Print and Digital Fatigue
What is the role of print in a world that has had to so suddenly shift work, school, and recreational life over to digital means? When there are no live events, bustling offices, tradeshows, conferences, and mixers, what do people need print for?
Plenty, it turns out. There’s the boon in the signage sector driven by brick and mortar companies of all types using print to communicate their COVID era rules and sanitary protocols with their customers.
But I want to talk about a specific factor in why print still has a strong role to play in the COVID era: Digital Fatigue.
Digital Fatigue
It should come as no surprise to learn that one of the more universal effects of the COVID era is an increase in digital fatigue. Simply put: we’re online and in front of the screen much more. And many of us weren’t exactly casual screen users before the pandemic.
The average time spent with digital content, be it Zoom meetings or Netflix binges, has rocketed close to 7.5 hours per day for Americans.1 Zoom isn’t even the only video conference player on the scene and yet even back in April they were boasting 300 MILLION daily meeting participants.2
The problem is: our brains aren’t optimized to focus on a screen this much. And the build up of screen time over weeks and months can cause real physical and mental exhaustion, hence the term digital fatigue.
But what does this mean for the print industry? It means that printed communications have an opportunity to cut through the clutter of our digital worlds more than ever. This isn’t a new strength of print. In so many ways, this year has seen the great acceleration of existing trends. Surveys have shown that people respond best to messaging that comes in multiple channels. There’s a reason omnichannel marketing has been such a buzzword.
Print can help brands stand out in a sea of emails and personalized Facebook ads. This can come in many forms. One that’s worth looking at a little more closely is, you guessed it, direct mail.
A Moment for Direct Mail
It shouldn’t be of much surprise to learn that direct mail is a sector of print that hasn’t been hit as hard by COVID-19 as some others.
Recent findings from the Joint Industry Committee for Mail found that in Q2 of 2020, the average piece of direct mail was interacted with “4.58 times, an 11% increase year-on-year and a record high since JICMail began tracking mail activity in Q2 2017.”3
Brands are using direct mail as a way to cut through the noise and remind customers that they’re ready to serve even if that service may look different than before. You combine the fact that people are spending more time than ever at home right now with the overload of digital communication and you’ve got a ripe recipe for the power of print in people’s homes.
Acceleration of Web-to-Print
Like mentioned above, COVID-19 has in many ways been an accelerator of existing trends and industry shifts. Being just direct mail, companies are relying on print to make sure their messages are reaching customers with updates about their status and current safety procedures.
And because so much of everyone’s work life has moved online, the way people are purchasing print has moved further online as was. The trend had already been moving in this direction for a while. That’s why as of last year, roughly 50% of print service providers said they have a web-to-print solution. Whether this means open storefronts for B2C customers or private portals for enterprise customers, web-to-print has been a dominating force in the print industry for years. The mass shift to work-from-home arrangements and online business in the past year has only accelerated web-to-print’s rise.
For smaller printers out there, the biggest downside to this change is that when print buyers start buying more print online, they have all the competition at their fingertips. Bigger producers can use their volume and resources to give customers more options at cheaper prices. But ironically, web-to-print can help smaller producers offset this problem as well.
With modern web-to-print solutions, producers of all sizes can route orders to third-party producers, dropshippers, and producing partners. This simple yet powerful ability greatly expands what a printer can offer. Plus, being able to give customers portals with a modern design and functions they expect from the ubiquitous e-commerce environment can be a real leg up against less tech-savvy competition.
All this goes to show that the effects of COVID-19 on the print industry, our work habits, and brand messaging are complex and nuanced. These are new waters but there are ways to brave the storm and even flourish in this unprecedented era.
1: https://www.salesforce.org/blog/digital-fatigue/
2: https://blog.zoom.us/90-day-security-plan-progress-report-april-22/
3: https://www.printweek.com/news/article/covid-boon-for-mail-effectiveness
