The biggest trends in Digital Publishing
The biggest trends in Digital Publishing
Retail print catalogs are trendy right now – but so are their digital counterparts. In fact, it’s estimated that the global digital publishing market will grow more than 11 percent year-over-year from 2022 to 2023, climbing from $41.3 billion in 2022 to $45.9 billion in 2023.
As a result, publishers are altering their distribution methods and expanding what’s possible. Trends like video covers, free-form navigation, web integration, native-style ads, mobile compatibility, and hidden depth of content are making more of what digital magazines can do.
Here are the biggest trends happening now and next in the world of digital publishing.
Skip to what you want to see: Free-Form Navigation
With print catalogs, readers can flip to the pages they want to read first, bypassing anything they don’t want or need to see. This feature used to be print-only, while digital publications required readers to click through from one page to the next without the option to jump to what interests them most.
But free-form navigation is changing the game and making it more straightforward for readers to jump to the most relevant pages.
With free-form navigation, readers can skip to their favorite features and choose their own adventure when exploring digital content. They can tap images to read specific articles or reviews and discover the content in their preferred order.
Ads that don’t feel like ads: Native-Style Advertising
Retailers are finding new ways to incorporate ads – and in some cases, readers aren’t even aware it’s happening.
Welcome to the world of native-style ads, unobtrusive advertisement strategies that publishers and advertisers can use to connect with their target audience without seeming too pushy or sales-focused. Native ads are custom-tailored to match the aesthetics and tone of the platform; these advertisements don’t feel like ads at all. They fit the look and feel of the digital publication, making them a seamless part of the user’s experience. Why is this so effective? The answers are two-fold:
- It expands the organic reach of each ad
- It fosters better engagement with target audiences
In the US, native ad spending increased by 37 percent in 2021, and spending is anticipated to surpass $100 billion in 2023. This spend may include sponsored content, in-feed ads on social media, video content, and other innovative native ad formats.
Making it personal: Personalisation in Publishing
According to McKinsey, 71 percent of today’s consumers have come to expect their interactions to be personalized – and what’s more, 76 percent of consumers find it frustrating if they don’t get this level of customized attention. Personalization can present challenges for paper publishing, but some barriers are removed for more digital formats.
Why does personalization matter so much? Besides offering consumers the experience they want, it increases engagement. When retailers focus on what individual customers want and need by working to understand their preferences, they deliver the kind of content your customers want.
How do retailers discover what customers want? You can leverage tools to analyze their actions and preferences and take small surveys on user interest to gear your publication toward specific audiences. With the proper data integration tools, retailers can insert user-specific content into digital publications, customizing messaging for each reader.
This is especially important for retailers looking to connect with Gen Z – the next generation of subscribers, consumers, and customers. Gen Z is a unique audience that consumes content differently than their older counterparts; they have a distinct point of view and spend more of their media time on video platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Publishers should seek ways to meet Gen Z audiences where they are and tailor their content to them.
More than meets the eye: Hidden-Depth Content
One unique benefit of digital publishing? Retailers can pack more content into each page with hidden-depth content, much like a children’s pop-up book.
Often, this looks like a small “+” in the corner of a photo or following a section of the text, revealing extra details like captions and additional data. Hidden-depth content can also include features like:
- PDF downloads
- Archival maps, letters, or documents
- More statistics
- Extended photo carousels or galleries
Scrolling text or historical timelines can sometimes be their own table of contents, with each point on the timeline serving as its access point to additional content.
What are the perks of hidden depth of content? It’s a great strategy to encourage readers to interact and engage. It can also serve as a far more exciting way to present information.
On-the-Go: An increased focus on Mobile and Responsive Design
There’s been a notable uptick in mobile versus desktop internet access for quite some time. This trend continues to pick up steam – and today, 55 percent of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. In fact, 92.3 percent of internet users are accessing the web via their mobile phones.
For retailers, this should mean increased, though not sole, focus on the mobile version of their online content. In certain instances, it may be beneficial to think mobile-first, depending on their target audiences and how they source their media. For now, the balance of mobile-first or desktop-first creation largely depends on the intended readers.
This doesn’t have to mean a complete overhaul of digital publication processes or twice the work to create two versions of the same publication; with a few slight adjustments, building a mobile version can be quickly accomplished at the end of the digital publication creation process, and some retailers may opt to utilize a completely responsive design that adapts to any device or screen type their reader may use to access their content.
Publishers don’t have to approach every piece of content in their digital publication from a mobile perspective – for some, the idea of limiting screen size may also limit their creativity. Instead, digital publications should be built and designed with the idea that every desktop page, article, and edition also has a mobile version. Artwork, galleries, videos, interactive media, and all other content can be easily borrowed or adjusted from desktop versions at the end of the creation process.
Bring it home: Web Integration
Another feature retailers continue to explore is integrating content with the web. This feature allows readers to explore products and information in further detail on an e-commerce page or the publisher’s website.
Digital catalogs can easily integrate their content with the web with responsive web links that direct readers to purchase, discover more resources, or connect with their brand on social media.
Moving Pictures: Add Video Content and Video Covers
In recent years, marketing teams have caught on to how impactful video content and covers can be in connecting with consumers. 92 percent of marketers reported that video content offers a positive return on investment (ROI), and 87 percent share that video content has a direct, positive impact on their sales.
But it’s not just marketing professionals who are taking note of how effective video content is. More than 9 out of 10 consumers want to see more videos from the brands they pay attention to in 2023. Audiences are more invested than ever in video content, with short-form videos like TikToks skyrocketing in popularity and offering growth potential and value to brands.
These audiences even use multiple devices simultaneously, so grabbing and keeping their attention is more challenging than ever. Short-form videos are becoming a trendy way to hold readers’ gaze, and even channels like TikTok are starting to experiment with longer forms, thanks to the rising popularity of video content.
