Often when I work with marketing and creative services organizations, a piece of technology that is usually missing is Dynamic Authoring, or Content software. For some reason, there isn't recognition of the value of this tool outside of generating things like direct mail or email campaigns. So, here's another take on the value of these tools.

Most of us have seen really bad examples of marketing and sales staff creating their own collateral or internal presentation materials. Some of the problems that show up are:

  • Low res images copied from web pages
  • Brand Identity elements that are just plain wrong
  • Use of out-of-date product copy/specs/images
  • Layout that, well, leaves something to be desired


So, why does this keep happening? Well, maybe sales and marketing teams have a real need for localized, focused collateral for customer meetings and sales presentations. But when they come to creative services, they find out they really can't get this kind of work done in the time frames they need. Plus, it may be cost prohibitive or require so many approvals it just doesn't seem worth it.

So, how can a dynamic authoring tool help? The great thing about these tools is that they keep control of design in the hands of designers but put control of content in the hands of the end user.

Here's just one example of how these tools can help.
Imagine Scott is a local sales rep for an office products company that carries a wide selection of electronic products and supplies. Scott just landed a meeting with a large potential customer who is very interested in large format printers. Scott is meeting with her in two days and would love to have a focused piece of sales collateral, featuring their top 3 large format printers so he can leave it with her after the meeting. With a dynamic authoring tool, Scott can go to the company intranet site and select a collateral template that has been designed by creative services, which includes up-to-date branding and gives him some options to select content. Scott then enters three product ids and the system pulls pre-approved images, specs and copy and automatically formats them and adjusts the template accordingly. Then Scott enters his contact information (which is checked for correct format and spelling) and previews his piece of collateral. If everything is okay, he requests a PDF or routes it to his favorite print shop. Now, when Scott visits the customer he'll have a very professional piece of collateral to leave with the customer that addresses her specific needs.

The beauty of these tools is the control you have over design and available content while still providing flexibility and quick service to the end user. There are a wide variety of variable printing tools that provide these capabilities. They range from open source, simple solutions to high-end CMS systems that focus on personalized marketing for print and web. While this is just a short list of vendors, take a look at Scene7 by Adobe, XMPie, and Saepio. The main thing is to look for solutions that scale to meet your particular needs.

Now all you have to do is figure out where this kind of tool could help you provide better service and generate more business.