Tim Klunder, the Vice President of Sales and Client Relations for Tribune Direct located in Chicago. Yet, we're a national full-service direct marketing organization with capabilities in not only variable print production, but also in data, database analytics, creative... really that full, the full spectrum of direct marketing services.
We don't have to offset capabilities in-house, we are a traditional variable production provider. So we do focus on the digital space. We have sheet fed digital capabilities in-house and are currently expanding too long run continuous digital capabilities.
It's really going to satisfy two conditions, one, is our existing customers that currently have a need for it today and we're going to evolve with the marketing initiatives. And then two, it's going to expand our business into other areas. With new customers in the direct marketing space and in addition, there may be applications as well in the publication side. Since were a wholly owned subsidiary of Tribune Company, we may have applications in some targeted applications as well that our company publishes.
Yeah, we used the Kodak sheetfed Next Press today that has the dimensional capabilities and are expanding what the Kodak Prosper. From what we understand, we’re the first direct marketing company in our industry to actually put that capability on our floor.
Many of our clients today have expanded their capabilities on the database side. So in the past, where you have a lot of variable imaging with messages and offers, today, we actually variably produced campaigns with specific product offerings, we call it an optimizer, so we take a true purchase history of a customer and variably offer products that they may have purchased in the past in addition to that, using demographic and geographic profiles to image variable photographs, general imagery, that are more appropriate for that specific customer. So it's really changing from a true are RFM segmentation model to a RFM segmentation model mixed in with product information and also images that are reflective of those individual’s specific lifestyles and geographies.
It's all about return on investment. So it's about eliminating waste, increasing frequency and then targeting specific customer groups and we are seeing lifts in response, but also quite frankly, reductions in circulation as well as we eliminate those non-responsive specific customers as opposed to customer segments.
I think the only reluctance in the past has been cost and quality on longer run applications. What Prosper is going to help us do is offer a lower-cost solution and a higher quality solution in a continuous environment. So we're really breaking those barriers that we believe is one of the reasons why digital hasn't grown as much as it has today. In addition to that, helping customers harness the power of their data, they have a lot of data they just need some help in understanding how they can use it and developing those specific targeting applications.
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