De-Bunking the 'Toners in the Mail Stream' Myth

We've all heard the conventional wisdom. Toner-based printing does not hold up as well under the rigors of the mail stream as offset does. If you're going to use digital printing, you'll need to coat the mailers or they'll risk getting scratched—and they might get scratched anyway. It is toner, after all.

Certainly, any direct mail piece risks getting scratched during the postal sorting process, but is toner any more at risk than offset?

The PIA/GATF Digital Printing Council decided to find out. It set up a rigorous testing process, and the answer may be a surprise to many. Toner-based printing not only survived the mail stream, but it actually fared better than offset. Not only this, but the two production presses with roots in the office environment—Canon and Océ—fared even better than presses with traditional graphic arts roots.

Survey Methodology

Five manufacturers agreed to be included in the research study: Canon, HP, Kodak, Océ, and Xerox. Komori served as the offset comparison.

Since the goal of the study was to see any marking of the printed materials in the U.S. Postal System, the postcard was designed with very heavy coverage. The DPC noted that few professional designers would create a piece with so much coverage, "but this design worked well for the purposes of this study."

The postcards were printed on 6x9-inch stock of the press manufacturers' choosing. The design on the front of the card contained a large area of black on the left (100 percent K) and a large area of blue (15 percent K, 90 percent C, 23 percent M, 10 percent Y) on the right. The backside contained a large solid area of black (100 percent K). The cards did not contain a barcode so that they would be processed on the widest variety of postal equipment. Coating was not applied.

Each press manufacturer produced its own version of the postcard. The design of postcards was identical, except the text on the backside of each so researchers could track both the mailing location and manufacturer participant.

The cards were mailed from four different locations around the country: Buffalo, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Orlando. These cities were selected because of their varying proximity to the DPC's Sewickly, Pa. headquarters, where the pieces were all mailed. This allowed the DPC to detect whether there were any correlations between distance and marking/defects.

Digital press vendors were asked to print 125 of each postcard for a total of 500 pieces (125 per test city). Four hundred of these cards were used in the mailing experiment, (100 per city) and the additional 100 were used for other research and testing.

To evaluate how the mailers did in the postal stream, the DPC used a sliding scale from one to four.

• "Score 1" indicated no penetration of the toner on the postcard.
• "Score 2" indicated a slight penetration of toner in a small area.
• "Score 3" indicated a moderate penetration of the toner in one or two locations.
• "Score 4" indicated a large penetration of toner in a single area, or penetration in three or more areas.
• "Score 5" indicated that the postcard contained tears.

The Results

• The percentage of tears was roughly equivalent between digital and offset produced mailers;
• The percentage of digital mailers with the lowest level of damage ("Score 1") was nearly four times higher for digital than for offset —11.3 percent for digital compared to 3.8 percent for offset;
• The percentage of digital mailers with the highest level of damage ("Score 4") was more than three times lower for digital—7.2 percent compared to 25.3 percent for offset.

• Nearly all of the marking occurred in the area of the belts on the postal sorting machines. The amount and degree of marking was not directly related to distance traveled, but rather to the individual mail sorting facility.
• Mailings from Chicago received the most "Score 1" results, with the least marking resulting on the mailers shipped from that location (although Chicago had the highest number of tears). In turn, Orlando had the most "Score 4" results, or the deepest markings.

Many marketers may be hesitant to use digital printing equipment such as (Canon and Océ) whose roots are in the office environment. However, the study found that cards produced on these two brands of presses actually contained the most resistance to marking. This was confirmed by a separate Sutherland Rub Test, whose results were also included in the study.

Surprised by these results? Maybe you should rethink what you know about toner.

Heidi Tolliver-Nigro is an industry writer, an analyst specializing in digital workflow and technologies. Her e-mail address is [email protected].