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Variable Data Publishing Resource Center

Glossary of VDP Terms

Adobe gratefully acknowledges the following list of Variable Data Publishing (VDP) terminology, provided by PODi.

Affinity Group Marketing

Targeting small groups of individuals who have similar characteristics or needs.

Application

1. A specific digital printing job: “This application is a great example of promotional VDP.”

2. A general category of printing jobs: “Web fulfillment is a rapidly growing application for VDP.”

3. In general, a software program: “Microsoft Excel is a useful application for cleaning up incoming data.”

Attrition

Reduction in a company’s customer population that happens as a result of normal turnover or because of some specific event — perhaps a good competitive offer or a failure on the part of the company. (Also known as churn)

Authoring Tool

A software package that allows the creation of variable information jobs by defining layouts that include variable and, usually, static elements.

Banding

Creating groups of customers or prospects based on selected criteria.

Bangtail

A promotional envelope with a second flap, which is perforated and designed for use as an order blank.

Bounce Back

An offer enclosed with mailings sent to a customer in fulfillment of an order.

Business Intelligence Software

Software that provides different views of company data, through such methods as filtering and recognizing patterns. This allows businesses to make better decisions.

Campaign Management Software

A tool that facilitates marketing automation by coordinating the segmentation of the customer database and the development of offers. It links data analysis with program execution.

Channel Manager

Software that enables a company to capture relevant information from every point of customer contact, pass it to the central information repository, perform meaningful analysis, and finally send key data back to every point of contact for execution.

Churn

see Attrition

Classing

Assigning value to groups of customers or prospects based on selected criteria.

Cleansing

Removing from a database any data that is incomplete, incorrect or corrupt. (Also known as Scrubbing)

Coding

Identifying devices used on reply devices to identify the mailing list or other source from which the address was obtained.

Collaborative Filtering

A Web interactive channel through which a company can collect information about its customers by monitoring what pages are visited on its Web site and where the most time is spent.

Collateral Management

A system that records details of the various marketing materials (printed and electronic) for use in any campaign. It enables customer contact staff to access the exact materials to which a customer has been, or should be exposed.

Component

A part of a page, (e.g. image, graphic or text) which may need to be printed on various pages in a VDP print run. (Also known as Element or Page Element)

Component Caching

A method of improving VDP production efficiency by avoiding redundant re-RIPping of reusable elements. Without Component Caching, the element (this “page component”) must be re-RIPped every time it appears. But if a system does offer Component Caching, the component is RIPped only once, and the resulting press-ready bitmap is saved in the system, so it can be imaged anytime during the print run.

Conditional Processing

The ability, in a VDP system, to automatically change a page’s layout or content based on specific fields in the incoming data stream, using logic rules. Example: a picture field might be specified as “If Gender=M print redcar.tif, otherwise print whitecar.tif.”

Contact History

A record of the interaction a company has had with the customer over time and the outcomes of those interactions.

Content Management

Use of managed text, images, and pages to create a unique message for each customer.

Continuous Relationship Marketing

See Customer Relationship Management

Corporate System Application (CSA)

See Enterprise Resource Planning

Cost per Piece

The traditional measure of the cost of a direct mail marketing job: “How much did it cost me for each piece I dropped in the mail for this campaign?” But in comparing two printing methods, cost per piece is only meaningful if all other factors are equal.

Cost per Response

The goal of a marketing campaign is to get responses or orders, so the proper parameter for measuring the cost of a direct mail job is cost per response, or cost per dollar of sales, or some other results-oriented measurement. This point is important in the business of VDP, because VDP costs more per piece than conventional offset printing. The VDP page must justify its cost by producing better results.

Customer Information Repository

See Data Warehouse

Customer Acquisition

the marketing goal of acquiring new customers — selling to people who were not already customers.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

1. The overall process of marketing, sales, and service within any organization

2. The practice of identifying, acquiring and retaining the best customers to produce profitable growth.

3. A dialogue with customers consisting of sequenced messages timed to individual needs and opportunity. (Also known as Continuous Relationship Marketing, Relationship Management or Relationship Marketing)

Customer Retention

the marketing goal of keeping your customers from going to the competition. The rule of thumb is that it costs five to ten times less to keep a customer than it does to acquire a new one. This is a major impetus behind the move to Customer Relationship Management.

Customization

See Personalization

Data Driven Graphics

Graphics, such as charts, which are generated by sending the raw numerical data to the DFE or RIP rather than creating individual charts in advance for each document in a print run. A digital printing system that can produce data driven graphics reduces the workload and bandwidth requirements for the earlier components of the system.

