Summary:
The College Coaches Skills Camp (CCSC) is designed for high school athletes that want to be evaluated by and work directly with college coaches on the field. Its year-round schedule features 8 sports, hundreds of institutions and hundreds of camps.
The company markets its camps to student athletes and their parents through direct mail and digital methods. In past years, it has mailed nearly 10 million letters annually.
Challenge:
Principals Rob Smith and Ryan Sawyers commented that ‘there are lots of moving parts in their business’ and their messaging outreach needs to be nimble.
They outlined a ‘cumbersome’ process where they previously worked with printers who ran large quantities of letter and envelope shells through offset presses at the beginning of the season. The printers would then run the shells through a 2nd press when the camp details were finalized. This process led to:
- Large inventory carrying costs (‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’)
- Longer production times
- Waste
- Lack of flexibility when schedules and coaches changed
CCSC also worked with a 3rd party partner to manage its print products. This ‘middleman’ led to higher costs and at times a lack of accountability.
Solution:
Rob and Ryan sought a direct relationship with a printer which offered a process that eliminated some of their challenges.
Heeter presented a digital workflow that leveraged the printer’s advanced presses and automation software.
CCSC no longer needs to make initial projections for a season nor does it carry an inventory of shells. Instead, the firm initiates a complete print job by uploading files for each confirmed camp. Heeter gang runs the jobs on a regular schedule which reduces unit costs and mails the digitally-run jobs much more quickly and flexibly than the previous method.
CCSC is embracing further automation utilizing Heeter’s Imperium software which will reduce time and save additional dollars as manual work will be eliminated.
