Pageflex Persona™ Cross Media Suite

Pageflex Persona™ Cross Media Suite gives you the power to create personalized cross media campaigns using the award-winning variable data capability of Pageflex™ on your desktop. Pageflex Persona is an easy entry point for anyone getting started in variable data publishing. It offers powerful features not found in any other desktop variable data solution. Everything happens on your desktop, and there are no server components to install, even for e-mail output.

You can produce an infinite variety of marketing materials in print and digital formats. Easily create compelling, database-driven marketing campaigns, all with the simplicity of a single desktop application.

For example, you can develop a multi-touch campaign that includes:
    •    Personalized direct mail — A personalized postcard or flyer introduces your offer to your database of customers;
    •    Customized booklet or catalog — A variable-length booklet, also personalized and perhaps customized, further explains the range of products covered by your offer;
    •    Personalized HTML E-mail — A follow-up e-mail reminds the customer of your offer using the same text and images as the print pieces to keep the campaign’s message consistent.

Cross Media Publishing

Optimized Digital Color Printing

Design your variable data projects using Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite, and then send them to a digital color press for output. Depending on your workflow setup, you can send projects directly from your desktop to a printer, or you can send the files Pageflex Persona creates to a print service provider for output.

Customized Electronic Images

With Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite, the final output can be images in GIF, EPS, JPEG, and PDF formats. This is useful for printing on different substrates, such as ceramics and plastics, displaying customized messages on electronic signboards, and sending as attachments to e-mail messages.

Personalized HTML E-mail

To send a personalized HTML e-mail campaign, you first create an HTML template using any HTML editor. You can be as creative as you want with HTML formatting and style information.
Open the HTML template in Pageflex Persona, and apply the variables you want to use to personalize or customize each e-mail. The resources for your cross media campaign—databases, images, and variables—are shared within the project, which means the images and variables you use in your print campaign are easily repurposed for the HTML e-mail.
When you are finished crafting your message, you can send the e-mail campaign directly from your desktop. Pageflex Persona takes care of sending the e-mail to every customer in your database. During this process, it automatically copies and converts high resolution images to a smaller size for delivery over the Web.
You can also create personalized HTML websites and dynamically launch them using an add-on mini-server for Pageflex Persona.

Features

Design with a Variable Design Tool

Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite includes Pageflex Studio, a layout tool built for the unique design needs of variable data projects. You’ll find all of the familiar and powerful formatting tools you have come to expect from high-end desktop publishing systems, such as precise text formatting controls, style sheets, drag-n-drop controls, and tools for creating text, images, and shapes. Be?zier drawing tools let you add complex curves and shapes, and also add variable text along a curving path.
You can design everything you need for your variable data projects with Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite. There are no requirements for any third-party design applications.

Start with Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress

Pageflex Persona comes with a plug-in for Adobe InDesign® and an XTension for QuarkXPress®. Combined with Pageflex Persona, these tools give you the best of both worlds. You can start your design documents using these third-party applications, and then bring them into Pageflex Persona. Or, you can design everything right from the start with Pageflex Persona.
Drive Campaigns with a Database
A database drives the creation of personalized documents. Your database can be as simple as a comma-separated-value file (CSV), a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet, or a Microsoft Access® database, or as complex as a multi-table relational database. Persona can connect to any ODBC-compliant database such as Oracle®, Microsoft SQL Server, Visual FoxPro®, dBase®, or IBM® DB2®.

Variables and Unlimited Variability

Variables are the dynamic elements of a variable data publishing project. The project database provides one set of variables for adding personalization. Pageflex Persona has several additional methods for defining variables by using the data in the project database.
    •    Powerful “If-Then-Else” logic drives the insertion of text or the selection of additional content, articles and images for your documents.
    •    Scripts written with VBScript or JScript can perform calculations and evaluate complex logic to add another dimension of variability.
    •    Plug-ins allow you to connect digital asset managers (DAMs) or other content repositories to provide more content.

Pageflex Persona includes a unique capability called document actions to enable you to take variability to a new level. Document actions are powerful scripts, capable of manipulating and transforming anything and everything in each variable document. Not only can you vary content, you also can vary the appearance of content. For example, you can use document actions to dynamically change text attributes like font size or color, or you can change shape attributes like the fill color and border.
You also can use document actions to do additional transformations on a document-by-document basis. You can create document actions to re-distribute white space, to insert additional content based on space availability, or remove select content to make everything fit on the page.

Add Flex

An important and unique feature of Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite is flex, the ability for elements in your documents, such as text, images, and shapes, to automatically resize and reposition themselves to fit the variable content in each document. This patented technology provides a high level of production automation with extremely professional results every time.
Flex maintains the relationships among elements in your document. For example, it preserves the clear space between two elements even when those elements are resized. Flex ensures that the design integrity, the qualities of your document that make it visually pleasing to the eye, is maintained through every variation. Only Pageflex gives you this powerful capability.

Fit Text with Advanced Copyfitting

Sophisticated copyfitting controls eliminate text overflow situations when your variable text doesn’t fit into the allotted space. Copyfitting lets you decide how the text is reduced and which formatting characteristics are most important to preserve.
Simple copyfitting rules quickly reduce text characteristics uniformly to fit all of the variable content. Advanced rules let you fine-tune your preferences for copyfitting.
For design consistency, you can apply the same copyfitting rule to multiple text boxes, whether they are part of the same text flow or not. Persona determines the amount of copyfitting needed, and then reduces all the text in all the specified text boxes to the same type specification.

Market in 60+ Languages

With Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite, your variable documents can speak to people around the world. Pageflex Persona supports text composition and output in over 60 languages, including Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese. Combined with the flex and copyfitting capabilities of Pageflex Persona, you can be sure that text in any language always looks good and easily meets any global branding requirements you may have.

Create Variable Length Documents

Pageflex Persona Cross Media Suite has many features for managing long documents with a variable number of pages. Master pages, with automatic page and section numbering, provide design consistency. Left versus right page design features are preserved. Pageflex can automatically add new pages for long text flows, or it can insert PDF documents as variable content. Automatic filler pages can force content onto a left or right page, if needed, and make signature counts even out. It generates a custom Table of Contents for each document variation. During the Preview step, the Pages window displays how variable pages are flowing into each document.

Production Workflow Features

Pageflex Persona supports many features to assist with production and keep the press room running efficiently.
Basic Imposition
You can set up basic imposition options to create Step-and-Repeat or Cut-and-Stack imposition to fill up each press sheet. You can set up double-sided documents with Work-and-Turn and Work-and-Tumble instructions so that the front and back of each finished document are properly aligned.

Job Batching

Job batching features let you decide how many documents are created with each output file. You can create one file for each document, or one file for all the documents in a job. You also can specify the number of documents to include in each output file, and Pageflex Persona determines how many batches are required to complete the job.

Support for Multiple Media Trays

For output devices with multiple paper trays, you can set up your variable print jobs to pull from different media trays for different parts of the document. If you’re printing a booklet, then the cover can automatically print on one stock while the inside text pages print on another.

Personalization on Pre-Printed Shells

Use Pageflex Persona to create pre-printed shells using traditional production methods, such as offset printing or foil-stamping, then add personalized content to them. On-screen previews let you view your project with and without the pre-printed shell items visible. At press time, you can suppress printing of the shell items and be certain everything prints in perfect register.