Data Mart

A subset of the information contained in a data warehouse.

Data Mining

Searching large volumes of data looking for patterns that accurately predict behavior in customers and prospects.

Data Model

A structured way of viewing a set of data — the design of the tables and their corresponding relationships in a relational database that are needed to support a vertical industry.

Data Warehouse

1. An information infrastructure that enables businesses to access and analyze detailed data and trends.

2. A separate store of transactional data that provides a single integrated view of the customer. (Also known as Customer Information Repository).

Database Management System (DBMS)

Software used to create and maintain a database. Provides a layer of transparency between the physical data and application programs.

Database Marketing

The use of customer profiles contained in a database to market to customers.

Database Publishing

A process for managing, creating and publishing content through extensive use of database systems and content creation tools.

Decision Support Systems

Software application that helps to analyze data contained with a customer database. (Also known as Executive Information Systems, EIS)

De-duplication

Removing duplicate records from a database, especially when two or more databases have been merged to form a single larger list.

Digital Asset Manager

A software package that organizes, tracks and manages digital assets such as graphics, logos, pictures and text.

Digital Front End (DFE)

see RIP.

Digital Printing

Printing technology (laser printer, inkjet printer, digital press, etc) that can produce printed sheets directly from a computer file, without going through some intermediate medium such as a film negative or an intermediate machine such as a plate-making machine.

Direct Mail Advertising

Any promotional effort using the Postal Service for distribution of the advertising message.

Direct Marketing

A direct communication to a customer or business that is designed to generate a response in the form of an order, a request for further information, or a visit to a store or other place of business. (Also called Direct Response Advertising)

Direct Response Advertising

See Direct Marketing

Doubling Day

A point in time established by previous experience when 50% of all returns to a mailing will normally be received.

Element

see Component

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Multi-module application software that helps a company manage the important parts of its business such as product planning, parts purchasing, inventory management, supplier interaction, customer service, order tracking, finance and human resources.

Enterprise Customer Management (ECM)

The concept of moving ownership of the customer up to the enterprise level, and away from individual departments.

Events

Significant happenings in either the life of the customer (e.g. marriage, birth of child) or externally to the relationship with the customer (e.g. competitor activity) that may affect purchasing habits. Event-triggered communications are an important application of promotional VDP.

Executive Information Systems, EIS

See Decision Support Systems

Extract File

A subset of a large database used for analysis, often formatted as a flat file for downloading to a personal computer or workstation.

Frequency Marketing

A marketing program that recognizes and rewards customers based on their purchasing behavior. (Also known as Loyalty Programs)

Geocoding

Analysis of geo-demographic data such as ZIP codes, counties, regions, etc.

Hard Benefit

A program benefit that the customer would otherwise have to pay for (e.g. free air travel, free hotel lodging, etc.) See also Soft Benefit.

Householding

The grouping of individuals by household or relationship patterns.

Interactive Marketing

Marketing products or services via the Internet.

Kill Bad Name (KBN)

Action taken with undeliverable addresses.

Lifetime Value (“LTV”) of Customer

Viewing the value of a customer in terms of how much product or service he will purchase during his lifetime, not just on the current transaction. By focusing on LTV, a marketer gets a much more realistic picture of the value of keeping customers loyal.

Loyalty Programs

See Frequency Marketing

LTV

see Lifetime Value.

Marketing Automation

Automating the business processes involved in marketing: campaign definition, creation, and execution; market segmentation and targeting; collecting and analyzing response, and feeding back the response into the system.

Marketing Campaign Lifecycle

The full cycle of events in a marketing campaign including planning, execution and assessment.

Marketing Velocity

The speed of cycling through the marketing process — all of the steps in the Marketing Campaign Lifecycle.

Mass customization

The ability to cater to a “market of one,” printing tailored to an audience of one specific individual.

Needs-based Differentiation

How customers are different, based on what they need from the enterprise. Two customers may buy the same exact product or service for two dramatically different reasons.

Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

an industry standard method of connecting to a database to request and receive data records.

One-to-One Marketing

Marketing process through which a business identifies its individual customers, differentiates among those individuals, interacts with customers and records responses, and customizes communications for individual consumers. Popularized by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., in their series of “One To One” marketing books.

Online Analytical Processing

An application that looks for trends and patterns in corporate data in real-time.

Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)

An application that assists in the processing of a transaction and provides all the necessary information to complete the transaction. (e.g., the program running in front of the telephone operator when a consumer calls and orders a product from a catalog. The operator needs access to product information (what colors does that come in?), pricing, availability, delivery options, etc.)

