How Rengel Helped Impacks Bring Its Marketing Into Schools
Digital marketing can generate awareness, build relationships and reach customers quickly. But sometimes the best way to extend a digital campaign is to give people something they can actually see, hold and use.
That was the opportunity Impacks saw as it continued expanding its partnerships with schools across the country.
Impacks had built strong momentum through public relations, digital marketing and school partnerships. The next step was finding a way to bring that marketing directly into participating schools and their surrounding communities with highly visible, professionally produced materials.
The idea was straightforward. Executing it at scale was more complicated.
Every school’s materials needed to be personalized, multiple printed pieces had to be coordinated into individual kits, and everything needed to be produced and shipped during a critical spring sales period.
Rengel Printing helped Impacks take its campaign from digital to doorstep—turning a creative marketing idea into a scalable print, personalization and fulfillment program.
Bringing a Digital Campaign Into the Physical World
Impacks is a Minnesota-based, tech-powered company focused on making back-to-school shopping easier and more affordable for families while helping schools and teachers ensure students have the supplies they need.
Founded in 2020, the company provides customized school supply kits, bulk school supply ordering and school supply drive solutions to schools across the country.
As Impacks continued to grow, the company identified an opportunity to encourage schools to commit to its program earlier during the important spring enrollment period.
Until then, much of the company’s growth had been supported by digital outreach and public relations. Impacks wanted to complement those efforts with a physical marketing presence inside participating schools and their local communities.
The goals included:
- Encouraging earlier school participation
- Increasing visibility within school communities
- Strengthening school-level branding and engagement
- Creating a consistent, professional campaign presence
- Making fulfillment manageable as the company continued to grow
The solution needed to be more sophisticated than simply printing the same posters and flyers for every location.
Impacks wanted each school to have marketing materials that felt like they were created specifically for that school.
Creating a Personalized Marketing Kit for Every School
Rengel Printing collaborated with Impacks to develop a fully customized promotional kit program for participating schools.
Each kit contained a coordinated collection of marketing materials that schools could begin using immediately:
- Personalized school posters
- High-visibility lawn signs
- Promotional flyers
- Branded Post-It® Notes
School names and logos were incorporated into the appropriate materials while maintaining the consistent look of Impacks’ recognizable green brand.
Lawn signs also included school-specific QR codes, making it easy for parents to take action when they encountered the signs around schools, pickup and drop-off areas and the surrounding community.
Instead of receiving generic corporate marketing materials, each participating school received its own professionally produced Impacks campaign.
The Power of Variable Data Printing
Personalizing materials for one school isn’t particularly difficult.
Personalizing multiple components for a growing number of schools—while maintaining accuracy, brand consistency and production efficiency—is a different challenge.
Rengel used variable-data workflows and a shared database to incorporate individual school information into the appropriate printed materials.
School-specific elements included:
- School names
- School logos
- School-specific QR codes on lawn signs
Variable data allowed Rengel to maintain the efficiencies of larger-scale print production while producing materials that felt individually created for each recipient.
That’s an important distinction for companies managing multi-location, franchise, dealer, distributor or partner marketing programs.
Personalization doesn’t necessarily have to mean sacrificing efficiency.
With the right workflow, a large campaign can maintain a consistent overall brand while still making individual materials relevant to the people receiving them.
Making the Campaign Visible
Some of the most noticeable components of the campaign were the wide-format lawn signs.
Rengel produced vibrant signs designed to stand out in busy school environments and community settings. Each incorporated Impacks’ signature green branding along with school-specific information.
The signs gave Impacks something digital marketing couldn’t provide on its own: a physical presence within the communities it wanted to reach.
Parents arriving at school, picking up their children or driving through the area could encounter the Impacks message as part of their everyday routine.
Combined with posters, flyers and other printed materials inside the school, the campaign created multiple opportunities for families to see and respond to the message.
Printing Was Only Half the Challenge
Producing all of those customized pieces was just one part of the project.
Someone also had to make sure the right poster, signs, flyers and other materials ended up together in the correct school’s package.
And then those packages had to get where they belonged.
Rengel handled the complete kitting and fulfillment process, including:
- Kit collation
- Packaging
- Inventory coordination
- Shipping logistics
The workflow was designed around the way Impacks’ sales process actually operated.
Schools weren’t all joining the program simultaneously. New schools continued enrolling throughout the spring sales season.
As a school signed on, its personalized materials could be produced, assembled into a kit and shipped directly to the school.
That gave Impacks an on-demand production and fulfillment system capable of supporting the program as it grew.
From Complexity to Scalability
One of the most important outcomes of the project wasn’t a particular poster, lawn sign or flyer.
It was simplifying what could otherwise have become a complicated operational process.
Without an integrated solution, Impacks could potentially have been responsible for coordinating databases, personalized artwork, multiple print products, wide-format signage, inventory, assembly, packaging and shipping.
Instead, those functions were brought together through Rengel.
That allowed Impacks to focus on growing its school partnerships while Rengel managed much of the production complexity behind the scenes.
For participating schools, the experience was equally simple.
They received a coordinated package of professional, personalized marketing materials they could immediately begin using to promote the Impacks program to parents.
What Impacks Had to Say
“We loved working with the Rengel team on what was a very creative and unique solution for Impacks, and our schools loved it as well. The finished materials looked great, the quality was excellent, and the customization made each school’s packet feel much more relevant and useful to them.
What stood out most to us, though, was the peace of mind that came with knowing we could trust the Rengel team to manage the details and execute quickly. This campaign happened during a very time-sensitive sales period for our business, so it was critical they understood that urgency and were able to keep the process moving without creating additional work for our team.
It allowed us to take an idea that could have been operationally complicated and turn it into something scalable and easy to execute. Having a partner who could handle the variable data, printing, kitting and fulfillment all in one place made a significant difference for us, and ultimately helped us put high-quality marketing materials directly into the hands of our school partners when they could make the biggest impact.”
— Clare Richards, CEO & Co-Founder, Impacks
What This Project Shows About Personalized Print
The Impacks project is a good example of how print can work alongside digital marketing rather than competing with it.
Digital marketing helped Impacks build awareness and relationships. Personalized print extended that experience into the physical locations where schools and families interact.
It also demonstrates what’s possible when variable-data printing, wide-format production, kitting and fulfillment are planned as one integrated campaign.
For organizations managing multiple locations, branches, dealers, franchisees, schools or other partners, that approach can make highly personalized campaigns much easier to scale.
Instead of asking, “How can we print all of these different materials?” the better question may be:
“How can we create one system that gets the right materials to the right people at the right time?”
That’s the kind of challenge Rengel Printing is equipped to solve.
Take Your Next Campaign From Idea to Doorstep
If your next marketing project involves personalization, multiple locations, different printed components, kitting, fulfillment or tight deadlines, you don’t have to coordinate it all yourself.
Rengel Printing can help bring the pieces together—from variable-data printing and wide-format production to assembly, packaging and fulfillment.
Have an idea you’re not quite sure how to execute? Talk to Rengel Printing about your next project.