Now, digital publishers can add this content form to their publications. Since marketers and consumers alike are embracing video content, digital publishers should take note and incorporate this content into their digital formats. Video covers, in particular, are an intelligent way to captivate readers from page one – some even feel like movie trailers. Digital publications allow publishers to expand what’s possible in magazines and newspapers, providing users with a memorable experience beyond what can be printed and published on a page.
Bonus: Interactive Content
It’s not just video content making waves in the digital publishing sphere. Overall, digital publications are becoming increasingly interactive. This includes video content, but it also includes audio recordings, augmented reality, animations, and other rich, interactive multimedia content forms to enhance the overall reading experience and create fresh, catchy content.
Your partner in modern Digital Publishing
At Comosoft, we’re all about expanding what’s possible with digital publications. From workflow collaboration to publication and distribution, we’re always on the cutting edge of digital publication and marketing production.
With LAGO by Comosoft, digital publishing is both simple and advanced. Every page and piece of digital content is an opportunity to engage and delight readers and showcase your brand. As more people consume media online, we’ll help you turn your printed marketing production, circular ad, or catalog into an extended experience with features like:
- Automated hotspots
- QR codes
- Augmented reality
As a fully integrated PIM and DAM system solution, we’ll support your collaborative workflows with intuitive versioning optimization in real time and a detail-oriented proofing system. The result? A modern digital publication is created using less time and resources.
Retailers are automating their weekly circular production
How retailers are automating their weekly circular production and do more with less
The weekly circular has long been a staple marketing and advertising tool for grocery chains and other large retailers. To cope with the disruptions of digital media, retailers have experimented with various ways to cut costs, sometimes discontinuing the printed versions of circulars (especially as newspaper inserts) only to bring them back in other ways. Recently, a national grocery retailer paused the printed versions of their weekly ads but then brought them back as regular mailers, with targeted promotions and QR codes to take customers to sale items on the website.
There are good reasons why the weekly circular – in print or digital formats – is an enduring tool for marketing and advertising directors. As Motley Fool writer Maurie Backman noted in her May 2023 column, using the circular as a five-minute research guide for shopping lists can save consumers significant amounts of money – a worthwhile pursuit during high inflation. And, if the circular is well-designed (and accurate), it also serves as a familiar, brand-reinforcing weekly reminder to consumers.
A complex process
Weekly circular ads and flyers (printed and digital) are the lifeblood of a retailer’s marketing program. The larger the retailer and its inventory of products, the more challenging it is to produce compelling and accurate flyers using SKU data that promote high-margin products. Creating multiple versions of that same flyer that support various regions and markets is even more challenging.
As creative services and production managers know, creating an effective weekly circular is complex and difficult. It was always challenging, but with the growth of digital, retailers are under enormous pressure to deliver more content across an increasing number of platforms. By using the weekly circular as a starting point, they can begin to fill that need – but only if they have the right processes and workflows to handle the flood of activity it requires. And they must do so, very often, using overstretched human resources.
The circular involves multiple departments and individuals, each racing against a weekly deadline and coping with product management details, rapid and time-sensitive changes in the information, design localization and versioning, and conversion to digital and social media channels. This process is complicated even further by the fact that product statement from multiple manufacturers is stored in several different databases, starting with their product information management (or PIM system), digital asset management (or DAM system), and other data sources.
If any of these processes must be done manually, then retailers cannot reasonably expect to keep up. They will risk enormous gaps in their marketing content mandate – not to mention the risk of costly errors in the material produced. Automation is the secret to “doing more with less”, but that is hard to do haphazardly or piecemeal. Facing the continuous onslaught of activity that weekly circulars represent, retailers need a global solution.
An elegant solution
Comosoft’s LAGO represents the ideal solution to this perplexing problem for large retailers, including major grocery chains. By taking a holistic approach to data management, campaign planning, and media production, LAGO gives retailers the luxury of automation while giving marketing managers and production designers the freedom to innovate.
The LAGO process begins with a plan. Retail product line and marketing managers create a campaign strategy based on an integrated approach to product information (PIM), product images, logos, descriptions (DAM), and other connected data sources – all coordinated with a digital whiteboard interface. Products with higher margins or known popularity can be featured, along with a mix of the retailer’s other offerings. Sale pricing is based on real-world business goals and solid data.
After the campaign is planned, it gets transmitted to the design team through InDesign templates automatically. These have the campaign’s featured products in place and real-time connections to all their related PIM and DAM information. Designers are freed from the need to track down all that data and can focus on designing the finished product. When multiple regional versions are required, the design team can create these easily, using the base circular as the “master version” and creating regional variants according to that region or branch manager’s priorities.
Other time-consuming manual tasks are highly automated as well. LAGO provides an efficient, collaborative approach to proofing and approvals, sending digital proofs automatically to the right decision makers and returning their feedback to the design and production teams, who can send the finished, multi-version result to the proper print service providers anywhere in the country.
The automation does not stop at print, however. Data used to create a circular in LAGO can be automatically sent to the retailer’s website or mobile app, even on a regional level, satisfying today’s shopper’s growing need for up-to-date information on multiple media channels.
As LAGO users have discovered, there are ways to reimagine the printed circular. QR Codes, which have seen a resurgence since the pandemic, can easily be integrated into the LAGO workflow, typically as part of the retailer’s existing DAM system. Just as a marketing manager and design team can easily specify a product photo, they can also include a QR code for that product. When the printed circular comes in the mail, users can quickly go to that product’s sale landing page, genuinely integrating the print and online experience.
“Doing more with less” is much more than a catchphrase. With advanced workflows from LAGO, retailers can make it a profitable reality.
