How Production Printers Are Enabling Marketers to Respond to Today’s Market Defining Pressures
By Sander Sondaal, Director Commercial Print Sales, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe
Escalating costs, greater development of sustainable practices, and enhancing customer engagement are among the market pressures shaping strategy for today’s marketers, print buyers, and brands.
These pressures are defining their relationship with the communications channels that can be used and the technologies that can be adopted in these ways:
1 Escalating costs
The European Parliament reported that the rising cost of living is the most pressing worry for 93% of Europeans. Almost half of the EU population (46%) say that their standard of living had been reduced due to the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the cost of living crisis. A further 39% expect to see their standard of living fall in during 2023.
Great Britain’s Office for National Statistics reported that 71% of British adults were cutting back on non-essentials, 54% were shopping around more and 52% were spending less on food shopping and essentials. Europeans are also cutting back on subscriptions such as those for streaming services, fitness apps or other non-essential things.
This places greater pressure onmarketers, print buyers, and brands to deliver improved affordability or to communicate why their offering is valuable. It is also why they should choose the most appropriate message and avoid a spray and pray approach. This is where highly crafted, personalised but affordable campaigns, produced on the just-announced Ricoh Pro™ 9500, the latest evolution in colour sheetfed digital printing technology, can be developed to detail relevant USPs.
2 Sustainability
According to Deloitte’s Global Marketing Trends 2023 brands reported their top three priorities for sustainability efforts were improving sustainability of internal marketing practices, promoting more sustainable product and service offerings, and establishing long term sustainability commitments.
Digital production printers have been developed to produce tailored campaigns on demand, ensuring the most efficient use of resources. They have also been designed to be more sustainable in terms of their manufacture by reducing energy consumption while maximising production uptime and efficiency. Ricoh’s software, some of which is cloud-based, aids efficiency, productivity and trims waste, particularly with substrates.
Ricoh also identifies practical solutions to help print businesses drive down costs, transform operations and support growth with its Lean Print Services while its Carbon Balanced Printing Programme enables operations to analyse, optimise and neutralise their carbon emissions. Ricoh operates a zero waste to landfill strategy at its manufacturing facility too, and its Comet Circle model for reusing parts and recycling materials lessens environmental impact and promotes a multi-tiered recycling system.. All these benefits can be passed on to marketers, print buyers, and brands.
These are just a few of the initiatives that have resulted in Ricoh being rated as one of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the world for the eleventh time and selected as a member of the Sustainability Yearbook 2023 by S&P Global.
3 Personalisation
Customers have growing expectations around personalisation with an Insider Intelligence survey reporting 73% of shoppers imagine brands will understand their unique needs. 56% expect offers to always be personalised.
This is where personalised print produced on systems such as the brand new Ricoh Pro C9500 can play a key role. Beyond using the recipient’s name and address marketers can develop tailored communications and content that respond to specific triggers or actions. These can be based on previous information shared such as key dates, interests or buying habits
.Deloitte’s research also highlighted interest in the implementation of systems or algorithms to enhance customer personalisation. Output from Ricoh’s class leading production printers is supported by software solutions such as /data.mill Data Cleansing Solution that automatically interrogates and corrects data inaccuracies quickly and simply, aiding a smooth and effective process and the easy to use FusionPro VDP Solutions suite of tools for simple design and production of personalised communications.
These are just some of the ways digital printing can help marketers, print buyers, and brands respond to the challenges they face today. Its versatility and content flexibility enables specific tailoring for messaging that resonates, is memorable, and drives results.
For further information, please visit www.ricoh-europe.com
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