Tips and Bits

Webinar: Updated Server Submission Libraries with Vinny Myles

Please join Pageflex's Director of Support and Services, Vinny Myles, on July 14th at 2:00 PM EST for a discussion about updates to the Server submission libraries (pfsubmit). Vinny will be sharing sample code and discussing best practices for submitting documents to Pageflex Server.

This webinar will be highly technical in nature and it will assume programmatic knowledge of Pageflex Server. This event is for Pageflex customers only.

Click here to register.

New Plug-In: QR Code Generator

Pageflex is pleased to announce a new QR code generating content source plug-in available for Studio 7.5.2 when used with Storefront, Campaign Manager or Pageflex Server. The plug-in is available free of charge to clients on support.  To get the plug-in, please log in to the Pageflex Support Site and search for "QR". Alternately, the answer ID of the tech note is #427.  The plug-in is downloadable from the tech note.

QR codes are two-dimensional bar codes designed to be read with a QR code reader app installed on a user's mobile phone. The reader typically uses the camera of the phone to scan the code, which usually contains either a link to a web address, personal contact information, or a short message about a product.

QR codes are primarily used in marketing programs as a response mechanism, so try them on your direct mail pieces, brochures, business cards, and trans-promotional statements. Pageflex's QR code generator can generate generic QR codes with one URL, such as the one linking to Pageflex.com above, or individualized QR codes that take users to a pURL or gURL. 

Some tips for successful QR codes: 

• White Space Matters - Give the QR code some room in your design. A bit of white space around the code dramatically improves the readability of the code. And, larger codes are easier for mobile phone cameras to focus on, so try to make your codes at least 1 inch by 1 inch. The Pageflex plug-in will let you specify the size of your code.

• Provide an Alternate Link - Because QR codes are new and not every reader reads every QR code, it's very important to provide an alternate link to web pages you want users to visit. If space is tight, consider a URL shortener.

• Test Your QR Codes with a Variety of Readers -  QR code readers are evolving rapidly. There are a plethora of readers available. We've enjoyed using QuickMark  on the iPhone and several Android mobiles. And, BeeTagg was great on the Blackberry. You can test your QR code reader (and enjoy some font humor! ) with these Pageflex-generated QR codes.

                               

                             

We hope you enjoy the QR code generator!

Storefront Webinar: Integrated Data List Acquisition Extensions with Petri Isola and Phil Proto on June 24th at 2:00 PM EST

Please join Petri Isola and Phil Proto of Pageflex Services for an in-depth look at three new data list acquisition extensions that are now available for purchase and use within Storefront. We'll be previewing and configuring integrations that allow you to connect your Storefront's Data Merge step to Salesforce.com, LeadsPlease and Mailer's Haven.

The Salesforce.com extension allows Salesforce/Storefront users to import data dynamically from reports written within Salesforce.

The LeadsPlease and Mailer's Haven extensions allow end users to query for and purchase commercial data lists on-the-fly within Storefront.

This Storefront webinar is appropriate for current and prospective Pageflex customers. This webinar will be held on June 24th at 2:00 PM EST.

Register here:
https://bitstream.webex.com/bitstream/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=486517257

Pageflex Welcomes Our New Press-sense Colleagues and Customers

Hello, I'm Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, President and CEO of Bitstream. Today we announced the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Press-sense, including the IP. This is an exciting point in the history of Bitstream. I want to welcome the Press-sense employees, customers, partners, and distributors to Bitstream.

 

We have committed to continue iWay and Press-sense manager product development, maintain the Press-sense office in Israel, and continue to support the OEM partners and customers that have chosen to make the Press-sense iWay and Manager technologies a major component of their production workflow solution. The Press-sense products will join Bitstream’s Pageflex publishing product line.

HP, Océ, and Xerox have all expressed support for Bitstream as the new owner of the iWay technology and we expect to continue and expand these relationships.

Some of our Pageflex customers also own a Press-sense product. We know that the recent months have been anxious ones for Press-sense customers as you awaited word of what would happen with Press-sense. We hope that you will give us the opportunity to support you and work with you during this transition.  We look forward to hearing your feedback on how we can further develop our software to meet your needs. There are many things we have not had time to address yet. We ask for your patience as we work through the details and integrate our teams.

Among other strengths, Pageflex is known for its knowledgeable, friendly support team and powerful, published APIs and SDKs that enable and simplify the process of extending our products and integrating them with third-party systems. We fully intend to invest necessary resources to bring these two qualities to our new iWay products. To that end we will retain nearly all of the current Press-sense employees. They know the technology intimately, they know you well, and they know your concerns and needs.

Our initial focus will be on stabilizing the iWay product, addressing immediate functionality issues (those pesky bugs), and actively supporting those of you who are on current support contracts.

We have posted an FAQ at press-sense.bitstream.com along with additional information. I further welcome your feedback and questions here and at iWay-acquisition@bitstream.com.

Bitstream is Hiring!

