it costs electricity. Over the years, lots of un-deleted emails therefore completely ruin the CO2 footprint. With many billions of emails being unnecessarily stored worldwide, this all adds up to a lot. To be fair, however, we must also admit that we have only used the carbon footprint of the paper production in our analysis so far. However, for emails, the entire chain has already been included, right up until delivery. And anyone who has ever created a print mailing knows that the postage costs are significantly higher than the paper and printing costs. The same applies to the CO2 emissions: it is not the production, but the delivery of the sheet of paper that is the actual driver of CO2. The bottom line is that the lifecycle assessments of paper and digital media are very difficult to compare. In the case of paper, there are individual items which are relatively easy to quantify. Electronic media, on the other hand, involve high initial resource consumption, which must then be written off over a product's useful life. At the same time, however, there are also usage costs that add up over time. Letter or email – which is more environmentally friendly? In order to be able to compare the carbon footprint of print and email mailings, one can, ultimately, only rely on qualified estimates. As can be read on the website of the Baden-Württemberg State Institute for the Environment, Survey and Nature Conservation, for example, environmental experts have agreed to accept an average CO2 emission of 10 grams for one email. For a standard letter transported by post, on the other hand, a total of 20 grams (production, printing, transport) is estimated. The bottom line is that the email thus retains a decent CO2advantage. At the same time, however, it is also clear that an email distribution list only has to be twice as large (or has to be used twice as often) in order for this advantage to be lost. This is not very much in practice. Because the disciplining factor of postage is missing, the end result is a rebound effect: the savings are overcompensated for by increased usage. Emails are sent in such an excessive fashion that the CO2 advantage is positively pulverised. This can be understood by means of a simple calculation: according to the CMC Dialogpost study, emails rack up an average conversion rate of 0.5 percent. A comparable classic print mailing will achieve a conversion rate of around seven percent, and a post mailing optimised by means of programmatic printing will come in at a rate of over 13 percent. This means: to encourage customers to buy, email marketers send 200 emails, while print marketers send fewer than 15 letters (classic mailing) or 7.4 letters (programmatic printing). For 200 emails, however, 2 kg of CO2 are emitted, whereas, for seven and a half letters, the amount is not even 150 grams. The result is that, on balance, the carbon footprint of programmatic printing is more than 13 times lower than that of than an email campaign. Anyone who wants to further reduce their company's CO2 emissions can also achieve this through offset payments. A number of print service providers offer climate-neutral printing, and Deutsche Post can also organise climate- neutral shipping. The special issue that you are holding in your hands was created in exactly the same way and sent directly to you: printed climate-neutrally and sent via Go Green. The e-paper edition appears on our climate-neutral websites (via ClimatePartner) and is promoted by means of newsletter marketing, for which we use 100% green electricity. (Dominik Grollmann)

FOR BRANDING THAT LASTS The Power of Print in Marketing Campaigns. Print offers a lot of benefits for marketing. By way of Programmatic Printing, these benefits can now be used in an efficient, targeted and integrated way to optimise conversion rates. At drupa 2024, Hall 8A, Canon will demonstrate how this works in theory and real life and what role digital printing plays in this. The power to move Learn more now at www.canon-europe.com/business/insights/events/drupa