Do Print Shops Need Big Data?

Many print shop owners cringe at the mere mention of anything that includes the word or the concept of data. If you react the same way, you’d better get over it. Marketing and communications are now almost completely reliant upon and driven by data. As simple evidence, we now have what’s called “Big Data” and even “Little Data”. Business cards, letterhead and the like will always be part of the printing business, but opportunity and growth are in those products incorporating the use and management of data. Not convinced? Don’t care? Perhaps the following will change your view about data…

Collecting and applying data to find and cultivate buyers, members, donations, etc. for products and services has become its own industry. A groundbreaking 2013 study developed under the auspices of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) concludes that the data-driven marketing economy (DDME) in U.S. was worth $165 billion and involved some 675,000 jobs in 2012. It also suggests that small business and innovation are the biggest beneficiaries of the DDME:

“Thanks to data, startups and small businesses today face lower barriers to market entry than they have since the 1870s. The exchange of data enables small businesses to compete effectively with big players, allowing new market entrants to challenge mature players." 

You can download the study, “The Value of Data: Consequences for Insight, Innovation, and Efficiency in the U.S. Economy”. The summary (4 pp) is here… | The full study (105 pp) is here… 

You’ll see that data in the DDME isn’t financial, accounting or transactional data. It is data needed to communicate…seller to buyer…maker to user…marketer to consumer. It’s data businesses of all sizes use to reach and motivate their target audiences. Many of these businesses can be customers, if you are willing and able to help them use their data. The DDME study explains: 

“Today, data-driven marketers still spend more on the postal channel [direct mail] than all digital channels [online] combined. In the current DDME, data is equally vital “offline” where the cost of interaction with a customer is much higher. By acquiring data, and using it for segmentation, targeting and measurement, marketers aim to reduce expenditures on non-valuable interactions as close as possible to zero, while ensuring that the expenditures they do make maximize the number of valuable interactions. The efficiency derived from smart use of data makes the process of marketing significantly more efficient.” 

Translated into simple English:Small businesses want to use data intelligently to target high potential customers and avoid low potential customers to maximize the return on money spent on direct mail. Unfortunately, many print shop owners ignore this because they don’t know how to deal with customer data. 

So we don’t leave you hanging…Big Data is a general term referring to data sets too humongous to be stored and managed with conventional techniques. Big Data is, for example, Amazon’s 237 million active customer accounts or the more than1 million sales transactions Walmart processes every hour. Little Data is all about you…how many calories you had for breakfast…how many minutes you watched what TV program…how often you do this…when you do that. You may not want to know that much about yourself, but there plenty of people who will do just about anything to get (and use/sell) all that information about you.

You don’t need to worry about Big Data or Little Data, but you do need to understand why and how your customers use data (or want to). There's no need to staff up or gear up to do data work…don’t waste your time and money…simply outsource all your customer data work to specialists. Differentiate your business the fast, easy and effective way by learning how to get things done rather than learning how to do them yourself.