In business, the ideas and content of a marketing campaign are only as good as the documents that present them to customers and clients. You might have a great product or service, but without putting the same care, precision, and creative substance into your marketing documents, customers probably won’t immediately realize the value and promise of your business. Thus, it’s worthwhile to invest in a versatile and powerful document design software solution.
There are many programs on the market that enable users to make marketing documents, but only some are truly versatile and powerful enough to produce the absolute best materials. One of the first things to look for when comparing software is the variety of printing languages that they support. A lot of standard, generic software only prints to basic printers, fax, and PDF, yet a business in need of finer documents that require many different industrial, state-of-the-art printers needs software that can print to the various non-Windows languages: IPDS, AFP, Post-script, Metacode, and PCL5.
Next, since you will put most of your documents straight into the mail, it’s worth investigating whether or not a certain document design software solution can print accurate mail and general barcodes. Without this capability, the mailing process will be very difficult – additional software or tacking stickers or stamps on at the end of the process can harm the aesthetic unity of your materials and have a negative impression on the recipient.
Some of the very best software can also intelligently correct and enhance your address information, which will lower the amount of mail that cannot be delivered, lower postage costs (since the software will automatically adjust to the clearest and truest address possible, i.e. add the often forgotten last four digits to the end of a zip code), and save your and your team from the cumbersome process of verifying addresses.
The amount of variables and features in a great document design software solution could continue, but being aware of at least these essential features will have a very positive effect on your direct marketing campaigns in the future.