Friday 10 December 2010

Dischromatics Announces Availability Of New Range Of USB Flash Memory Drives

Flash Memory Drives or Pendrives are now available in various colours, capacities, shapes and sizes and can be personalised to customer requirements with on-body printing or labels. The addition of copy protection will prevent the data from being wiped.

The choice of USB Flash Memory Drives or Pendrives has never been greater and with the possibility of having new bespoke products produced, there are many obvious advantages which are being overlooked. In the past, floppy disks were used for similar reasons but in comparison, these USB Flash drives are so much faster, with literally thousands of time more memory available, and due to there being no moving parts they are much more robust.

Dischromatics has been in the media management business since 1989, they are an established CD, DVD and Blu-ray producer and provide USB Flash Drive Duplication and is accredited to Quality Standard ISO 9001:2008 and Environmental Standard ISO 1400:2004. Their Managing Director Gareth Spencer has a word of caution to would be purchasers of USB Flash Memory Drives “People should be aware that some suppliers are selling USB Drives, claiming that the capacity is higher than they actually are, in some cases 2GB drives have been ‘modified’ so that they emulate larger capacity drives, unfortunately when the data is written to them they fail, the drive freezes or maybe worse data is overwritten, losing valuable data already on the drive”.

The flash drive itself is made up of a printed circuit board which carries all the circuitry with a USB connector fitted to one end. USB means Universal Serial Bus and was invented and developed by Ajay Bhatt whilst in the employment of Intel. It has become an international standard for the interconnection between personal computer equipment and uses plugs and sockets and lightweight cables. The circuit board is electrically insulated on the outside using various materials such as plastic, metal, wood or rubber to act as the outer case. The USB connector itself is protected with a removable cap or in some other way depending on the style of the product.

All Personal Computers available today have USB ports available. USB is very user-friendly in comparison to parallel or serial ports and is supported at the operating system level. The obvious advantage is that the user does not have to be technically knowledgeable in the hardware. They are simply plug and play devices with the ability to be used through multiple platforms, working on Mac, Windows and Linux.

The uses for these devices are endless; they can be used as a tool for storing files, sent to clients as gifts at certain times of the year, as an incentive to purchase goods as an additional free gift with certain value orders, they could have catalogues or other data permanently copied onto them but with space left for more use. They could be distributed at trade shows, during conferences and seminars, so they can be used as an advertising gadget to enhance ones own image. With logos and any other data being printed permanently on the body, it will always be ‘in the eye of the beholder’. The data written to the Flash Drives can be copy-protected to prevent mistakingly deleting valuable data.

The convenience and uses of these USB Flash Memory Drives will help reduce costs of distribution of expensive and cumbersome documentation like catalogues which invariably ends up in the bin and therefore they can even contribute to reducing waste. The styles available already cover a wide range from the standard classic shapes to bracelets, keys, credit card, key rings and also multifunctional and designer products. Materials used include plastic, wood, metal and leather. All with personalised printing using pad or screen printing, digital photo printing and pantone colour match printing.

In the unlikely event that the product required is not in the range of what is already available, customers can design their own.

For more information on USB Flash Drives and Duplication please call 01495 243222 or visit the website at: http://www.dischromatics.co.uk/cd-duplication/usb-key-duplication/
           

Friday 3 December 2010

Direct Mail Marketing is now Available to Companies of all Sizes using Digital Printing

A Marketing tool used by large companies and corporates for decades is now accessible to Small to Medium Sized Enterprises at an attractive cost thanks to the new Software available.

Over the years Direct Mail Marketing or 1:1 Marketing has been one of the main marketing tools used by large business to target prospective customers. The problem with this process is the cost largely outweighs the potential returns, The Return on Investment or ROI.

The fact is that when these brochures, leaflets, flyers, catalogues or whatever other literature were sent out (and of course this is still the case) to their target audience they were or are really exactly the same, the only difference between each is an address label stuck on the outside, looking rather unprofessional, the rest of the information is utterly and completely the same! The reason for this is that the printing is done by lithographic offset printing on huge presses which cost enormous sums of money. Therefore, in order to be cost effective, many thousands had to be printed in one print run to bring the unit cost down to an acceptable figure. That’s why it has always been too expensive for smaller companies to introduce this method of marketing with any success.

With the litho process, each colour requires a separate plate which itself is expensive and takes a large amount of labour time to set up, furthermore there is an amount of wasted prints early in the run whilst the printer attempts to get the colours to match, the alignment correct and so on. Naturally if these costs were amortised over a small amount of copies the unit cost would be horrendous.

The biggest problem with this type of mass mail marketing is the ROI is about 1% to 2% and unless those turn into substantial business, the question has to be “is it worth it?”

Fortunately, with the advent of better quality Digital Printers and speciality software, it is now possible for companies to have small runs and sample runs prior to a full-scale roll out and to individually target by business type, authority or area. Variable Data Printing Software in conjunction with Digital Printing increases the potential ROI to a very desirable 10% to 15%. Personalisation is the key. Not only can the sticky address labels be eliminated by printing names and addresses directly onto each printed item, but each can also have a different bar code, individually personalised message and even a change of graphics and the colours can now be different on each printed part.

Companies simply provide a database of names and addresses to the print company, the individual graphics are designed in the Graphic Design department and uploaded to the Rip Drive. Rip stands for Raster Image Processor and is like a print driver but more sophisticated with many enhanced features. Once all the data is uploaded, the print job is ready to go and unlike the litho process there is no need to stop to change plates or waste many copies getting the print correct, all the changes are effected on ‘the fly’ by the rip, in other words whilst the job is running.

The advantages are obvious, by targeting prospective clients with the inclusion of more relevant data and with a more professional image it is more likely the recipient will read the information they receive rather than put it straight in the bin, also the labour costs are reduced as the printer runs the job non-stop and there is no need to set up individual plates or print large volumes which are not required. This type of marketing also means that it’s trackable and the success is measurable. It allows the marketer to get the message across more directly.

This process can even be combined with sending out data on CD and DVD or other types of media by printing and personalising the card wallets, Digipaks or the paper parts in a CD Jewel case for instance.

For more information on Direct Mail Marketing using Variable Data Printing, please call 01495 243222 or visit Dischromatics website.