How LAGO PIM and DAM help you create a seamless customer experience
How LAGO PIM and DAM help you create a seamless customer experience
In information technology, the idea of a “single source of truth,” or SSOT, is a well-established practice. Simply put, in the context of databases, SSOT means that each piece of information is edited only in its leading system. It’s logical in theory but often difficult in practice.
Retailers, for example, must store different types of information about a single product they sell in separate databases, each designed to optimise a different part of their operations. A product information management or PIM system contains different types of information than a digital asset management or DAM system. Each system serves a specific, vital purpose. To duplicate the data everywhere would be pointless and time-wasting – the very thing SSOT exists to prevent. The real trick is getting all those special-purpose databases to work together.
Various databases
A retailer may have immaculate records on every product they offer, but they will only stay in business if they can effectively advertise and promote those products. Therefore, today’s retailers must have immediate, efficient access to every data source available to market effectively. As every creative services manager, production manager, and director of marketing knows, it’s all about the data and learning how to use it.
That’s where SSOT comes in. It’s OK for different types of data to exist in their appropriate and unique locations – so long as marketing can harness all of it in a well-planned campaign or, more likely, in hundreds of simultaneous campaigns across multiple channels and regional variations. With proper integration and workflow, multiple databases can become a single source of truth.
For instance, the degree of difficulty for marketing managers is very high. A system with an integrated PIM, DAM, and other databases can help organize, categorize, validate, and distribute product information and digital assets. More importantly, it can do so transparently, allowing designers to create content for multiple channels efficiently without having to master each database. Such a system, Comosoft LAGO, exists today.
As retailers move increasingly into e-commerce, such a system becomes even more important, allowing them to create marketing content for existing channels while simultaneously doing so for online and mobile channels, creating a seamless brand experience for their prospective customers.
The customer experience
Making one’s message welcoming, engaging, and relevant requires creativity and communication skills unencumbered by complex data technology. Retail consumers have never been exposed to this much media clamoring for their limited attention. Wise marketers are acutely aware of this and thus must continually find ways to make their messaging welcome, engaging, and relevant. This combination requires creativity and communication skills, unencumbered by complex data technology. Doing this well requires the work of many hands.
One advantage of an integrated approach is that all the data – usually supplied by various manufacturers and vendors – is genuinely and securely centralized. LAGO accomplishes this not only for internal production use but also for external users such as agencies and sales reps. While the data still reside in separate, secure systems, they are also part of a trusted, single source of truth.
Another thing LAGO accomplishes for the marketing or advertising designer is to provide transparent access to accurate, up-to-date, and rich information for each product. So, for example, when a marketing or product line manager identifies the product most likely to appeal to a target audience (by using LAGO at the start of a campaign), all the relevant information is instantly made available to those creating the campaign.
With so many “touch points” available to the average consumer, from print to digital and beyond, marketing and production managers are too often at a loss how to keep all those channels full – without flooding the customer with mere noise. LAGO offers creatives the ability to do this and more. Facilitating complex information exchange across many channels simultaneously multiplies the creativity of good marketing and advertising designers. As a result, even the need for multiple regional versions of a single campaign can be accomplished with relative ease. By doing this, retailers can sustain the best possible customer experience, using only the current, trusted product information in the customer’s chosen medium.
Finally, using a well-integrated PIM and DAM approach accelerates a retailer’s go-to-market strategy for marketing campaigns. Critical workflows, including print versioning and mobile app updates, can be automated with LAGO, allowing designers to explore new strategic opportunities. LAGO can also be integrated with enterprise and cloud-based enterprise resource planning or ERP systems, further optimising and automating large retailers’ national or international operations. Also, since most databases are already highly customized and burdened with legacy code, the LAGO API gives a retailer’s IT department a decided edge in creating a robust, enterprise-wide, single source of truth.
Ultimately, the proof of any retail marketing campaign is how well it resonates with the individual consumer. In the age of big data, there is no shortage of available information – about the customer, their preferences, and the products themselves. Amid that immense sea of data, only a trusted, single source like LAGO can help the retailer create that optimum customer experience.
LAGO Product Information Management
Learn more about our LAGO PIM and how we can help you organise your product information efficiently.
Why Digital Asset Management matters
Why Digital Asset Management matters
Does everyone on your team have the same access to all the assets they need to do their job? What about your third-party collaborators or your remote team members?
Here’s a fact:
In one study examining how digital assets are managed, 54 percent of survey respondents reported using Google Image Search to locate their own company logo.
Managing assets like photos, PDFs, and videos isn’t as easy as it sounds when your organization requires multiple teams to collaborate on content creation and publishing. At its best, this collaboration needs to be optimized with software to ensure that their sales team, for example, always finds the latest version of a file, like a logo, at the right size and resolution.
This is where Digital Asset Management comes in. So, what does this kind of tool do—and why does it matter? Here’s a look at what Digital Asset Management can do for you and your team.
What can you and your organization do with a DAM solution?
- Share files via a cloud-based platform at any time and from any place
- Organize all of your digital assets in a centralized location
- Collaborate, share, and create content from a single set of shared updated assets
- Empower your team and your third-party partners to locate assets quickly and easily
- Manage rich media like audio files, videos, and high-quality images
- Keep everyone on the same page regarding branding and current versioning
- Streamline digital publishing and distribution
- Track which assets are being used and when, assign metadata to each asset, and understand how your content is being used
With a Digital Asset Management solution, everyone is on the same page within your internal teams and when working with outside vendors and other partners. For example, your creative team and marketing, sales, packaging, technology, and legal teams have access to the same assets. Moreover, sharing these assets with external users like agencies, distributors, and other collaborators is easier and more secure.
Why it matters: The benefits of utilizing a DAM solution
The demands of today’s digital landscape are constantly increasing. As brands look for ways to make the most of their content and the lifecycle of their digital assets, Digital Asset Management offers myriad benefits shaping how these assets are used.
