Why More Businesses Are Bringing Production Print In House

Recognize this issue? Your marketing team has a mailer ready to send. The design is finished. Customer names have been added. Deal offers are personalized for each recipient.

Then the waiting begins. The file is sent to your outside print vendor. Then, a change needs to be made, so the project goes back into their queue and back to your team. A proof arrives, but someone notices a typo or an incorrect date. The file has to be updated and submitted again. The cycle never seems to end. 

For many businesses, this process is completely normal. The vendor may do excellent work, but every adjustment, whether large or small may take two to three days to make a change.

Bringing production print into your office changes that process. It gives your team more control over timing, personalization, and print quality.

One of the biggest advantages of in house production print is the flexibility it gives your team. If a change needs to be made, it can happen in minuets, not days. 

Modern production equipment allows businesses to use variable data printing. This means a single design can automatically include different names, dates, locations, or offers for each person receiving it. For example, a company could send renewal notices with each customer’s expiration date, a franchise could create mailers with different promotions based on zip code, or a school could personalize invitations with student names and event information. Variable data can also place mailing addresses directly onto each piece. This can save your team hours of printing and applying labels by hand. This can be  useful for schools, healthcare offices, insurance agencies, franchises, and other organizations that regularly send personalized information.

When production printing happens inside your office, your team controls the entire process from start to finish. If someone notices a mistake, it can be fixed immediately. If you want to test two different offers, both versions can be printed without creating separate jobs with an outside vendor.

Production print is not only useful for large mail campaigns. Businesses can also use it for many different internal solutions. Customer proposals, sales packets, training manuals, event programs, brochures, and so much more can be professionally printed in house, elevating your brand

Many businesses assume that printing in house means sacrificing quality. That may have been true years ago, or when printing on a normal device, but is definitely not true with a production print machine.

Today’s production print devices produce sharp text, vibrant and accurate colors, and consistent results from the first piece to the last. Brand colors remain consistent across large print runs, which is important when printed materials represent your company just as much as your website or advertising. No more fading colors from the first to the last print.

Finishing Options Have Drastically Improved As Well

Spot UV coating on Konica Minolta devices can add a glossy texture to logos, headlines, or messages. Heavier paper stocks create a more substantial feel and help your materials stand out in your customers’ hands. Textured materials take this one step further, creating a unique finish that immediately grabs attention. These details can help a mailer feel more valuable and give the recipient another reason to stop and look at it.

The result is a finished product that feels polished and professional. Customers are less likely to see it as another piece of mail and more likely to keep it in their hands.

Businesses once had to choose between convenience and quality. Companies often outsourced projects because specialty finishes and personalized printing were difficult to manage internally.

That tradeoff is disappearing.

With the right production print equipment, businesses can create personalized mailers, produce premium finishes, and print everything on their own timeline. There is no waiting for shipping, no repeated explanations to an outside vendor, and no delays caused by last minute changes. Businesses may also reduce shipping costs, rush fees, minimum order requirements, and the cost of replacing outdated materials.

For organizations that regularly produce mailers, brochures, training materials, or customer communications, production print may be worth looking into for your business.

If your team is still relying on outside vendors for every print project, MMIT would be happy to show you what modern production equipment is capable of and help determine whether an in-house solution makes sense for your business.

If you would like to learn more, contact our Production Print Specialist, Blake Campbell, at (515) 251-1169 for a simple conversation.