Beyond offering services like personalization and omnichannel marketing, another way to stay ahead is to ensure your operations are optimized for efficiency, even down to your output format.

Enter PDF/VT, a robust yet underutilized format that could revolutionize your printing game.

Let's explore why you should use PDF/VT and how XMPie excels—not only as a leading personalization engine but also for leveraging the efficiencies that this powerful format is built to deliver.

Unlike optimized PDFs or other PDF formats, which are widely used and appropriate for many tasks, PDF/VT was specifically created to handle complex, variable data projects that boost customer engagement and improve marketing ROI. The "V" stands for Variable, and the "T" stands for Transactional, highlighting its design for Variable Data Printing (VDP) and transactional printing.

Smart Printing with Rich Metadata

PDF/VT files offer greater value than standard PDFs because they come packed with essential metadata for printing, marketing, archiving, and tracking. The metadata stored in a PDF/VT file includes features such as efficient resource management, support for transparency and color management, and document part metadata (aka ‘dpart’), which help the press and server handle the file. It's like having a super-organized assistant built right into your files!

Coordinate Multiple Printing Processes Effortlessly

Whereas in the past, the complexity of a VDP project might have been an enormous headache to execute, now it's almost a walk in the park!

Since PDF/VT adheres to ISO standards, it works smoothly across various systems and platforms, you can even use the stored PDF/VT metadata, to direct different components of a project to the most suitable presses, optimizing for quality, speed, or cost. This approach ensures that each part meets the desired standards, minimizes downtime, and maximizes productivity by enabling simultaneous processing. For example, an envelope and its contents can be printed on different presses and organized before delivery. These built-in instructions help reduce errors and maintain consistency across all components.

Advanced Color Management, Transparency and Layers:

PDF/VT supports modern International Color Consortium (ICC)-based color management to ensure that colors are accurate across different devices and media, which is crucial for maintaining brand integrity and producing high-quality prints.

XMPie: Leading the Charge with PDF/VT

While PDF/VT was designed for handling Variable Data Printing (VDP) jobs, its full potential is only realized when paired with a top-notch VDP document composition engine like XMPie which has exceptional personalization capabilities and seamless integration with Adobe's end-to-end workflow.

With XMPie, you can keep the native quality of InDesign in your documents without any format conversion. Your designers can add branded colors, customized vignettes, and high-quality personalized images without messing up color management or any other quality aspects handled by Adobe. But XMPie doesn't stop at just design. It builds the logic into the PDF/VT and pulls in the data to create the files for the RIP or even for a full omnichannel campaign. So, with XMPie powering your output, you can fully harness the potential of PDF/VT and take your VDP projects to the next level.

XMPie played a crucial role in developing the PDF/VT format, significantly enhancing the VDP workflow with its efficiency, advanced metadata capabilities, and exceptional support for managing complex projects. The expertise of XMPie, particularly its patented optimization for production, is essential for achieving these efficiencies in PDF/VT. We're dedicated to educating the industry about PDF/VT and VDP, helping printers adopt more efficient practices and achieve greater value from their print projects.

Scott Houck is Director of Business Development CXM Initiatives at XMPie. XMPie’s personalization platform has been transforming communications across the globe for over twenty years. We’re helping businesses and organizations delight customers, automate business processes, increase profit margins, and become immersed in their clients’ ecosystems. Our applications include: Advanced Data-Driven Print, eCommerce technology with built-in customization, and Fully automated omnichannel campaign management.