- Rich in Metadata: Metadata is the perfect opportunity to bring order to chaos. A system of assigning keywords and other metadata makes it easier to find assets later. It tracks important information embedded alongside each asset, including copyright and licensure dates, technical specifications, origin, keywords, and more. At a glance, you (and your team) can manage your asset metadata and know if the asset you are viewing is up-to-date and usable, which campaigns it’s been used for already, how it’s been used, and who created it.
- Advanced Search Capabilities: An effective Digital Asset Management solution means your entire organization can explore your digital assets in new ways via advanced search capabilities. Using a traditional file storage system, you might only be able to search for files based on their file name or date—but a DAM gives you the power to use filters, categories, subcategories, keywords, collections, and more to find what you need.
- Control Who Has Access: One of the essential features of a DAM system associated with asset governance is that the platform makes it simple to manage who has access to your assets. Administrators have control to establish how different users from different groups interact with your company’s assets and even track who uses or makes changes to assets—and when. A DAM solution allows you to set separate access rights for creators, sales and marketing teams, and even third-party collaborators. Hence, everyone has access to what they need, and you can limit access to all your other assets to keep them secure, protected, and used only for the proper use cases.
- Manage Security: Outdated file-sharing methods don’t give you the same level of security over our assets the same way Digital Asset Management does, and more labor-intensive file-sharing wastes valuable time. DAM systems boost your cybersecurity strategies, storing everything securely to protect your assets and ensure your entire organization is adhering to the regulations or guidelines you must follow for digital rights management. You also save time because your teams don’t have to waste time establishing access permissions—because it’s already done for you. In addition, DAM simplifies secure sharing without the time and hassle of encryption or file transfer protocols (FTP).
- Uphold Your Brand Reputation: Thanks to a single, centralized repository for all your assets, you can rest easy knowing that everyone on your team will use the most updated version of all your assets. You don’t run the same risk as someone using a low-quality or low-resolution asset or an outdated asset that no longer fits with your current branding. Everyone is working from the same page. The result is consistent output and strong branding from everyone on your team to present a professional, consistent image.
- Save Time and Money: Employing a Digital Asset Management solution saves you valuable time and resources. How? As you create and use new assets, you risk misplacing files. Then time is spent searching for—and sometimes even recreating—these assets simply because they aren’t easily accessible. But this doesn’t happen when assets are stored in a DAM solution. Instead, you create an asset once, which can be published anywhere. As a result, a DAM platform streamlines your processes, quickens your time to market, and simplifies collaboration.
- Take Advantage of Analytics: How are your assets performing? How often are they getting used? With an intuitive DAM solution, you can access all kinds of analytics about where your assets are going, who is using them, and which assets are used the most. It shows you what kinds of assets are most useful to your brand—and paints a picture of the most beneficial assets to create moving forward.
- Work From Anywhere: Because DAM software is accessible from any web browser, your team can utilize your brand’s assets from wherever they are. There’s no waiting to access files from an office computer or for someone to set up a secure FTP; everything is securely stored in the cloud to keep your work in motion.
The importance of governance in Digital Asset Management
When managing your assets, governance is one of the most significant benefits of using a Digital Asset Management tool. Governance is an essential strategy to keep track of your ever-growing library. Asset governance is about establishing and evolving standards, policies, and best practices for how you plan to manage it all as an organization. This not only includes the assets themselves but also everything surrounding these assets, including:
- The people who use them
- The processes of how different assets are used
- The technologies your organization uses
Establishing a well-defined governance plan gives you a clear path to move forward in managing your assets and sets you up for success with implementing a DAM platform. It sets the information, guidelines, and policies to keep your DAM running smoothly.
Why does this matter?
On the one hand, a clear definition of policies will help you use a DAM system optimally and securely. In addition, these guidelines can be a helpful guide for adjusting your operations in general, since a critical part of DAM management involves optimizing a continuous and collaborative workflow with your entire team.
Governance can be an oft-overlooked part of setting up or maintaining a DAM system. After all, in establishing your organization’s DAM platform, you’re already thinking about systems configurations, user permissions and access, taxonomy, metadata, and legal compliance – not to mention training everyone who will use the DAM solution.
But DAM governance is just as important as the nuts and bolts of it all. Think of it like the rulebook for your favorite board game. While you might have all the right playing pieces, the dice, and the cards to get started, the rules – in this case, your governance structure – help you keep things moving.
Your organization’s governance structure may include considerations like:
- What kinds of assets belong in the DAM
- Who has access, what they have access to, and what they can do with it
- What naming conventions will you use organization-wide
- What metadata standards and requirements do you have
- How to handle versioning
- What licensing and compliance requirements do you need to consider
- How to communicate changes and updates with users
- How to handle expired assets and how to archive out-of-date assets
Making things pretty DAM simple
Comosoft’s LAGO DAM solution is the ultimate in Digital Asset Management: It’s powerful, easy to use, and a media-neutral repository to keep your brand’s most valuable digital files, images, and videos secure and usable.
Thanks to an expansive, standards-compliant approach to metadata, LAGO by Comosoft takes the burden of asset management off your team so they can focus on more important tasks. Together, you can import and maintain assets in one secure, central location, manage access, stay compliant with brand guidelines, and help everyone be more collaborative and productive.
Plus, LAGO eliminates time-consuming requests and asset silos through collaborative workflow tools that enable you to create, edit, revise, and approve print and digital marketing communications all from the same place with the most updated assets. In fact, LAGO automatically updates active media campaigns whenever assets are updated or replaced to make your work more efficient than ever. Are you ready to see LAGO in action? Book a demo today!
The 9 biggest trends in print publishing
The 9 biggest trends in print publishing
Catalogs, print media, and direct mail flyers can be powerful tools to connect with your target audience. After all:
- Print marketing boasts a recall rate between 70 and 80 percent higher than digital advertising.
