Walking around the factory floor a couple of weeks back I noticed an old machine sat in a dusty corner of our facility – our old Heidelberg SBG Cylinder. The old Heidelberg, that was once a cornerstone of platen press production and 50 or 60 years ago would have been getting a regular hammering, now sits quietly in the corner after so many years of loyal service. It almost seems sad for the old machine.
A lot has changed since those days and through 70 years in the print and direct mail industries we’ve seen a great deal of change; change in the trade, change in technology, change in demand, change in the economy. The products and services we can now supply are astounding.
The industry will continue to shift and demand more of our capabilities and as pioneers in direct mail and print our parent company DMP has always relished the responsibility of adopting new and exciting technologies. By harnessing these technologies and moulding them into effective and highly useful resources we are able to continually offer market leading services.
Recently marketing and communication professionals have slowly started seeing the vast potential of variable data printing (known as VDP), something we have already perfected. VDP allows us to create and print highly personalised direct mail communications where the recipient gets a bespoke mail piece, tailored to them. It’s an amazing resource that isn’t used nearly enough. Here at DMP we realised that there are barriers to utilising this sort of technology: its complex, its expensive, its relatively new and unused. So we combined the technology with on demand, high speed digital print, and an amazing, easy to use online design platform. It’s called Hello Market and it allows users to create and mail fully personalised marketing communications, at low cost, direct from their desktop pc or laptop.
We’ve come a long way since the old Heidelberg and while it still has its place as a die cutter and creaser in our facility, we know that the future is variable data printing – the future is Hello Market.