Both Pageflex and our parent company, Bitstream, have positions open at our Marlborough, MA headquarters. We're looking for new team members in marketing, pre-sales, development (web and product) and finance. You can browse the jobs we've already posted here, but please check back regularly as not all of our open positions have been put up yet. Or, if you're experienced with Pageflex but you don't see a position that exactly matches your skills, please consider submitting your resume so that we can match you with future openings.

Some of the reasons to consider working with us include:

• Bitstream was ranked as number 77 on the 2009 Globe 100 list of top-performing Massachusetts companies.
• Bitstream ranked 29th on The Top 100 Women-led Businesses in Massachusetts for 2008.
• In 2007, the company was recognized by the Boston Business Journal as one of the fastest growing companies in Massachusetts.
• The company was ranked as the twenty-fifth company on the 2008 Fortune Magazine list of America's fastest-growing small public companies.
• Bitstream was also named by The Boston Globe to "The Globe 100" list of fastest growing companies.
• The company is consistently cited as a one of the "Top Women-Led Businesses" by the Commonwealth Institute and Babson College.

We offer a first-rate benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, 401(k) with company match, short and long term disability, paid holidays, vacation, and sick time.

For consideration, please submit a resume and cover letter along with salary requirements to careers@bitstream.com.

Wanna Put a Branded Watermark on Your PDF Previews?

Howdy, my name is Petri Isola. I am the Consulting Services Manager here at Pageflex.

Many Pageflex Storefront customers would like to have the PDF previews on their site be watermarked. With a watermark you can offer a high-quality PDF preview while protecting the piece from being printed elsewhere. And better yet, the watermark should be customizable. For instance, it may display your logo or your customer’s brand.

With the help of a Pageflex-provided Document Action script it is easy to create branded watermarks to be used on the Pageflex Storefront deployments. When your end-users view a PDF preview, the customized document will include your watermark.

You have control over the look and content of the watermark, and you can easily share it across multiple deployments by putting the watermark image in a shared location.

I’ve placed the watermark document action script and detailed instructions in the Pageflex Support Knowledgebase. Search for Answer ID #416 under “Find Answers.”

EarthColor Licenses Range of Pageflex Products to Launch EarthIntegrate

Pageflex technology has been licensed by EarthColor, Inc. to support their EarthIntegrate solution set.  EarthIntegrate will incorporate Pageflex Storefront, Pageflex Server, and Pageflex Campaign Manager into its technology suite, which provides clients leading-edge web-to-print, integrated marketing, and custom digital solutions.

EarthIntegrate is the digital print, technology, and marketing arm of EarthColor, Inc. This venture builds on EarthColor’s 30 years of experience providing printing, providing environmentally engineered printed products and technology for clients in a range of vertical markets.

Ryan Farris, President of the EarthIntegrate division of EarthColor stated, “When we defined the scope for EarthIntegrate, we knew it needed to include robust functionality in a range of areas, including cross-media, personalization and web-to-print. That’s why we chose Pageflex. Pageflex gives us the best technical foundation to build comprehensive solutions today, and can keep pace with the lights-out production offerings we will bring to our clients moving forward.”

The Pageflex product line enables companies across the globe to communicate their marketing messages more easily and effectively. Pageflex sets the standard for excellence and innovation in targeted marketing and brand management.  Pageflex Storefront is an easy, flexible platform for creating and managing targeted communications online. Pageflex Server is an enterprise solution for creating your own variable publishing solution and communicating through print, e-mail, and personalized Web sites. Using Pageflex Campaign Manager allows you to easily create, manage, and track multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Anna Chagnon, Bitstream President and CEO, said, “Individually, each Pageflex product gives customers the tools for enhancing their communications and creating customized campaigns, but when used collectively, the possibilities are endless. It’s wonderful to see EarthIntegrate utilizing our products to develop this comprehensive solution. The combination of their innovation and Pageflex technology enables them to achieve outstanding results for their clients.”

 

About EarthIntegrate

EarthIntegrate is the digital print, technology, and marketing arm of EarthColor, Inc. Comprised of over 50 years of combined print, interactive, and marketing experience, the team at EarthIntegrate is a proud extension of the best in class printing, sustainable solutions, and technology ventures that have long distinguished EarthColor in the marketplace.  The EarthIntegrate team can provide vertical industry expertise to discuss what we’ve seen in our tenure in the field, or how we might better apply a technology solution to more efficiently manage any programs or campaigns you have currently. http://earthintegrate.com/aboutus.html

Meeting the Needs of Customers in a Range of Vertical Markets

To be successful in this economy, your business needs to be able to grow and seize every opportunity that it can. For many organizations, that means looking outside the current group of customers you serve and into undiscovered markets for new opportunities.

But after focusing on one market for so long, how difficult is it to move into a new one? I'm Marion Williams-Bennett, Pageflex Marketing Communications Specialist. I’ve talked with several Pageflex customers about this idea, and wanted to share some of their thoughts in this issue of Tips and Bits.

First, let’s look at the benefits of the two different ways of addressing market opportunities.