- Marketing emails have an average response rate of 0.1 percent – but direct mail has a response rate of 4.9 percent.
Even in our digital economy, print marketing is incredibly effective. Around 44 percent of consumers will visit a company’s website after receiving a direct mailer, catalog, or magazine.
Print marketing, magazines, and catalogs are making a comeback in 2023 and beyond, but the strategies for these formats look very different than they did years ago. Here’s an inside look at what trends are rising to the top and catching the eye of today’s consumers.
1. Sewn binding
Brands looking to make their mark are finding significant differentiation in the look and feel of their catalogs and print media by opting for all kinds of binding.
On the one hand, some brands use hand-sewn binding to evoke a feeling of something unique and handcrafted; recipients of these catalogs can get the sense that they are lucky to have come across something so rare. On the other hand, a sewn binding feels as though artisans handled it and gives off the sense of the culture and history of a brand. In many cases, this can help establish a strong connection between the brand and the consumer. Post Press Magazine even suggests selecting contrasting threads to highlight this feature.
Brands wishing to share their unique history, artistry, and attention to detail are choosing sewn binding more and more frequently lately.
2. Upscale binding
Conversely, other brands are choosing high-end binding. With this option, their print media can feel just as memorable. Instead of the handcrafted feel of sewn binding, high-end binding makes a catalog or printed marketing magazine feel like a coffee table book; it’s a piece that’s meant to be savored and cherished.
For this kind of hard-case binding, the case might be covered in some material or even embellished with hot foil stamping. Another popular binding trend making the rounds today is Swiss binding, in which the text block is glued to the outside back cover so that, from the outside, the catalog looks like a casebound book. Upon opening a Swiss-bound magazine, the spine is revealed and may be sewn or saddle stitched.
For brands looking to put luxury on display, high-end binding options are an extra element to make the tactile experience of leafing through a catalog or magazine feel more personal to the brand identity.
3. Personalization
An increasing number of consumers crave personalization from their user experiences, marketing, digital environments, and more. Forbes shared that 80 percent of today’s consumers only shop with brands that provide a personalized experience.
But personalization in catalogs, magazines, and print media? Is that really happening?
It is – at a quickening pace. Personalized content is more important than ever before. This kind of custom printing means having the solutions to craft countless customized experiences in the same publication. That means:
- Understanding your audience’s needs, wants, and priorities, as well as what they find motivating or engaging.
- Having the tools on hand to keep your workflow and collaboration flexible and agile while keeping track of customer needs as they evolve.
- Creating a magazine with the experience in mind, balancing large-scale appeal with personal touches.
Post Press Magazine quickly points out that nobody wants to receive irrelevant marketing materials like coupons, catalogs, or emails. Personalization today enables brands to take custom printing beyond just mail merges with solutions like variable data printing, supported by a robust pool of customer data and detailed analytics.
4. Adding some luster with foil
Many brands lately are choosing to enhance their catalogs and magazines with the metallic sheen of foil stamping and printing. This trendy option can make catalogs feel sleek, modern, and upscale.
You’re not wrong if you feel like you’ve seen shimmer and foil for a while now. But, of course, foil stamping has been popular for quite some time. Still, with new print technologies emerging and becoming more accessible, a whole new range of options is available to enhance magazines and catalogs with a touch of extra luster.
Thanks to these new print technologies, popularity and interest in this glamorous look have been resurgent. Foil printing and stamping options include hot and cold foil, metalized substrates, and digital foil.
The result? No matter your budget or price point, you can add an element of sheen and shimmer to your next printing to make a strong brand statement and catch the eye of your target audience.
5. Offline media to invite your audiences online
There’s nothing like the feeling of leafing through an artfully designed magazine or catalog, but what’s the next step? Tactile experiences are meaningful, but how can you continue to keep your audiences engaged?
Print catalogs and magazines can significantly impact sales—even for eCommerce brands. In fact, 57 percent of consumers prefer print catalogs over their digital counterparts. Moreover, 69 percent of consumers have paged through a printed catalog for information before purchasing online.
In other words, print media is still relevant to boosting sales in our digital marketplace. Even so, magazines and catalogs today are essential tools brands can use to invite their customers online, where you can collect consumer data, reinvigorate marketing efforts, and help solve their problems in new ways. Some of the trend’s brands are using to encourage their catalog-loving customers to go online include:
- QR codes to take customers to a direct page or even make a direct purchase
- Image recognition apps to pull up product information without QR codes
- Including website URLs and links on each page
- Printing contact information and website information clearly on the back cover
6. Telling a story
How can you get customers to return to a magazine or catalog, flip through the pages again, and savor every page? By taking a storytelling approach.
Household names like NASA, GoPro, Airbnb, and Bonobos use visual storytelling to build an emotional connection with their audiences. Bonobos, in particular, has leaned into the storytelling surrounding the lifestyle of their brand, centering their storytelling around golf.
After sharing the design philosophy and love for the heritage of gold early in the catalog, the following pages are all devoted to linking the golf lifestyle to their clothing, even shooting the photos in an actual golf club and displaying images of active golf swings from page to page.
The result? Their customers see the product in action. They experience the story behind the clothes and the life they could live while wearing them, not just the clothes themselves.
7. Becoming one with nature
In a time when 75 percent of millennials say that they would pay more for a brand that centers around sustainability, an increasing number of brands are putting their efforts on display, making nature a core element of their print media messaging.
This means wood grain texture, earthy colors, and natural elements are heavily incorporated into the design, celebrating and appreciating the planet. This all-natural trend is showing up everywhere, from interior design to fashion and merchandising, and the popularity of this concept is showing up in print and catalog marketing.
