Resilience is essential in the printing industry, where overcoming daily challenges is simply part of the journey. With the pressures of rapid turnarounds, growing client expectations, inventory...
Communicating with customers, establishing relationships, and being viewed as a true partner are critical elements to long-term business success.
Whether it’s through personal contact and the deep-rooted relationship between a sales representative and his/her customers, or the marketing communications that promote services and educate audiences; meaningful communication and relationships are key drivers of a sustained growth.
During conversations with print marketers and executives, it’s always interesting to hear about the effort and resources invested into generating new revenue - rather than strategies to grow existing customer revenue. Especially given Artisan Growth Strategies confirms that customer acquisition costs are around 5× higher than retention, yet 44% of companies still lean toward acquisition in 2025.
Either way, in times like these when marketing budgets are typically tight, optimizing conversion rates and implementing strategies to get more from less are more important than ever. So, what web to print marketing strategies can print executives leverage to enhance value and drive growth?
Contents
- Incorporate Web-To-Print Into Your Company's Marketing Plan
- Understand Your Customers And How They Utilize Web-To-Print Services
- Customer Engagement And Marketing Automation
- Abandoned Shopping Cart Emails
- Promotional Codes
- Product Marketing
- Track Your Results
- Conclusion
Incorporate Web-To-Print Into Your Company's Marketing Plan
Many printers launch a web to print portal for their clients and assume the job is done once it’s set up. But those customers—often your most engaged and profitable—are just beginning their journey. To unlock the full potential of web-to-print marketing, you need a strategy to keep users engaged, informed, and actively ordering.
Every print order placed through your storefront not only drives production but strengthens long-term loyalty. That’s why your web to print software shouldn't sit outside your marketing strategy—it should be embedded at the center of it.
Share new features regularly, promote seasonal printed materials, and spotlight automation tools like variable data printing software that make the platform more valuable to your customers. This is especially important for prospects comparing solutions. If they’re asking, “what is web to print software?” or doing a web to print software comparison, your messaging needs to be clear, benefit-led, and built for conversion.
Integrating storefront education and campaign support into your overall strategy ensures that your web to print portal remains an active channel—not just a one-time setup. When used strategically, it becomes a scalable way to grow print orders, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase the long-term value of every printing business.
Understand Your Customers And How They Utilize Web-To-Print Services
Web-to-print software facilitate a diverse range of use cases and workflows, from B2C online printing to B2B customer portals and in-plant order management systems. Because your printing business and the customers that you serve may utilize web-to-print in a variety of ways, it’s important that you segment web-to-print customers and fully understand how they use the product.
Ask yourself, “Why are they using web-to-print? What is most important to them? What types of printed materials are sold? How is demand generated?”
This type of knowledge can only be achieved through a strategic effort to entwine the marketing, account management, and sales teams and create synergy that not only leads to a deeper understanding of the customer, but results in tactics for enhancing customer-specific value, production output and customer satisfaction.
Customer Engagement And Marketing Automation
On a tactical level, there are some simple yet powerful web to print marketing tactics that can be implemented and automated across your web-to-print customers. These activities are typically rooted in digital and email marketing, and when done correctly, can have a significant return on investment.
With marketing automation, it’s of course important to adopt a mindset that evaluates how you can do more with less. That doesn’t however necessarily mean establishing automation programs or campaigns to target the largest audience possible. Increasing customer engagement and optimizing conversions is done by leveraging a system that allows you to generate hyper-targeted marketing campaigns - delivering offers for discounts, new print job types, and reminders to complete abandoned checkouts.
Abandoned Shopping Cart Emails
According to the Baymard Institute the average cart abandonment rate is 69.99%. This statistic highlights how fragile the conversion process can be and the challenge businesses online face in capturing the full value of customer interest.
Abandoned shopping cart emails are an extremely effective way to pull users back to their online printing experience and complete their print orders. With the right automation in place, these emails can help printing businesses run an ‘always on’ conversion recovery engine.
Using a solution like AutoEngage, the web to print software links customer data with pre-built email templates and personalized system triggers. It streamlines the ordering print production process by automatically notifying users when a print job is left in the cart — helping recover lost revenue with minimal effort.
Promotional Codes
Ever wonder why you receive so many promo codes and discount offers? Because they work. Customers love the feeling of getting a deal, and they’re more willing to place unplanned print orders if the offer is relevant and timely.
With web to print software, you can easily set up promo codes and distribute them via email to targeted customer segments — a task that would be cumbersome and inefficient through traditional sales outreach. This increases repeat business while maintaining brand consistency across every touchpoint.
Product Marketing
General product marketing through email might seem straightforward, but with the right planning and segmentation, it becomes a powerful web to print marketing strategy.
Examples of high-impact product marketing campaigns include:
- Announcing a new product added to the storefront
- Sharing a “Top 10” list of most-ordered printed materials
- Highlighting a new brochure template or seasonal print job
- Promoting a newly stocked substrate ideal for premium business cards
Thanks to segmentation and email automation, these campaigns can target the right users with the right offers — and boost both engagement and revenue.
Track Your Results
Great marketers measure everything. If you're not evaluating performance, your web to print marketing efforts are flying blind.
Most web-to-print software platforms offer built-in reporting on print orders, revenue, and usage. Use this data to understand:
- Which printed materials are most popular
- Where buyers drop off in the printing process
- What customer segments respond to which campaigns
Additionally, tools like Google Analytics and Tag Manager allow marketers to dig into:
- Buyer journeys
- Conversion funnels
- Traffic sources
- Device preferences
- Referral performance
This insight is essential to optimizing the full order management and print production experience for long-term growth and customer satisfaction.
Conclusion
In today’s competitive market, simply offering web-to-print software isn’t enough. Print executives and marketers must weave web to print marketing strategy into the core of how they drive value — especially from existing accounts.
By understanding customer behavior, promoting new features, leveraging automation, and constantly analyzing results, your printing business can turn a storefront into a high-performing revenue engine — all while delivering brand consistency, streamlined print jobs, and real value for your customers.
