Digital publishing or cross-media publishing has become increasingly important for consumers’ research and purchase decisions. In addition, the need for companies to output their marketing on digital platforms has become more vital in recent years due to the substantial increase in mobile device use and the availability of information. With more people shopping online, turn your printed marketing production, catalog or circular ad, into an extended online shopping experience with automated product hotspots, QR codes, and augmented reality applications that recognize product images.
A dedicated palette in Adobe InDesign enables users to create, manage and modify hotspot overlay coordinates directly on the layout. Gallery assets (images, videos, logos) and text for each product offer get automatically exported along with the resulting JPEG/PDF and XML file. The LAGO Digital Output module fully automates the creation of hotspot overlay coordinates and the assignment of gallery assets.
Digital Production Features
Dedicated palette in InDesign for overlay, gallery asset, and main text management
Automatic and/or manual creation of hotspot overlay coordinates
Automatic generation of XML and JPEG/PDF for the selected page based on workflow status with the following info:
Project data fields/properties
Hotspot overlay coordinates with product/offer association
Automatic and manual assignment of gallery assets and component text associated with products/offers
Supports versioned and LAGO compressed pages
Project data fields/properties including variants
Document details and product/offer assignment
Product/Offer information with attributes, prices, and asset assignments
Configurable export definition (which data fields should be part of Digital Output’s XML)
Supports versioned and LAGO compressed pages
Output store codes associated to project variants for downstream mapping
What is LAGO?
LAGO automates and optimizes multichannel marketing activities, significantly cutting production time and costs. LAGO has been a reliable multichannel marketing solution for over 25 years for Retail, Grocery, Agencies, and more.
At its core, LAGO is a PIM system, DAM system, and Marketing Production solution with an integrated checkpoint-based collaborative workflow, versioning optimization, and proofing system.
LAGO’s Core Digital Tools Make Static Pages Come to Life
Digital Production: Manage and output content (including XML file) to publish online interactive digital circulars and digital catalogs.
- Direct Individualized Marketing: Link personalized product recommendations and custom landing pages directly from catalogs and circular ads.
Proofing & Approval: Web-based system, powered by Adobe InDesign Server, provides user-friendly commenting tools and intuitive task lists for an all-inclusive proofing process.
Versioning: Eliminate manual intervention from designers with automatic versioning for national, regional, market or customers specific variants.
On the FLIPP Side of Digital Publishing
Another significant benefit of LAGO—besides the efficient production of printed circulars—is that digital platforms like FLIPP use this data to populate the weekly ad content to digital shopping marketplaces and retailer mobile apps for iOS and Android.
These retailer apps, designed to recognize the user’s location and nearest store, automatically feature the most relevant circular of all the regional and market-specific digital versions created each week. For example, one retailer showcases dynamic weekly offer content from up to 350 different variations as a digital-first, mobile optimized experience.
Every page of the circular can become interactive. Customers can zoom in and touch any of the advanced products inside the weekly circular ad to visit a secure e-commerce page for ordering that item. In addition, the page indicates how many of those items are currently available in the user’s local store, home delivery options, customer ratings, and even the item’s location inside the store. LAGO powers this digital output as a critical component of the FLIPP platform. Comosoft has been a collaborative partner with FLIPP since 2016.
LAGO Case Study
Learn how Lowe’s automated their retail circular ad production for in-store and digital marketing agility
Use Data & Design for Your Customers’ Personal Experience
Direct Individualized Marketing
The add-on module DIM (Direct Individual Marketing) from LAGO lets you sharpen the focus of your targeted marketing activities for your customers. LAGO DIM provides you with a “One-to-One” output option for both digital environments as well as print channels. Reap the benefits of personalized and custom advertising to offer your customer base relevant products and to attract attention to your offerings.
Cross-channel referrals from the print page to digital channels based on image recognition or QR codes
Template editor for HTML content
Generation of personalized and custom emails and landing pages based on product data from LAGO PIM
By permanently referencing products on print pages with LAGO PIM, you can automatically create links from printed pages to digital channels. Whether you fall back on QR codes or image recognition via smartphones or tablet apps is up to you. In both cases, LAGO DIM lets you code a customer URL for each customer or customer group to link to personalized and custom landing pages.
With LAGO DIM you can also directly add products from LAGO PIM for personalized and custom emails and landing pages. LAGO DIM will handle the processing of address data, template generation, and the production of emails and landing pages. Then, an email service provider of your choice can handle dispatching emails and hosting landing pages.
To better track from where a user was directed to your website, you have the option of using a different landing page for emails than for print pages.
Producing an ePaper is fast and easy: Drag & Drop the completed PDF into a hot folder, select the processing profile and generate your final ePaper. There‘s no easier way to create an ePaper unless you use our upstream PIM system.