Not only does the prevalence of natural elements suggest a commitment to sustainability and love for the earth, but these elements are also timeless, elegant, and aspirational for true nature lovers and would-be outdoorsy types alike.
8. Unique discounts from cover to cover
Emails and newsletters are still popular ways to market to customers, target new audiences, and track consumer activities. Still, marketers are finding ways to follow behaviors and appeal to deal-seeking shoppers through catalogs and magazines.
To get the most out of catalogs and magazines, marketers place unique discount codes within the pages of their print media. The benefits are twofold:
- They motivate casual shoppers to make a purchase online.
- They gather invaluable marketing information to discover their marketing materials’ performance.
This strategy is a great way to discern what actions real customers are taking and their preferences. With this direct feedback, you can make data-driven predictions about what products and services your customers are interested in.
9. High-Quality paper
When promoting your brand, your choices are a statement of your focus on quality, so your brand stands out from the competition. These choices include everything from the quality of your logo and pictures, ensuring they aren’t blurry and pixelated, to how print media is bound. And when it comes to print, quality also includes your choice of paper: the texture, weight, feel, and sheen of it.
It’s estimated that the average American consumer receives 41 pounds of unsolicited mail every year – per person. The result of all this mail? Unfortunately, these print catalogs and magazines feel like an afterthought and are often discarded or recycled immediately. But quality print media speaks to the quality of the brand. It feels good and inspires recipients to flip through the pages more.
Comosoft: Keeping you current
LAGO by Comosoft is a marketing automation tool that makes it simpler than ever to foster a collaborative workflow (in real-time), store data and assets in a single, secure repository accessible from anywhere, and manage everything from print marketing to point-of-sale in the same place.
Comosoft LAGO is an inclusive marketing production solution with integrated Product Information Management (PIM) and Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems. In addition, it comes complete with integrated workflow collaboration support, versioning optimization, and a proofing system.
With LAGO, creating print magazines and catalogs is easy and efficient, saving you time and money that you can invest in things like paper quality, foil printing, binding, and more. In addition, by collaborating in real-time, your media can be as up to date as desired, empowering you to stay ahead of the latest print marketing trends.
The Insider’s Guide to new marketing production efficiencies
The Insider’s Guide to new marketing production efficiencies
Retail marketing has never been as complex to manage as it is now. Creative services and production managers must cope with the daily demands of promotional campaigns covering multiple locations on various print and digital channels. All this leaves little time to innovate and swiftly respond to emergencies and ad hoc requests.
For example, large national retailers with multiple regional locations often see widely different demands for products based on differences in climate, culture, and demographics. Promoting and supplying these products on a regional or local level is complex, with marketing departments often playing catch-up to create timely, locally-focused promotions. Then there are the inevitable, last-minute changes in inventory, custom pricing, and special promotions that localized operations require to remain competitive. With so much else to do to keep national campaigns going, design and production departments need more capacity.
These additional capacities are often provided in the form of external agencies. An important factor for successful collaboration between internal and external teams is a common platform that automates crucial workflows.
The secret is in the data
All modern business is dependent on mastery of vast data sets. Every conceivable facet of retail operations generates (and is governed by) information that must be well-managed and understood by those who make meaningful decisions. Even before the emergence of AI and predictive analytics, complex retail operations could only thrive if they understood and leveraged the value of their data. The problem is that business data’s sheer volume and complexity have exploded. Thanks to networking and cloud computing advances, even its “velocity” or ease of access has skyrocketed. But without the right tools, simply having all that data does not automatically give marketing departments the ability to cope with multichannel demands and deal with pain points, time constraints, and last-minute requests.
So, creative and marketing managers must ask themselves some hard questions to discover that inside track for gaining production efficiency.
- Is all product data consistent, up-to-date, and centrally located?
- Are the data connected in meaningful, product-specific ways?
- Can product-specific media be found quickly and intuitively?
- Can internal and external users collaborate easily?
- Is the process for approval simple and straightforward?
- Is the content available and transmissible to all production channels?
- Can content be personalized, and can versioning be automated?
It starts with a plan
To create a meaningful retail campaign, marketing managers must know every detail about the product(s) they wish to sell, starting with known demand, margin, and availability in each region. Then, they must add each product’s descriptors (sizes, colors, etc.) and the latest versions of its images, brand elements, and descriptions to that data. With the rise of e-commerce and social media, the product’s digital assets will likely include customer ratings, reviews, and videos. That’s a lot of data to manage.
Planning a campaign should be routine if the data is centrally located, consistent, and connected in meaningful ways. But standalone PIM, DAM, and design systems are often not integrated with the initial planning process. Fortunately, Comosoft’s LAGO system offers a solution: a whiteboarding module that lets marketing and product managers map out the initial plan – drawing directly from various data sources – and initiate the design process via InDesign templates that can be easily customized and versioned.
Once the plan is initiated, production designers using LAGO’s InDesign plugin have easy, bi-directional access to all the PIM and DAM data for each product. If an image or description is modified or updated in the original database, it is automatically updated in the layout. If regional or demographic versions are called for, they can be easily generated from the master version. Even these separate versions are connected to the relevant product data – right up to the moment the printed or online channel piece is generated.
Review and Approve
With so much going on with each campaign and every version, the proofing and approval process must be rapid and efficient. Therefore, LAGO also provides the means for rapid soft proofing, notification and review by qualified managers, and clear, trackable instructions to deal with last-minute corrections. As with the design process, review and approval lines of communication can include in-house and outside agency members, using a secure and robust connection.
Once the final designs are approved, the campaign data are transmitted immediately to remote printing facilities (for catalogs, flyers, and other collateral) and to the retailer’s media operations and partners (for publishing on websites, mobile apps, programmatic ad tech systems, and e-commerce sites). Because all of the product data is consistent across every channel, the resulting sales data can be fed back to LAGO, informing marketing and advertising managers of the relative success of their campaigns – helping them improve their efforts.
