For the past couple of years transactional and direct mail printers have been focused on how to integrate digital technologies into their operations, including shuffling floor plans, developing new in-house finishing capabilities and trying to sell new services. Well, now it’s time to consider what your customers really want from you. The latest research shows they want a genuine relationship. To build your bottom line, you need to shape an experience that your customers will appreciate, remember, and share with their colleagues.

Did you know that InfoTrends predicts that by 2018, inkjet will account for nearly 60% of total production digital color volume? The inkjet market is growing rapidly as a result of speed and quality levels never dreamed possible. Of course, back in the day, printing presses literally changed history, improved the circulation of literature, and revolutionized media. Today, business depends on printing to inform, influence, entertain, and educate people the world over.

As the popularity of inkjet grows, we’re seeing bigger, bolder ideas about what can be accomplished by combining inkjet and an innovative spirit. Two recent events celebrated this potential; first, the thINK Forum User Conference, where members of Canon Solutions America’s educational inkjet community came together to share insight and hear about the latest emerging trends from experts. Secondly, Canon EXPO 2015 offered an imaginative showcase of the vast capabilities of Canon technologies, while diving into what’s still to come. See the excitement for yourself.

With multiple color presses, you know how critical it is to maintain color consistency across those presses — both to meet a client’s branding standards and to enable output from several presses to be combined into a single package without having multiple shades of a specific color. Color matching has sometimes been called a “black art” in the offset world, but new technologies make it possible to highly automate color consistency in a digital inkjet world, reducing the amount of color knowledge a press operator requires to produce high quality output.

Direct mail works. You and your clients know that, but do you know that today’s digital technology can make it work even better?

Ordinary, mass-produced direct mail can become more relevant, engaging, and even interactive, when consumer data is used to create personalized, targeted content and tools like QR codes, personalized URLs, and augmented reality are used to create dynamic cross-media experiences. The result — increased response rates and an improved return on the investment of marketing dollars.