What was produced?
A personalised run of 5,000 16-page catalogues, with each one featuring a selection of 28 products uniquely selected based on the needs of the individual recipient.
What did the job entail?
To tailor each of the 5,000 catalogues to their 5,000 recipients, more than 1.3 million data elements were compiled and processed, including sales history, related product purchase and web-browsing data, to determine which 28 products would appear in each catalogue.
High Wycombe-based direct marketing specialist First Move was commissioned to distil the elements into a printed job, with each copy comprising 240 data variables including a library of 6,421 unique products from which 28 per person would be chosen, and differing artwork based on the data required.
Once the complex templating process was completed, First Move used its Xerox Trivor 2400 inkjet system, which could produce more than 2,000 catalogues per hour, to print off the varying products on to 130gsm Lumi stock in CMYK. It used the new EFI Fiery RIP to process the significant volumes of data.
A Duplo System 5000 bookletmaker was then used to bind the catalogues before they were sorted on a Buhrs insertion system for distribution.
First Move chair David Amor (pictured) said: “We have processed variable data for jobs before but this was on a much more significant scale – the sheer volume was greater than anyone else I am aware of has handled before.
What challenges were overcome?
With a considerable amount of data to process, a series of software-based processes were deployed. First Move’s IT department first needed to transfer the complex XML they received from the client into data that could be processed as “structured query language” (SQL), allowing for data integrity.
The Software Bureau Cygnus system allowed the team to discount deceased customers and sort the data for savings on postal cost. Then, a print template for each recipient was compiled using Objectif Lune Planet Press design and production software linked to the database, which fed into a PDF output that was sent through the Xerox FreeFlow print server to finally become a tangible, printed product.
What was the feedback?
Complete Care managing director Jon Price said: “I have been waiting for 10 years to do this and am really excited about its potential to communicate with our customers on a one-to-one basis and lift our customer engagement and life time value.”