Command and Control
The marketing insider’s best way to compete in an ever-expanding sea of data is to have complete control of that data from beginning to end. Integrated, cloud-based systems like Comosoft LAGO serve that need in two ways. First, they automate the handling of data and complex but routine tasks. This automation frees the entire team to respond to the inevitable, last-minute demands and unforeseen emergencies.
Marketing production does not have to be a siloed, overly labor-intensive process, even when multiple versions and channels are required. By asking (and answering) the hard questions about the company’s data resources, creative services, and marketing production managers can put their company on course to greater agility and competitive advantage.
LAGO Product Information Management
Learn more about our LAGO PIM and how we can help you organise your product information efficiently.
PIM | DAM impact on retail business
How PIM and automated data management are changing the way manufacturers and retailers do business
These days, you cannot turn on the news or read a publication without seeing something scary and fascinating about Artificial Intelligence or AI. Nearly as often, you see ads by Amazon or IBM promoting cloud computing and “big data.” What you see or read far less often is a down-to-earth explanation of ordinary business data and how that data can make marketing a truly efficient process.
For retailers and their marketing and advertising directors, the most abundant collection of valuable data is the vast ocean of information about the products they sell. Every item has its own, unique collection of images, general descriptions, and product details, all stored in either a Digital Asset Management (DAM) or a Product Information Management (PIM) system. Often, there are also separate data sources for product pricing, inventory, sales history (for physical stores and e-commerce), customer reviews, and other feedback.
The problem, of course, is how to combine all that data and utilize all those data sources automatically in multichannel marketing campaigns. Eventually, AI will be able to use large data sets more effectively, but first, we need to manage the product data we already have. As more and more data moves from local servers to the cloud, the first step is optimizing our PIM and DAM systems.
Retailers and manufacturers must always start with accurate, trusted data if they are to effectively reach customers across all print and digital channels. A cloud-based PIM system then serves as a reliable, central product data depository. When its data are consistent and connected with DAM and other data sources – and ultimately to print and digital production systems – the use of manual processes is minimized. In other words, the flow of data between systems is streamlined and automated, allowing campaign projects with multiple versions and channels to reach their audience faster and at a reduced production cost.
Over the past ten years, PIM systems have migrated from limited, locally-hosted entities to cloud-based ones. This transition has made it easier in theory for retailers to accept and use manufacturers’ PIM data and connect PIM, DAM, and other systems into a more unified, flexible infrastructure. In practice, this has often been challenging, especially when it comes to integrating with print and online production systems like Adobe InDesign.* One of the only systems to effectively manage and automate this “last mile” between cloud-based PIMs and actual design and production is Comosoft’s LAGO.
Data accuracy is essential, whether the final output is for print, digital e-commerce, or (as is usually the case) both at once. So, one of the first things Comosoft does when implementing LAGO is to ensure that the PIM data from manufacturers and the retailer are aligned by SKU number. This alignment is critical, whether the systems remain local or are in the cloud, because LAGO has all available data for each product in the campaign. In addition, retailers often rely on LAGO’s own cloud-based PIM system, although LAGO can also work with existing PIM and DAM systems.
The LAGO PIM system allows for the vast complexity facing marketing and retail advertising directors, namely the need for product data variants. For example, a single product may have different regional names or be expressed in more than one language. It can even be defined by customer-specific content. With so many possible variations and regional marketing needs, the PIM must have unprecedented flexibility to produce multi-versioned campaigns quickly and efficiently.
Perhaps the greatest need in a PIM-to-production marketing workflow is for the data to flow wherever it needs to go without undue manual intervention. LAGO accomplishes this by making PIM data bi-directional. Production designers can pull all the elements for a single product (from the PIM, DAM, and other systems) with a single action – or in a template created by the campaign planners. The process is automatic, freeing the designer to do what they’re best at – design. But if they have to change something, such as a regional override or correcting an error, that data change is communicated back to the cloud-based PIM. An authorized marketing manager can then approve the change globally or allow it as a regional or situational exception.
Data interconnectivity does not stop there. Besides coordinating the data flow between PIM, DAM, and other data sources, LAGO also conveys relevant campaign data automatically to other systems, including sales and inventory management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), marketing campaign planning, and other complex systems – often also in the cloud. It also conveys the campaign design data, usually expressed as regional variants, from one medium (print) to its many online counterparts, such as mobile e-commerce. By supporting a wide, multi-faceted, and largely automatic data flow, LAGO has changed PIM from an isolated data “island” to an integrated part of an efficient marketing workflow.
With or without advances in real-world AI, cloud computing and massive data sets are now an everyday reality for retailers’ marketing and advertising departments.
* Adobe’s suite of graphic design products is known as “Creative Cloud.” However, apart from license verification, the software itself still consists of local desktop applications.
LAGO Product Information Management
Learn more about our LAGO PIM and how we can help you organise your product information efficiently.
How secure is your Digital Asset Management solution?
How secure is your Digital Asset Management solution?
Working with a cloud-based digital asset management (DAM) solution means your entire team can connect and share the same assets from anywhere. It makes fast, efficient collaboration more straightforward and more accessible than ever and can help you do things like:
- Tracking and managing assets
- Assigning and utilizing metadata
- Formatting and customizing assets
- Searching and locating assets in moments
- Automating workflows
- Updating assets across the entire enterprise
- Integrating with other solutions
But how secure is your DAM solution? Cybersecurity has never been more critical than it is now. So many organizations use cloud-based tools to do everything, from multichannel marketing to eCommerce platforms to resource planning, customer management, user experience, and more.