LAGO ePaper
The LAGO ePaper is our solution for managing and generating online catalogs. Existing PDF catalogs can be made accessible in the cloud and integrated. Our wizard lets you automatically link articles in your webshop. This gives you the option of sharing catalogs for specific target groups as needed with the customer. Existing catalogs and flyers produced with LAGO can also be imported into the online catalog with a direct article link – without additional effort. This means you benefit twice from the work you only have to put in once.
- Responsive design with look-and-feel of print publications
- Webshop product previews and direct linking to products
Shorten time-to-market for publications
Hot folders can also be defined using the generation profiles saved in the wizard so your advantage is you only make your settings once. This means you can generate online catalogs directly in future and publish them on the website without having to actually do anything. This saves time, improves the reliability of the process and ensures that you always provide the customer with the most current information. Simply place the PDF you generate into one of the folders you‘ve defined and LAGO does the rest.
Proofing Workflows
Browser Based Proofing
As InDesign documents save in LAGO, a proof of the page is automatically generated for all users to mark up and review in our new browser-based HTML5 LAGO Proof solution. Proofs are accessible through the LAGO jobs list or standard document list. They are a part of the integrated LAGO workflow with permission-based control for accessibility and task allocation. In addition, when proofs open in the proofing area, a set of easy-to-use commentary tools are made available for each user to mark up changes directly to the proof.
When corrections are marked-up and saved on a LAGO proof, those corrections are automatically linked in position and made visible to the layout in InDesign. This automation allows the layout artist and copywriters access to those corrections made during the proofing cycle without leaving their layout application. Additionally, there are a set of correction tools available in InDesign, giving the layout artist and copywriters the ability to create corrections and manage them within the layout application. When modifications are set to done or edited again, these changes are automatically made visible in the browser-based LAGO Proof solution, thus allowing for complete bi-directional communication for efficient collaboration and transparent communication.
When certified documents or snapshots of the page get generated from the workflow, they become accessible in LAGO Proof for historical comparison when viewing a proof. This automation allows users to compare corrections based on how that page looked before changes were made, making it easier to verify whether something was done correctly and for overall visual comparison.
When a correction gets created using LAGO Proof commentary tools, LAGO automatically timestamps that correction with the owner’s username, the date/time of when it was made, and the document’s status at the time of when the correction was made. Additionally, when the correction is modified or set to done, username and date/time information is also tracked, giving all users complete transparency as to who created, last modified, and resolved the correction.
To make it easier to search through a list of corrections, LAGO offers the ability to filter based on corrections you have created, corrections that are processed and unprocessed, corrections made by all users, corrections created on a specified document status, and corrections created by a specific primary working group. It is also possible to filter corrections based on the filtering examples listed above. Filtered correction results can be downloaded to XLSX format for external usage and archiving.
Workflow Management
LAGO’s Workflow Management enables your marketing production process to run efficiently and smoothly, even with large data sets and complex versioning. Our workflow module offers automated task management combined with highly configurable user & group rights.
The easy creation and configuration of parallel workflows for different channels (print or digital) provide the means to produce marketing materials while respecting each channel’s nuances.
LAGO’s Workflow Engine automatically assigns jobs to teams (or individuals) and monitors their progress through completion. Reporting tools let you keep an eye on production and immediately identify possible bottlenecks. Because of its modular nature, LAGO can produce multichannel marketing materials from planning to output.
1) Campaign Planning
Page & layout planning for marketing
2) Asset Management
Allocation of products and/or offers to the page
3) Production Process
Page layout & design management
4) Proofing Process
Manage who and how corrections are made
5) Approval Process
Easily manage approval of production from anywhere
6) Production Output
Easily generate digital & print production pieces
Production Features & Benefits
Browser based solution & HTML5 framework
Support multi-proof selection for proofing more than 1 page
Easy to use commentary tools
Integration into the workflow with task lists for selection and management of tasks
Dedicated “Correction Supervisor” permission
Access to certified documents for history comparison of proofs
Print out correction document and corrections list
Bi-directional communication with InDesign page
Corrections list downloadable to XLSX format for archiving and external usage
Filter corrections based on document status, primary working group, processed or not processed
Zoom in/out capabilities
Corrections timestamp with username, date/time, and document status from when the correction was made
Auto-message prompt for notifying users that an InDesign document has unfinished corrections
Correction list and correction tools available in InDesign page
Digital Production Insights from Comosoft
The Designer’s Dilemma
Finding Time to Actually Design While Working On Data-Intensive Projects - Designers have more to do than hunt for images and product information. But when their printed and online designs involve complex data, they need tools to stay productive.
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