Merqury Marketing takes personalised printing bull by the horns

Merqury Marketing printed personalised covers of Blou, the Blue Bulls magazine, for box owners at Loftus Versfeld rugby stadium in Pretoria, following the team's recent victory over New Zealand's Chiefs to claim the Super 14 rugby title for the second time. The marketing tactic has led to several business opportunities for Merqury Marketing with the blue-chip companies that hold those boxes, and resulted in several orders for additional personalised magazines.

“A personalised magazine was a first for this audience,” says Gerhard van Rooyen, director of business development at Merqury Marketing. “It was a unique souvenir item attached to a memorable event and it communicated perfectly what variable data printing (VDP) is to our target market.

“All of the clients who ordered personalised magazines from us are now talking to us about broader one-to-one communications strategies. The campaign was topical, distinct, and allowed us to forge very powerful ties in a short space of time, because we delivered an outstanding quality product on time and immediately cultivated trust with these clients. That type of rapport has been one of the biggest factors of success in our business and will continue to be invaluable in future dealings.”

Merqury Marketing delivers its service predominantly using below-the-line media platforms, specialising in design, implementation, management and measurement of multi-touch marketing campaigns with emphasis on targeted and personalised material. Its services include consulting, data management and one-to-one communications solutions.

Bowens in Johannesburg provided Mercury Marketing with the personalised magazines. The business provides a full range of digital printing services to posters, personalised calendars and photo. Merqury Marketing's job was printed on a Xerox iGen3.

“Our clients provided us with the names of everyone who they wanted to send magazines to,” says Van Rooyen. “We ran that through our checking process to eliminate any potential errors and then fed that into Bowens' variable software system on the Xerox printer. It resulted in copies of Blou with each person's name printed on the cover, which is what makes it so unique and such a powerful medium for reaching people directly.”

This is software that communicates with a variety of printers and printer interfaces as well as computer systems, integrates the worlds of print and electronic media to make it easier for customers to create and produce personalised communications.

The Xerox iGen3 digital production press prints with automatic make-ready and collation, the ability to mix stocks in a run, and built-in intelligence to maintain colour fidelity and registration.

“The result was a beautiful magazine,” says Van Rooyen, “and it was difficult to differentiate between the cover and the inside back page advert printed on a litho press and we must give credit to our partner, Bowens, for always delivering a superior product.

“It meant we were able to cut through the clutter of today's consumer environment, with people constantly bombarded with generic marketing messages, to reach our prospects in an effective personalised communication.

“It was personalised, different and perfectly timed since we were rapidly able to capitalise on the hype surrounding the Bulls' success. In these harsh economic times it is important for marketing managers to spend their budgets where they will have maximum impact, and leveraging one-to-one marketing campaigns such as this builds a great deal of brand loyalty and drives sales.”

Paul Haglich, marketing manager of production systems group at Bytes Document Solutions, authorised Xerox distributor to 24 sub-Saharan countries, says: “Variable data printing on the iGen allows companies like Merqury Marketing to customise, personalise and add value to as many pages as they wish in conjunction with leading-edge print service providers such as Bowens. They simply use their customer data, captured from CRM databases, Web sites, call centres or delivered direct from the customer, to drive variable text, images, and graphics in marketing communications materials such as Blou magazine. It supports their high value customer marketing programmes and increases customer loyalty and response rates.”