Sun shines on DScoop meeting
While there's no shortage of talk about how the recession is impacting print business at the DScoop annual conference in Orlando, FL, the bad economy doesn't seem to have impacted attendance.DScoop, which is a digital services cooperative of HP Indigo users and HP, is reporting record attendance for its fourth annual conference, with almost 1,300 people present. In addition, 69 companies are exhibiting in the Solutions Showcase.
The three-day event, which began on Thursday and continues through tomorrow, offers a variety of educational seminars covering the best practices in digital printing.
In a Friday seminar titled "Pricing for Value Add," the panel discussed how printers are increasingly looking to broaden their skill set with value-added services such as list services, campaign creation and management and fulfillment.
In a survey of 341 printers, 38.3% said they offer digital print, 41.4% offer conventional print and 18.1% value-add services. By 2010, 44% expect to offer digital print, 34.9% conventional print and 19.3% value-added services.
There's also a "heavy migration into e-enabled print services" like e-catalogs, said moderator Barb Pellow, group leader at InfoTrends.
When it comes to pricing, "there's a movement toward a per-campaign charge, which is more of an agency model," as opposed to hourly rates,which have been the norm, said Pellow.
The benefit for printers of offering a broader set of sklls is being able to help clients improve response rates. In a DScoop survey of 217 marketers, a campaign with print, e-mail and a Web landing page had an average response rate of 8.8%, a 35% lift over a mail-only effort.
