Creating printed promotions - A worthwhile, yet time consuming process
Without a software solution, the manual creation of printed promotions like flyers, freestanding inserts, catalogs, and in-store promotions, is time consuming, error prone, and filled with potential bottlenecks. Some of the biggest issues retailers and catalogers complain about are:
- Time wasted to hunt and gather previously used images and copy
- Re-occurring errors from one promotion cycle to the next
- Redundant review cycles resulting in prolonged production cycles
- Time crunch and missed deadlines due to unforeseen circumstances – like staff getting sick or images not being delivered on time from photo shoots
- Time intensive page creation process
- High production cost through overtime work (just throw more people at it)
- No centralized location to pickup and reuse content
- Update print content on the fly from a PIM
Many successful retailers and catalogers have implemented semi-automated production environments but need to optimize the processes even more as they compete in a multi-channel, multi-lingual world.
Creating printed promotion remains an art. However, the data aggregation, management, enrichment, and delivery of consistent product content can be greatly simplified by integrating DTP (desktop publishing) tools like QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign CS with a Product Information Management solution.
Benefits of DTP Integration
The central management of product information makes it easy to aggregate, manage, enrich, and update content. Product owners can collaborate with copywriters, copy editors, translators, designers, photographers, studios and other creative staff to create multi-channel promotions more efficiently and quickly.
By linking all related product content – SKU, price, copy, images etc. – and select the promotional vehicle within the PIM, the time of building pages in the DTP application can be reduced greatly. Through simple drag and drop, page layout artist pull pre-selected product content onto the page, and focus on finalizing the look and feel of each page rather than looking for content.
As a result, an integrated DTP and PIM solution will:
- Shorten the page creation time by up to 70%
- Eliminate any hunting and gathering for product images
- Reduce – if not eliminate – errors and use of out dated copy
- Free up page builder time to focus on other tasks or create more pages
- Allow final content changes to be made minutes before production end; i.e., update final pricing minutes before sending the flyer off to the printer
- Create a collaborative work environment between merchandisers and creatives
- Allow users to prepare web content during print production workflow
To find out how LAGO DTP can help you create more with the same number of staff in less time, read about it at LAGO for DTP.