Page Caching

Processing all the static elements on a VDP job only once and saving the result for reuse on every page in the print job. The variable elements for each sheet are then merged with the cached page to make the final printed piece.

Page Element

see Component

Personalization

Customizing a document by varying the text, graphics and layout to meet the needs of an individual consumer. (Also known as Customization)

Portable Document Format (PDF)

A file format created by Adobe Systems based on its PostScript® page description language. PDF files are platform- and device-independent, and are much easier to “port” from one user’s system to another without errors arising. PDF files are created and supported using Adobe’s “Acrobat” software tools; also, many other vendors have announced development of tools that support and expand the use of PDF in graphic arts production.

PostScript

The de facto standard page description language for the graphic arts, created by Adobe Systems. PostScript instructions created by application software and the printer driver are sent to a PostScript output device to describe the page the user wishes to have output.

Product Holding

What products a customer has purchased and what products they currently hold.

Product Usage

How the customer uses a product.

Promotion

Marketing communication activities that further the awareness, acceptance and sale of merchandise or services.

Propensity Scores

Scoring, based on past customer history, which portrays the likelihood a customer will perform a certain action.

Pull Marketing

Communications with a customer that are originated by the consumer.

Purge

The process of eliminating duplicates and/or unwanted names and addresses from one or more lists.

Push Marketing

Communications with a customer that are originated by the company.

Raster Image Processor

see RIP.

Recurring Content

See Reusable Component

Reflow

Dynamic hyphenation and justification of a text block caused by insertion of variable content. (Also known as Rejustifying)

Re-justify

see Reflow

Relational Database

A database built using the relational model, based on tables linked by a common key. Relational databases do not have any predefined access paths, and the order of records within each table is arbitrary.

Relationship Management or Relationship Marketing

see Customer Relationship Management

Response Rate

in a direct mail campaign, the percentage of recipients who responded. Response rate is a vital measurement of the success of any such campaign. The rule of thumb in the US and Europe is that typical response rate is 2%, but estimates in various industries range from a fraction of a percent to 4-5%. A major goal of promotional VDP is to generate higher response rates.

Response Tracking

Recording responses received in answer to a marketing campaign.

Reusable Component

Component reused within a personalized print job. (Also known as Recurring Content)

RFM Market Analysis

Segmenting customers based on Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value of transactions.

RIP

1. noun: Acronym for Raster Image Processor: Hardware or software that converts a page description from some abstract language into a “raster image” — a pre-computed pattern of individual bits that are ready to be imaged on a digital output device: laser printer, imagesetter, digital press, etc. In the graphic arts industry, “RIP” almost always (but not always) refers to something that reads PostScript.

2. verb: To convert a page description file to bits, using a RIP. The RIPping process is also called rasterizing.

SAS (Statistical Analysis System)

A comprehensive statistical and graphical package that includes modules for several types of specialized analysis.

Sales Force Automation

Automating the business processes involved in sales such as contact management, information delivery, and proposal configuration. Note: in 1998, the industry Sales Force Automation Association renamed itself CRMA: Customer Relationship Management Association. This reflects a trend that’s important to the VDP industry: marketers are increasingly recognizing the importance of managing the entire customer relationship over a lifetime, not just through a single sales process, and CRM requires frequent communication, which often uses VDP.

Scoring

A technique that uses a model to predict future behavior. The score assigned to each individual in a database indicates that person’s likelihood of exhibiting a particular behavior.

Scrubbing

See cleansing

Segmentation

Dividing customers into groups, each with common demographic attributes.

Soft Benefit

A program benefit that strengthens the customer’s sense of special status and does not generate significant expense to the sponsor (e.g. discounts, advance notification of sales, special shopping hours, etc.) See also Hard Benefit.

Suppressions

Indicators to not communicate with a particular consumer or group of consumers.

Transactional

Representing or recording a business action of financial exchange.

Variable Data Printing (VDP)

A digital print run where each printed page is somewhat different, with the variations usually determined by relating page content to customer information in a database. (Also known as Variable Information Printing or VIP.)

Variable Information (VI) or Variable Information Printing(VIP)

see VDP.

Versioning

A form of short-run printing, where different versions of a document may go to different geographical areas or people with different income levels. Versioning can be done on a press that does not have VDP capability, because hundreds or thousands of identical sheets are printed for each “version” of the job.

Workflow

The decisions, steps and information paths taken in creating and outputting a digital document. In current graphic arts usage, “workflow” may be used loosely, sometimes including materials, processes and data as well as specific operator procedures.