2.12.19
Madison Advisors today announced the availability of its new research report, “Color Migration and Digital Delivery: Trends in Transactional Communications.” Building on the previous Madison Advisors study published in 2017, the 2019 study offers an update to the state of migration to color inkjet technology in the transactional print industry. Madison Advisors collected image volume data from participants in enterprises that operate an internal print facility, enterprises that outsourced print and mail, and print service providers. The focus of the research was to understand trends in transactional business-to-consumer (B2C) communications with respect to adoption of color for printed communications, management of customer preferences and omni-channel delivery.
The study’s key findings include:
• One hundred percent of the print service providers and enterprise in-plants that participated in the study have made an investment in color inkjet technology.
• The migration from monochrome to color is behind expectations, despite numerous benefits.
• From a service provider perspective, price and a lack of understanding of the benefits of using color are the major barriers that prevent conversion to color.
• Electronic delivery is a higher priority than converting monochrome documents to color; however, none of the participants have adoption rates higher than 50 percent.
• Forty-three percent of the enterprises in the study indicated they are not currently collecting customer preference data; however, 57 percent of the print service providers are able to collect and manage preference data on behalf of their clients through an internally developed solution.
• While technology continues to move toward digital-only interactions, print is still a vital component of customer communications management (CCM) and plays an important role in an omni-channel strategy. By allowing print and digital to work together, organizations can enhance customer experience and increase customer engagement with their brands.
“In our previous report ‘Color Print Migration Market Update 2017,’ Madison Advisors revealed that 62 percent of the images produced by the study participants in 2016 were monochrome,” said Gina Ferrara, senior analyst at Madison Advisors. “This year, our research reveals why monochrome still dominates the transactional print industry. In addition to collecting image volume data, Madison Advisors has expanded the scope to list the barriers to adoption of color, trends in preference management and omni-channel delivery, and the role color print plays in an overall customer communications strategy.”
