Digital

In the digital age, successful printers are not necessarily defined by the trade in which they operate. Dialogue Solutions is a leading example of the new age of printing. With the strapline, “your communications mouthpiece”, it terms itself a ‘marketing support company’; despite its arsenal of traditional and digital printers, print is only one of the services it offers.

Jeremy Walters, the company’s managing director, is not from a print background. He comes from new media and was, he says, suited to the job due to his knowledge of software and how to sell it to clients.

“The traditional print model is dead in the water,” he says. “Printers need to start thinking like their clients, who want the complete package: print that’s available at the click of a button, and a service that goes above and beyond print alone.

“We are a marketing solutions company and print is only one aspect of our offering. We are about technology driving output, about clients using cross-platform strategies to market their services and products.”

So, not a printer per se, but Digital Solutions has a strong print heritage. The company was founded in 1980 as Eden Lithographic Reproduction, before being bought out by Howitt in 2005 and renamed Howitt Digital. A change of name followed to Dialogue Solutions, because, according to Walters, “it encompassed the many solutions that we offer”.

The company has pioneered the age of digital printing. Walters proudly points to a Xeikon with a serial number of 02 as evidence of the company’s inherent ambition to break new markets and drive the digital print industry.

In the last two years, Dialogue has grown its floor space from 400m² to a state-of-the-art 1,400m² facility. Walters believes the firm’s web-to-print offering has been key to its success.

One such program is MarketPower. Designed with the aim of “empowering the individual”, it is a web-based tool which allows users to manage the creation, ordering and execution of branded digital communications via an on-demand ordering and design system.

The interface provides the user templates of advertising literature regulated by the client’s head office. On to these templates, users can input information to tailor the document to their local market and send the order direct to Dialogue Solutions, who will print and dispatch it.

Users can plan and execute multi-channel campaigns, from email, SMS and across printed communications. Approval procedures can also be incorporated into the ordering process and spending levels set for individual departments, giving businesses central and local control of their budgets.

“The technology enables local branches to respond to local market conditions on an ad-hoc basis,” says James Parker, group software development director. “In addition, all transactions are recorded so head office can ascertain the exact effect of each campaign.”

Walters adds: “MarketPower gives control back to the decision makers, both at head office and local level, and places the power of marketing in the hands of those who need it most: marketers.

“The real beauty of MarketPower is that it gives confidence to businesses. They can manage campaigns when it is right for them, but also guarantee their brand image is maintained.”

MarketPower is complemented by the Edenbridge firm’s Infrastream technology: a cross-platform, direct-marketing tool. It is centred on the company’s assertion that, via ‘trigger marketing’ across SMS, email and print, response rates for direct mail can be increased by up to 200%.

In trigger marketing, special prompts are defined and coded into the user’s database. When a pre-determined event occurs, these strips of code ‘trigger’ the automatic creation and dispatch of a relevant marketing communication. “The more information we collect, the more we can appeal to the customer via direct mail,” said Walters. “Infrastream is an example of how print fits into cross-platform marketing to deliver a total solution for the client.”

At the heart of Walter’s philosophy on printing in the digital age is the importance of data. Data enables personalisation, which boosts sales.

Last year, Sony commissioned Dialogue Solutions to improve pre-order sales for the launch of the Spider-Man 3 DVD. Dialogue Solutions came up with the idea of offering a personalised poster.

On registration for the DVD, customers could personalise the message under the banner title, and Dialogue printed and dispatched the order.

Walters believes that the Sony project is indicative of how to use print in the digital age. He concludes: “Success in print lies with those who can successfully marry a diversified product service with exceptional customer service.”