SCREEN Americas announces the installation of its fourth continuous-feed inkjet press from the Truepress Jet520 series to Summit Direct Mail, Inc. of Dallas, Texas. The direct mail printer now has two presses from the Truepress Jet520ZZ series, one Truepress Jet520HD+ and one Truepress Jet520HD AD. The four presses reside in one of the company’s three facilities in the Dallas area and account for 80 percent of its total production.

Summit Direct Mail chose to designate its Truepress Jet520ZZ series to direct mail campaigns involving 8 ½" x 11" letters printed on 60-pound uncoated stock and the Truepress Jet520HD series for postcards and self-mailers printed on coated stock. Because neither series requires preprinted shells, Summit Direct Mail’s direct mail marketing customers can make last minute changes to their campaigns based on the stock that is available.

Such flexibility retains business for Summit Direct Mail whose customers are often disappointed when they discover that the paper that they planned on using is not available in the quantity that they need due to a tightened global supply chain. “My customers are having to make decisions based on what’s available to them paper-wise,” said Mike Robinson, director of new technology and business development at Summit Direct Mail. “Because SCREEN’s technology allows me to print on a wide variety of substrates, I can offer them alternative solutions that were previously off the table for their direct mail campaigns.” Summit Direct Mail has experienced an increase in the demand for direct mail since more people have migrated to a work-from-home model. Robinson attributes this to individuals having more time to review what’s in their mailboxes. “When folks had long commutes to and from an office, items in a mailbox had a greater tendency to pile up,” said Robinson. “This led to marketing materials either not being read in a timely fashion or getting tossed right away.” With SCREEN’s technology, Summit Direct Mail has been able to capitalize on this recent shift in people’s daily habits where they are more likely to spend time reviewing their mail on a daily basis over their lunch hours as opposed to setting it aside and going through it one day a week.

The company has also addressed the industry’s labor shortages with the Truepress Jet520 series. With 150 employees across two shifts, Summit Direct Mail only needs one employee per shift to operate a single SCREEN press. The company produces 1.5 to 2 million pieces of mail per day and is fully prepared to produce 5 million pieces per day when paper supplies are expected to return to previous levels.

Founded in 2003, Summit Direct Mail serves the financial, nonprofit, retail and healthcare industries along with government agencies.

Summit Direct Mail, Inc. installed a SCREEN Truepress Jet520ZZ four months ago to boost throughput and capacity at its Dallas, Texas, facilities. The impact on the company’s productivity has been astounding.

Prior to acquiring the high-speed inkjet web press, Summit Direct Mail basically had two methods for satisfying customers’ variable data requirements: print color forms on the company’s web offset presses and add customer-specific content offline using roll-fed laser printers, and create full-color variable documents in one step with high-quality digital sheetfed printers.

One of the first projects that the Truepress Jet520ZZ handled was a promotion for bundled home services offered by a communications company. Previously, Summit Direct Mail printed the two-up 14-inch job on an eight-color Didde VIP variable cylinder press.

The project consisted of three versions and amounted to just over one million pieces printed four colors over two colors. About 30 hours of production time went into offset printing and offline imaging. By comparison, Summit Direct Mail was able to print and personalize the exact job on the Truepress Jet520ZZ in only 12 hours.

“We currently operate eight continuous forms laser printers with maximum resolutions of 300 dpi and 600 dpi,” said John Barber, founder and president. “Because of the capacity of the Truepress, we expect to retire some of our older-generation technology and keep nothing but the 600 dpi machines.”

Another client, in the financial services industry, each month orders approximately 700,000 promotional letters, printed four-over-four on 8½ x 11-inch pages. This financial offering features more than 20 versions with differing amounts of customized text and images for different groups. The files are received one day, and the direct mail ships the following day.

“Although printing larger jobs on our Didde web presses is fast, complicated variable data printing involves lots of makereadies,” Barber said. “If the customer needs the finished direct mail right away, the makeready times for the web presses can be prohibitive. We had been moving next-day projects to our HP Indigo presses. This process is more streamlined when it comes to printing many versions, logos and changes under tight deadlines, but the print quality often far surpasses what the job demands.”