Vertical Market – the Traditional Approach

Vertical Markets are defined as a business that meet the needs of a group of similar businesses and customers that engage in trade based on specific and specialized needs. Some verticals served by our customers include financial services, universities, real estate, and pharmaceuticals.

Working with one vertical market gives your business several advantages. It enables you to cultivate an intimate knowledge of the vertical market and their business challenges so that you can closely match your capabilities to the needs of that market.

In addition, this focus gives you a solid understanding of your customers’ vertical industries and the documents and document-intensive workflows of key importance to those industries.

Finally, working with one specific vertical market is a way for printers to make a successful transition to becoming a marketing service provider. Your knowledge of customers’ needs can help build the foundation for future work, and can expand the relationship into new areas.

Horizontal Approach

Businesses that focus on horizontal markets meet a given need across a wide variety of industries, rather than a specific industry.

The benefits you can earn from working with a range of markets are numerous. First, it enables you to find more opportunities and sell into a wider audience - critical in these economic times. Working with businesses in a range of markets also gives your business the benefit of diversity - diversity of schedules, peak times, and down times. It helps to insulate you from the failure of one industry, and can keep your projects and profits flowing evenly throughout the year.

What about combining both?

In these economic times, it’s critical to have a balance of both strategies. To gain valuable insight into one market, but take those lessons and apply them to new markets.

To do that, look at your work creatively, holistically, and learn to apply lessons from one market to another. Our customers report that while the specific needs of various markets change, there are several common goals that are consistent across markets. Some of these goals include compliance, better return on marketing investment, and streamlining of processes.

Say you have done a lot of work with financial services, for example. You’ve built an online storefront where branch offices of the financial services company can come to customize and produce marketing materials. In addition to customization, you also need legal compliance text to appear on every piece. Finally, the system had to demonstrate efficiencies to the client.

Now, think about other markets who might demand similar requirements – such as pharmaceuticals. Like financial services, the pharmaceutical industry is highly regulated and requires companies to include legally-required compliance information on their marketing materials. Pharmaceutical companies also often have remote sales teams that need to be able to customize marketing materials. And, like most industries, they could benefit from streamlining their processes and gaining efficiencies.

You have the solution that can meet their needs.

It’s finding similarities like these that can enable you to successfully move from one market to the next.

Pageflex has developed case studies on customers who have successfully worked with a variety of vertical markets. If you’d like to learn more about this topic by receiving these case studies, email me at mbennett@bitstream.com.

Conversen Brings Variable Print to Their Digital Platform

Conversen’s customers are innovative marketers. And Conversen is an innovative company also. Conversen offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that lets marketers communicate with their consumers through a variety of digital channels, including email, Web, SMS, RSS, and social media. They have now added print to this mix by licensing Pageflex Server and integrating it into their platform. Traditionally, we work with companies that are experts in print communications and are expanding their efforts to support digital forms of communications. It is nice when we see the digital frontier acknowledge the importance that print, and especially VARIABLE print, still plays in marketing to consumers.

Paul Mandeville, Conversen’s COO, recently explained to me the market need that lead them to use Pageflex. “CMO surveys consistently show that integrating offline and online communications is a high priority, and this partnership with Bitstream to bring Pageflex digital print capabilities into a platform that already supports email, web, SMS, and social content is powerful.”

Paul went on to say that ““Marketing services companies and agencies will tell you that they spend more time being general contractors of multi-channel programs than they spend creating the program concepts and creative, and that’s an imbalance that needed fixing.  By integrating Pageflex into the Conversen platform, we’ve essentially untied the hands of marketers everywhere.”

Conversen uses business rules within their platform to drive the variable composition of Pageflex templates using both demographic and relational data sources, as well as Conversen’s built-in activity- and response-based logic. The result is a highly personalized, print-ready, digital asset that can be downloaded and printed locally, or sent to the client’s print vendor.

Conversen CEO Philip Chischportich calls it “an amazing efficiency play,” and says that “we’re already seeing clients save between 30%-50% on printing costs.” I’m looking forward to sharing some real-life case studies in the coming months!

Check Out Pageflex at Cross Media West

On Monday (February 22) Pageflex will be exhibiting at the Cross Media West Conference in Anaheim, CA. We'll be showing attendees how Pageflex Campaign Manager can be used to produce targeted multi-channel marketing campaigns with print, email, and pURL microsite components that dramatically increase response rates over traditional direct marketing campaigns. We can show you how easy it is to setup, manage the campaign, and track results. And we'll be handing out several case studies about past successful campaigns.

The Cross Media West Conference is a new one-day event developed for print service providers, marketers, and creative designers. The educational sessions appear to be jam packed with educational information and tips for each of these groups. And best of all, the conference is very affordable with registration fees ranging from $99 to $139 for each half-day segment.

Cross Media West is co-located with the annual conference of the Photo Marketing Association (PMA). There is going to be a lot to see there, so don't forget to stop by and say hello to our Pageflex team first!