Get Personal To Get Business In Down Economy; People Crave High Touch In Low Tolerance Business Environment

    DENVER, CO, July 15, 2009 /24-7PressRelease/ -- By Peter Renton
Lightning Labels, Inc.

If you want to get new business and keep present customers, get personal. Our topsy-turvy economy and increasingly impersonal business pitches, communications and customer service have strained loyalty and patience to the breaking point.

People are overworked, under-supported, and mad as hell. And, they're not going to take it anymore. What they will take, graciously and gratefully, is a heartfelt gift personalized in some substantial and meaningful way.

By personalized, we're not talking about branded pens, coffee mugs and other trinkets carrying branding of companies wanting to sell you something. Even with the recipient's name included, this has become, if not passe, certainly done to death.

Be different. Be fresh. Be significant.

Thanks to the technological advances brought about by digital label printing, it's now possible to achieve meaningful personalization to multiple, even thousands of, recipients without spending a fortune. Personal value - when communicated to your customer or prospect through a thoughtful gesture - is a message much more likely to garner business for your company than a kitschy token.

Imagine getting an elegant bottle of wine or tin of cookies with a personalized label that says, "Created with care for [name of recipient] from [name of company]." To get even more impactful, add a graphic that's personal to the recipient (e.g., his or her photo, logo or other personally significant visual). And, of course, your company's brand can be included. Just present it tastefully so that it doesn't smack of blatant self-promotion.

To get started, develop a prospect list, contact the seller of an item you want to buy, and locate a printer or other source that can arrange for the development of personalized digital labels. To find resources such as printers, you can ask the item seller for recommendations and/or type "digital label printing" in your search engine.

Besides pricing and timeframes, make sure the prospective printer has experience working with personalized product labels and can offer quick turnaround regardless of workload. Also, request a press proof to see exactly what your finished order will look like before okaying the print run.

For a reasonable cost, you can develop a very eye-catching, artfully designed label with each recipient's name, branded to your company, and complete the fulfillment process through delivery.

State-of the-art digital printing enables one-on-one personalization in quantities of hundreds up to thousands. You can even do "limited edition" labeling (e.g., 1 of 500, 2 of 500, and so forth) to make the product more individualized and special. Print quality is even better than traditional label printing.

Unlike traditional printing presses where plates and inks are loaded before any labels are printed, a time-consuming and rigid process that produces roll after roll of identical labels, digital label printing requires no plates and every label potentially can be different.

Because digital label printing allows economical customization of every label, you could design label images or icons to reflect the prospect's location or type of business as well as provide a personal recipient message.

And digital printing carries no hefty upfront production charge--as does offset printing--so you could do a pilot personalized program in just about any quantity. Per-unit costs are very reasonable in quantities of 250 on up. Based on positive results, you could then do subsequent rounds without paying a premium.

Want to save money and expand reach at the same time? Partner with a promotionally-minded product manufacturer looking to expand its market cost-effectively--possibly an up-and-coming winery or coffee supplier. By combining forces--and sharing costs--you could develop a personalized prospecting program that brands both companies.

With or without a strategic partner, you can keep costs under control. Say you want to target 500 prospects with their own "private label" wine or hot sauce. Figure $12 for the wine, $6 for shipping and only about 95 cents for a personalized label--the turnkey package costs in the neighborhood of $18.95.

For hot sauce, plan on a turnkey cost of $10.70--$6 product, $4 shipping, 70 cents digital label printing.

If you're seeking novel, meaningful ways to impact prospects this year, stop scratching your head and start clicking your mouse on digital label printing.

Peter Renton is the founder of Lightning Labels, America's first all-digital label printer, ranked 1299 on Inc. Magazine's list of 5000 fastest growing US companies. Lightning Labels also is North America's first owner of multiple Hewlett-Packard Indigo WS4500s, HP's latest-generation label and packaging digital presses. He writes regularly about the label printing industry on the Lightning Labels blog at http://blog.lightninglabels.com. For more information, go to www.lightninglabels.com, email [email protected], or call 888.685.2235.

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