Print Solutions Magazine, March 2005 -- Case Study: Commercial Printing

Chambers of Commerce Get Customized Newsletters

When Carr Printing won a bid to produce newsletters for four chambers of commerce along Utah’s Wasatch mountain range, the company’s rewards went beyond gaining the accounts. Carr’s digital printing process allows it to personalize advertisements and produce customized newsletters with common content for the Wasatch Business Connection. The result: a community service that attracts attention from area businesses—other potential customers.

“We have seen more cooperation among chambers than ever before because they realize they have something in common and they can work together,” says Lloyd Carr, president of the Bountiful, Utah-based distributorship. “As businesspeople, we all have responsibilities and obligations to find solutions to community problems. The only way those solutions can happen is if people work together.”

The Wasatch Business Connection includes four Utah chambers of commerce: Provo/Orem, Salt Lake Valley, Davis County and Ogden/Weber. Because each community confronts similar legislative issues, producing a newsletter with common copy shows businesspeople they can work together to resolve issues, Carr says. At the same time, cities have events and concerns that don’t overlap. The newsletter had to contain “filler” space for this information.

Carr Printing’s digital printing capabilities allow the chambers to include the “canned copy,” plus personalize newsletters with city-specific stories. Advertisers benefit from the technology because they can target their messages to different audiences. For example, an advertiser might create different slogans or designs for professional and consumer readers.

“The newsletters print from computer to paper—the process skips the plate altogether,” Carr says. The computer electronically generates an image on a printing press drum. The drum attracts ink, which is suspended in a mineral oil that affixes ink to pixels. Pixels then form a blanket similar to an offset press, Carr says. “The drum changes the image on the fly. The press takes the image like a photocopier. On every sheet [of paper], the image is regenerated, so you can actually change every sheet as it is produced.”

This quick-change press process means cost-effective newsletter personalization for every chamber of commerce and each advertiser. “If we had a customer that was a retailer and a customer who was a professional, we could print a different issue for each client,” Carr says. Carr Printing’s technology allows customers to tweak advertisements depending on geography or customer type. “Newsletter advertisers have a unique market to speak one-on-one with business owners rather than turning to blanket marketing techniques,” he adds.

The system is convenient for newsletter production, which accounts for nearly 40,000 newsletters each month and 10 percent to 15 percent of Carr Printing’s sales. The firm also offers similar, traditional printed products, such as yearbooks, election supplies and telephone directories, and it houses a design division.

Carr says the chambers of commerce and some advertisers were skeptical to buy into the value associated with custom printing. He explained to them that “advertisers get better results with smart marketing,” he says. But this message doesn’t persuade customers who are conditioned to make buying decisions based on cost per piece. “Traditional print buyers say, ‘We need 5,000 of this. How cheap can you get it done?’” Carr says. “They are looking for quality and per-piece price. We have to explain to them that cost-per-piece does not matter. Results matter.”

Carr tells potential clients that higher response rates and increased business justify costs associated with customized products and digital printing. “If a customer gets a .5 percent return and they spend $5,000 on the pieces, that might not be so good,” he says. “I ask customers, ‘If you can spend twice as much and get 20 to 30 percent returns, would it be worth the cost?’”

In addition to selling the concepts of technology (digital printing) to the chambers of commerce, Carr had to defend the value of tradition (printed newsletters instead of online ones). “You can take them anywhere,” he says of newsletters. “They can be read without devices, they don’t run out of batteries, you can stuff them in a briefcase, and read them on an airplane or in a waiting room.” Carr also knew that the publications his firm would produce for the chambers of commerce had high pass-around potential.

These messages eventually resonated with chamber members and advertisers, then the business community at large. Today, chamber members contribute most of the editorial; Carr Printing fills in empty spots, prints the products and often sells advertising. “The newsletters have been a boon to us, and we have contacted new folks” who seek more information about Carr Printing or who are impressed with the newsletters, Carr says.

Most of all, Carr says, he’s pleased that the project helps link communities. “A chamber of commerce is an opportunity for cooperation between multiple parties to make things happen,” he says. Recently, Davis County Chamber of Commerce honored Carr Printing with a legacy award for community involvement.

—Kristen Hampshire

Selling Points

Before earning a newsletter print contract from four chambers of commerce in Utah, Lloyd Carr, president of Bountiful, Utah-based Carr Printing, educated members and local business advertisers on newsletter benefits. Here were three of his points:

Communication resonates with customers better than advertising. Newsletters offer information that readers value.

Newsletters are portable, can be read without technological devices, and can be saved, clipped and marked.

Newsletters produced through digital technology combine the advantages of physical documents (convenient for readers) with the value of customization. This means flexibility for advertisers.

Distributorship Carr Printing, Bountiful, Utah, uses digital printing to personalize advertisements and produce customized newsletters with common content for the Wasatch Business Connection.