Jan 15, 2008
McGrew's Communicating with Color:
Get to Know the Gorilla in the Elevator
In the world of high volume transaction output, there are many ingredients that go into the final mail package. The gorilla in the elevator, however, is the presence of color in these essential pieces of customer communication…
In the world of high volume transaction output, there are many ingredients that go into the final mail package. There is the output of the system generating the customer communication, which may be a policy issue system, a billing system or a process associated with a letter writing program. There is the set of formatting controls that determine the appearance of the print, and perhaps bar codes to help guide the mail piece through the finishing and inserting systems. There is also the paper and envelopes, and the computing and printing devices. The gorilla in the elevator, however, is the presence of color in these essential pieces of customer communication.
In this column each month, the goal will be to get to know that gorilla and make it your friend.
To get started, it is important to know what color you already have in your enterprise. What? You print black only? OK, but is there a pre-printed stock with the company logo? Most companies have, at least, that. Many already add static offset marketing messages to that base stock. While you as the HVTO professional may not have any involvement in that color, there may already be color in your output! In fact, if your system is set up to add pre-printed inserts to the envelope on its way into the mail stream, it is likely that they take advantage of the power of color.
While that limited use of static color has served the enterprise well, there are so many more ways to integrate color into the most regular customer communication in your portfolio. There are many reasons to begin the discussion if your organization is not already communicating in dynamic color across all of the communication channels. Consider what psychologists know: If you add color to any communication, the brain processes and stores that information more readily, and it is retrieved more accurately.[1]
That should make everyone who deals with essential mail—those bills, statements and notices that demand our attention—stand up and take notice. Imagine having fewer calls to the call center because with a bit of color and good information design, the recipients have all of the information they need and stop calling to ask questions about their bills. It can happen! Imagine increasing the number of calls to fulfillment centers placing orders for new services or products because the right marketing message attracted the attention of the consumer on their current billing statement. It can happen!
Those are only a couple of ideas, but they are scenarios that billers have offered at conferences and user group meetings during the last couple of years as the addition of dynamic color begins its move into the HVTO world. If you’ve been to any conferences lately, from Xplor meetings to AIIM/OnDemand, or even the 2007 TransPromo Summit, you’ve seen presentations by color practitioners describing how they have incorporated dynamic color into their customer-facing statements. The most interesting takeaways from most of these presentations are that they tell us that the integration of color was not easy; required some rethinking of their workflows and composition technology; and had a cost associated with it. Despite those hurdles, not one indicates that they are turning back to monochrome. The credit card companies, car leasing companies, and telecoms all tell their internal or external print providers that they’ve seen the value of dynamic color when paired with good information design and discovery of what they know about their customers and their needs. Even organizations that are highly regulated and not in a position to sell to their customers have found the value of color in better educating their consumers about the services they are using and how to use them most effectively.
This sets the baseline for our discussions this year. In coming months, the discussion will cover color tools, color workflows, and designing with color, but this isn’t intended to be a one-way discussion! Send your questions, ideas, concerns and challenges, and let’s make it a dialog.
Pat McGrew is the Data Center and Transaction Segment Evangelist at Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group. Her email address is Pat.McGrew@kodak.com