Viking Catalog - Putting It All Together (3,692 words)

"We perform all three of these personalization functions in the U.S. and Europe, and we do just the ink jet personalization in Japan and Australia," Ciavola adds.

Internet and database marketing manager Michelle Williams says, "The way we decide which of the three personalization modes to use [on a versioned book] isn't by customer, it's by what we call an 'effort.' Each time we go out with the monthly sale catalog, and at the beginning of the year we decide when our peak times are going to be on sales, and when we need to actually surpass prior years' sales, when we need an extra lift; and we know the digital[ly personalized] catalogs give us the biggest lift. So we will strategically place those catalogs in certain months. We are testing super ink jet right now; we're not sure where it will fit in our mail plan in the future."