Prior to installing the Truepress Jet520ZZ, Summit Direct Mail would divide the job between its Indigo 7000 and Indigo 7600. Working together, the two cut-sheet printers accomplished their mission in 13.5 hours each. The Truepress Jet520ZZ dramatically reduced the turnaround time, doing the same volume of work as both printers in a stunning 3.5 hours.

Said Barber: “In the future, we will exclusively run that project and similar work on the Truepress. It is the right press for the job.”

In the highly competitive world of direct mail marketing, a comprehensive approach to producing customized communications programs creates a strong strategic advantage for companies. Print service providers equipped with a wide range of sophisticated machines play a big role in this regard. Last December, Summit Direct Mail, Inc. added a SCREEN Truepress Jet520ZZ inkjet web press to its fleet. The high-speed alternative to traditional offset printing and offline personalization gives variable data printing more verve in speaking directly to the intended audiences.

“The Truepress Jet520ZZ supports true one-to-one marketing,” said John Barber, founder and president of Dallas, Texas-based Summit Direct Mail. “It prints and personalizes documents at 722 feet a minute in a continuous printing environment.”

With the full-color variable data press, messages and images are tailored to suit specialized markets and individual recipients in any color the customer wants.

“Real-time personalization removes the secondary process of offline imaging and eliminates the need for freestanding inventory of preprinted shells,” Barber pointed out. “It also allows our clients with varying state disclosures, logos and creative to run all projects simultaneously, thereby reducing postal expenditures.”

Since its founding in 2003, Summit Direct Mail has become one of the Southwest’s largest marketing production facilities. It has achieved this distinction by offering its clients turnkey solutions in the form of attractively priced printing, mailing, lettershop, creative services, analytics, data processing and fulfillment services. Known for flexible service, leading-edge applications and an ability to reduce costs dramatically, Summit Direct Mail caters to clients in the nonprofit, financial, insurance, retail and educational sectors.

At 75,000 square feet, Summit Direct Mail’s manufacturing facility houses cut-sheet and continuous forms imaging, variable digital printing, high-speed inserting, folding, tabbing and stamping equipment. Onsite United States Postal Service representation enables Summit to efficiently enter more than one million pieces of direct mail a day into the mail stream.

Texas Offset Printing, a 20-employee sister company, operates just four miles away in a 35,000-square-foot facility. Texas Offset Printing houses two web presses with eight-color and 12-color capability, inkjet web printing and bindery services. The combined operations bill approximately $28 million annually.

Barber stated that Summit Direct Mail is “a debt-free company that positions itself as the low-cost producer of quality direct mail with the highest degree of marketing intelligence.”

The company has the capacity to accommodate everything from a 50-piece order to a five-million-piece order. To streamline print production and minimize turnaround times, Summit Direct Mail started its exhaustive search for an inkjet web press more than four years ago. After testing several models from different manufacturers using identical files, it chose the Truepress Jet520ZZ in a dual-engine duplex-printing configuration.

“We visited numerous manufacturing facilities from Germany to Oregon, Florida, New York and California,” Barber recalled. “This press delivered the best combination of speed, efficiency and quality compared to the competition. We also were impressed with the ease and low cost of operation and the interface with variable data printing software.”

Summit Direct Mail also acquired the dynamic perforation unit, with unlimited capabilities for movement, to complement the Truepress Jet520ZZ.

“Perforations can be placed anywhere on the page at full production speed,” Barber said.

Barber further noted that “it allows us to create customized coupons and other unique promotions corresponding to the personal data.” Additionally, “the Truepress’ reliability, built-in redundancy and remote servicing capabilities were important considerations for us.”

Barber expects the SCREEN press to be producing 200,000 to 500,000 pieces daily within the next three months.

“As a debt-free company, we evaluate every large expenditure and return on investment very closely,” the executive said. “We predict that our ROI will be in range of 36 to 48 months. That is pretty good for an investment of this size.”

“Having SCREEN’s top-of-the-line inkjet web press will keep us as a low-cost producer of direct mail campaigns designed to increase our clients’ response rates,” he said.