Digital Dog Direct Stakes Future Growth on Konica Minolta Production Print Systems and Cross Media Marketing Software
INDUSTRY: Commercial Printing
PRODUCTS AND SOLUTIONS:
EngageIT XMedia- EngageIT Automation
- Konica Minolta Color Care
- PageDNA
- Two bizhub PRESS® C1100 Color Digital Press
- Four bizhub PRESS C8000 Color Digital Presses with Saddle Stitch and Face Trim
- Four bizhub® PRO 1200 Black and White Production Print System
- One bizhub PRESS 1250 Black and White Production Print System
- Duplo 645 Slitter/Cutter/Creaser
- Duplo 5000 Collating and Booklet Making System
- Duplo 280 Perfect Binding System
- Tech Lighting 21” UV Coater
CUSTOMER GOAL: Establish the company as a single-source print and digital marketing solutions provider by leveraging industry-leading production print technology and solutions designed to execute on cross-media marketing campaigns.
BUSINESS IMPACT: Digital Dog Direct views Konica Minolta as a true partner that is heavily invested in helping the company grow its business. “When we first started talking with Konica Minolta, our hope was to achieve a monthly volume of 100,000 color and 500,000 black-and-white impressions,” says Adcock.
“Six years later, our monthly volume is 1.2 million color and 2.5 million black-and-white impressions. Konica Minolta production print presses have been able to grow with us and are a key part of our success.”
Digital Dog Direct attributes its rapid growth to its standardization on Konica Minolta production print systems and solutions. The company has 100 percent confidence in the Konica Minolta digital presses.
With the new EngageIT XMedia in place, Digital Dog Direct is able to manage a multi-channel marketing campaign to attract new customers. Combining the XMedia platform with the expertise of Digital Dog Direct’s in-house creative and marketing specialists has helped the company reach its goal of becoming a full-service direct marketing provider. Adcock believes this will help drive the company’s growth over the next five years.
Through it all, Adcock knows he will have a trusted provider in Konica Minolta to help Digital Dog Direct achieve new business goals.
BACKGROUND: Digital Dog Direct provides single-source printing, mailing and direct marketing solutions to businesses across the United States. With more than 30 years of experience servicing the direct mail community, Digital Dog Direct is a leader in digital variable data printing.
Six years ago, Digital Dog Direct embarked on an aggressive company growth strategy to expand its service offerings beyond traditional high-volume black-andwhite mailings to include targeted, higher-quality color mailings. The company’s long-term goal is to provide customers with end-to-end direct marketing solutions from content creation, design and execution across multiple marketing channels such as print, email, mobile and social media.
To help meet its business goals, Digital Dog Direct standardized on Konica Minolta production print systems and software solutions. Over the course of five years, the company installed four bizhub PRESS C8000 Color Digital Presses, four bizhub PRO 1200 Black and White Production Print Systems and one bizhub PRESS 1250 Black and White Production Print System. Jay Adcock, information technologies director at Digital Dog, said the company selected Konica Minolta for its exceptional digital color capabilities, device reliability, superior customer support and production print finishing and software solutions
“Since working with Konica Minolta, we have seen our business double and triple,” says Adcock. “To meet the increased demand by customers, we are currently running all four bizhub PRESS C8000s at capacity and, during our busy periods, we are running the devices beyond the suggested duty cycle. We are excited to expand our business with the newest production print systems from Konica Minolta.”
DIGITAL PRESSES FOR COLOR ACCURACY: To address the need for increased color printing capacity, Digital Dog Direct added a two Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C1100 Color Digital Press to their arsenal. The new bizhub PRESS C1100s offer Digital Dog Direct faster speeds of 100 pages per minute and double the monthly volume with a million-page duty cycle.
“We have been very impressed with the performance of the bizhub PRESS C1100,” says Adcock. “It runs as advertised. We are especially pleased with the speed, registration, quality and stability of the system. Over long runs, the bizhub PRESS C1100 is very consistent. This means that the press can run longer without operators stopping to check and calibrate it for color accuracy. This will save us a significant amount of time.”
Having achieved G7 certification for outstanding color capabilities, Digital Dog Direct uses the Konica Minolta Color Care Suite across all its digital presses to ensure color accuracy and consistency. Color Care provides exact installation and calibration of the bizhub PRESS C1100 and bizhub PRESS C8000. Adcock comments that the bizhub PRESS C1100 easily passed all G7 testing they have performed on the device.
SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS DRIVE BUSINESS GROWTH: In the past 12 months, Digital Dog Direct has implemented a number of production print solutions to help automate workflow and expand the company’s service offerings. Leveraging Konica Minolta’s EngageIT XMedia marketing software, Digital Dog Direct has a multi-channel platform that makes data management, segmentation, creative design and deployment of multi-channel marketing campaigns simple.
“We see a lot of new business opportunity with the XMedia platform and it aligns with our long-term growth strategy of becoming a one-stop shop for all direct marketing initiatives,” says Adcock. “We have launched the platform with a new customer and are working on integrating it with their CRM system, allowing us to create and send email campaigns. We hope to expand their marketing campaigns to include real-time text message offers to their customers. We are excited about the possibilities the platform provides.”
Digital Dog Direct has also created a digital storefront using PageDNA and integrated it with Konica Minolta’s EngageIT Automation workflow software. Customers can now submit work orders through a branded storefront. The jobs are automated and pushed to the appropriate digital press for printing. The process is seamless and improves the efficiency of print operations. Adcock believes the storefront will appeal to its larger customers that need to maintain brand consistency across multiple locations.
Click here for more information about Konica Minolta