And cybercriminals are paying attention. So when evaluating solutions and choosing the right cloud-based DAM platform for your company, include cybersecurity in the conversation. Instead, discover what you need to know about protecting your assets from the rising threat of attack.
Protect your assets: Why DAM security matters
Your brand’s digital assets possess inherent value – after all, you use them to promote and share your message as a company. Unfortunately, cybercriminals and other bad actors find this kind of data extremely appealing because they know how valuable it can be. That’s why you have to make an intentional effort to protect your assets and choose robust cybersecurity tools to defend against the actions of hackers and other criminals.
What are some of the risks associated with your digital assets? They include things like:
- Phishing attacks that include attempts to download malware or make their way into your DAM.
- Ransomware that holds your data and assets hostage until you pay a costly fee to access them.
- Data breaches to view, share, transmit, or sell your digital assets and other sensitive data.
It’s estimated that by the end of 2023, more than 33 billion records will be illegally obtained by malicious actors, a dramatic increase of 175 percent from the number of records stolen in 2018. And it’s not just the large companies that are at risk. Of course, large multinational corporations constantly face threats from cybercriminals. But small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are also under attack.
In fact, the Internet Crime Complaint Center of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) reported an astonishing 847,376 complaints in 2021, totaling almost $7 billion in financial losses. Their findings? Most of these complaints and attacks targeted SMBs. That’s why choosing a secure DAM solution is mission-critical to your long-term success, regardless of your company’s size.
The other issue? Working with a digital asset management solution is – by nature – deeply collaborative. That means assets are shared, edited, and used by a whole host of users within and outside your organization. So, security is even more critical for digital asset management because you must have a strategy to protect your assets even when sharing amongst many people.
Choosing a Secure DAM Solution: Factors to Consider
Your DAM platform holds a lot of responsibility. It’s where collaboration happens – and with good reason. After all, once a digital asset leaves your DAM solution, you lose control over that asset. That means:
- Vendors, partners, and team members may wind up using an outdated asset or an asset that doesn’t fit your current brand standards.
- Marketing materials may include photos with expired digital rights, and you could have no idea and no control over this happening.
- You don’t gain access to asset metadata, which can help you track usage patterns to better understand what assets serve you the best.
A cloud-based DAM solution helps you retain control of your valuable digital assets while fostering partnerships, workflows, and collaboration from anywhere. But what about security? How well does it keep you protected? Here are factors to consider when looking for a secure cloud DAM platform.
Share files securely with internal teams and outside partners
Anytime you share assets with anyone, including your team, agencies, and retail and distribution partners, it is a calculated risk, especially if you’re about to launch a new campaign, service, or product. You’re juggling many things simultaneously, including embargo dates, product testing, final edits, publishing deadlines, and more.
Your DAM solution can help you track and safeguard assets with external vendors, third-party partners, and your team whenever you need to share assets without compromising your security.
Track the usage of your assets
Your marketing teams need a way to analyze which assets are getting used and why. This gives you unprecedented data about which visuals offer the highest performance and how to attune your marketing strategies. In addition, your DAM system must track your digital assets once they are distributed.
Especially when dealing with things like embargo dates and related protected images, you can manage the reach of your assets, detect unauthorized usage (and potential activity from cybercriminals), and protect your brand’s intellectual property.
Monitor & audit user access
What happens if assets are compromised by user access or a data breach? First, you need to know the source of the leak right away to mitigate further damage. Leak detection and complete records of user access to assets are essential when content is leaked or misused.
When you choose a DAM solution that monitors and manages all access, you’ll better understand where your assets are going and who is seeing them.
Other security measures to consider
Security isn’t just something you paste on top of your DAM tool—or any software solution, for that matter. Other security features to look for include:
- Strong passwords to prevent brute force attacks
- Two-factor or multi-factor authentication to keep bad actors out
- Secure application programming interfaces (APIs) connecting your DAM to your enterprise
- Encryption of data, including your digital assets
How LAGO Keeps You Secure
LAGO by Comosoft was developed with your security in mind; the whole idea behind a digital access management and product information management (PIM) platform is to enable secure sharing of your assets. As such, there are several security measures put in place to keep your data – and your entire brand – protected.
Security features include:
- Requiring secure passwords from all users
- Allowing for two-factor authentication (2FA) methods, including text, email verification, and authenticator applications
- Sending alerts to managers following any failed access attempts and suspicious activity
- Accessing and integrating LAGO with your existing platforms via a secure API
LAGO: Ensuring Asset Security At Every Turn
With LAGO by Comosoft, we’ve successfully completed both on-site and cloud installations of our DAM-PIM solution. Based on how most brands are working now, most of our customers are opting for a cloud-based installation to enable collaboration from anywhere.
LAGO has specific security protocols built-in to keep your assets protected. These include features like:
- Centralized and encrypted file storage
- Physical separation of database and file storage
- Distributed file storage with master and slave logic for external locations
Secure Sharing
LAGO DAM enables users to define access, visibility, and usability to restrict access to their most protected assets. So, when you share access to assets with internal users and outside vendors, you don’t have to grant them access to your entire digital asset library.
LAGO allows secure sharing by offering a wide range of restricted access to assets, which is helpful for those assets that have not yet been approved, are no longer valid, or have been limited to specific departments. Factors like validity dates can restrict the usage of a particular asset, and the visibility and editability can all be adjusted by assigning single users or user groups to an asset.
Easy, cloud-based access for external users
Some cloud file-sharing services like Google can share files via a link using different permissions, but they only include some of the metadata and other features that come with using a DAM solution.
Having all your assets stored within LAGO DAM enables external users not part of your LAGO-hosted production process to request imagery. For example, a web-based application allows users externally request access to the LAGO DAM search engine to find assets. Once a user has found assets needed for external purposes, the assets can be placed into a shopping cart for download. Users may download an original file or only a preview depending on user rights.