I was approached to find a way to funnel more business to a digital on-demand printing facility in Oregon. This service was exceptional in that the could print full color two-sided and laminated, with dynamic data (addressed from list and customized) – postmarked first class and at the postal main office within 24 hours of receiving your online order – all for 40¢ per postcard. Even with orders as small as a hundred units.
My solution was to build an integrated ordering system and web site that would compose and send PDF artwork directly to their Xeikon 5000 presses, ready to go. Then, the second phase was to white label this system for companies that have large sales fleets that frequently send direct mail, like insurance companies, realtors, MLMs, banks, tire stores and others. With my partner John, we were quite successful in gaining brand management approval and top-down rollout strategies with over 50 companies, several Fortune 500.
For the AdSwift generic web site, we built an ad account, where marketing designers could upload generic ads in a variety of small business categories, where any business owner could upload and customize the art with their own logo. The artists were compensated by a percentage of the print order and we had over 50 participating.
It was all reduced to this 5-step ordering system that we focus-grouped and more. Later some of my thinking on this found its way into more robust commercial products that emerged from this partnership.
Here was my first draft on it…
This is the system that worked best.
