The Print Renaissance
Once thought of as a victim of the digital era, print is making a comeback as an effective element in omnichannel marketing strategies. Catalog production that is efficient, repeatable, and easily refreshed from a source of truth makes it possible for companies to generate a higher volume of custom publications in multiple languages, cultural versions, and pricing schemes—all in a format that customers value.
Marketers are also coming to terms with the impact of the EU’s GDPR regulations for digital marketing and the need for a double opt-in for consent to contact a customer. When informed by audience intelligence from CRM systems and website behavior, PIM-generated print catalogs in smaller print runs can offer companies the targeted personalization of digital to a focused print audience.
79% of Agility PIM customers produce print catalogs, or PIM-sourced collateral and publications like PDFs and flipbooks.
PIM as Catalog Accelerator
Print catalog production can be daunting. Product information edits often come in hand-marked PDFs with notes in the margins. Memories or spreadsheets are the only options to keep track of every appearance of a product across multiple pages or catalogs.
The immovable object of a print and publication date means delays cause shockwaves across the entire production timeline. And the peaks and valleys of the catalog publication schedule means design teams are either in frantic production mode or underutilized.
Agility PIM radically transforms the catalog production process:
Current & Correct Data, Always
With Agility, product information on InDesign catalog pages is directly linked to the PIM and can be refreshed with live data instantly, and at the individual product level, at the discretion of the designer. The extracted files process used by other PIMs only captures a snapshot in time and must be completely re-imported to reflect the current data.
High-Speed Page Building
The Agility Connector for InDesign lets designers to work natively in InDesign with an extra menu to access PIM data. Drag and drop functionality speeds page construction and scripting controls how text and images flow onto the page and the character and paragraph styles applied. The Agility Lightbox shows designers all available product assets so they can make the best choice for the layout.
Seamless & Effortless Versioning
From US English to Canadian English to U.K. English, from dollars to euros to yen. Reduce page production time and print costs when generating additional language versions by using layers and swapping out only the black plate with language and pricing content. Smart Attributes in Agility can pass instructions to InDesign to interpret content formatting based on logic, i.e., to change the font color to red if the price is above a certain amount.
Always Ready for Print
Approved page templates populated with approved PIM data means the compiled catalog is immediately ready for print, shortening publication timelines and eliminating last-minute review. Pulling data from Agility PIM allows for the quick generation and layout of time-consuming product and manufacturer indexes.
Productive Down-Time
Between catalog production periods, teams can harness the power of the PIM to update product information as they go vs. all at once. Product Managers and Content Managers have time to focus on the content, pagination, and merchandising of catalog and collateral pages without the time pressure of a print deadline.
Beyond the Catalog
All these same capabilities and efficiencies can be applied to any content-rich collateral, allowing you to quickly produce direct mail pieces, articles, interest-based content, sell sheets, box stuffers, or packaging including specification bullets.
Learn how Avon use Agility to handle rapid new country growth and confront a wealth of new promotional channels.
The Value of a Custom Demonstration
Agility eagerly provides demonstrations of our software and, in a final round of deliberations, we offer a customized guided experience so you can see your own product data organized in a meaningful way. We find the self-directed sandbox experience some PIM providers offer cannot convey the scope of capabilities of an enterprise-level software package as powerful and adaptable as Agility Multichannel.
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