Table of Contents
by Sharon Jones Malloch, Head of Content Marketing, MHC.
- In Brief
- Expert Insights Interview
- Why Are Transactional Communications Moving to Digital First?
- Why Does Marketing Mail Still Pay Off in Print?
- Why Is Complex Transactional Print Here to Stay?
- How Should Organizations Decide Between Print vs Digital?
- How Fast Can a New User Start Producing Usable Documents?
- How Does the MHC and BlueCrest Partnership Connect Print and Digital?
- The Future of Transactional Print: Print and Digital From One Place
- Next Steps
- Frequently Asked Questions
Digital by Default: Why Transactional Print and Marketing Mail Still Matter
Sharon Jones Malloch 
October 8th, 2026
Featuring Joe Eremita, Senior Director, Software Product Line Management, BlueCrest, and Kim Cook, VP, Partners and Alliances, MHC.
In Brief
Digital by default is changing the mix of customer communications, not ending print. Routine transactional documents such as statements and notices are moving online first. Transactional print is narrowing to complex, higher-value documents that are hard to convert, while marketing mail stays in print because it delivers a measurable return. Organizations that make the print vs digital decision upstream, with the same data and content feeding both channels, can modernize without replacing print and mail operations that already work well.
Table of Contents
- In Brief
- Expert Insights Interview
- Why Are Transactional Communications Moving to Digital First?
- Why Does Marketing Mail Still Pay Off in Print?
- Why Is Complex Transactional Print Here to Stay?
- How Should Organizations Decide Between Print vs Digital?
- Why Does Onboarding New Work Quickly Matter So Much?
- How Does the MHC and BlueCrest Partnership Connect Print and Digital?
- The Future of Transactional Print: Print and Digital From One Place
- Next Steps
- Frequently Asked Questions
Introduction
As communications move toward digital by default, most people assume print, and especially transactional print, will simply shrink. What I’ve learned, however, is that the mix is already changing, and in a more interesting way. Some communications are quickly moving online, while others are staying in print for good reasons.
I recently had the opportunity to explore this shift in an Expert Insights interview with Joe Eremita, Senior Director, Software Product Line Management at BlueCrest, and Kim Cook, VP, Partners and Alliances at MHC. We also talked about the SEC’s proposed Regulation E-Delivery and the new partnership between MHC and BlueCrest.
From BlueCrest’s position in print and mail production, Joe sees a clear pattern. Routine transactional documents, such as statements and notices, are making the move to digital first, because customers increasingly handle them online and many organizations see printing them as a cost with little measurable ROI.
With printing and postage costs rising, organizations are looking more closely at what they still print, and the pieces that are staying in print fall into two groups:
- Marketing pieces stay in print because, as higher-touch, higher-value items, they deliver a measurable return that justifies the cost.
- Complex transactional print stays because these documents are hard to move to digital and still need to reach the customer accurately.
In the rest of this blog, I look at how the mix is changing, what is moving to digital and what is staying in print, and why a streamlined, integrated process for both matters more than ever.
Key Takeaways
- Digital by default is changing the mix of communications that go to print and to digital, rather than ending print.
- As printing and postage costs rise, every piece that stays in print has to justify its cost, either through a measurable return or because it can’t easily move to digital.
- Marketing mail is staying in print because organizations measure its ROI and see higher response from printed direct mail than from digital messages.
- Complex, higher-value transactional print is staying because it is hard to convert, and it needs careful handling in production.
- Decisions about what goes where now happen upstream, in how data, content, approvals and channel choices are managed.
- Ease of use speeds up onboarding new work: during BlueCrest’s evaluation, a summer intern was producing usable documents in MHC NorthStar CCM within two weeks.
- Organizations can manage that mix from one place without replacing print and mail operations that already work.
Why Are Transactional Communications Moving to Digital First?
As the mix changes, routine transactional communications are the first to move to digital. Transactional communications are the documents tied to an account or a transaction, such as statements, bills, policy notices and trade confirmations. The routine ones move first because they are high in volume, follow the same format every time and, for many organizations, are a cost they rarely measure a return on.
In the interview, Joe described transactional mail as declining faster than marketing mail. The main reason? Younger customers expect to handle these transactions on their phones, which is why paperless statements are a natural fit for them.
Regulation is starting to reflect that shift in consumer preferences. On July 16, 2026, the SEC proposed Regulation E-Delivery, which would make electronic delivery the default for many required investor communications, such as prospectuses, shareholder reports, proxy statements and trade confirmations.
That doesn’t mean paper disappears, though. Investors could still ask for paper. As Joe put it in our interview, “there’ll always be both,” and the two need to be managed with a similar look, feel and result for the customer. My colleague Shawn Phillips has written about what the proposed rule requires in more detail, including how the content of a document affects the way it can be delivered.
The result is that the volume of transactional communications in print will keep falling. What matters now is which communications stay in print, and why.
Why Does Marketing Mail Still Pay Off in Print?
Does direct mail still work? For BlueCrest’s clients, yes. Marketing mail holds its place in print because organizations can measure its return, which they rarely do for transactional mail. When it comes to print vs digital marketing, a printed piece tends to get more attention than a digital message and, in the experience of BlueCrest’s clients, a higher response and conversion rate. That measurable direct mail ROI is keeping marketing mail volumes steady, even as postage and production costs rise.
Rising costs do, however, raise the bar for every piece that gets printed. In the PRINTING United Alliance 2026 State of the Industry Report (May 2026), 58.9% of print companies agreed that rising costs, including postal rates, labor and tariffs, are encouraging clients to reduce their use of print.
The same survey found that 49.0% of print companies see clients combining print and electronic alternatives in the same communication and marketing programs. Printed marketing pieces increasingly have to prove their value as one part of a coordinated campaign across channels, not as a standalone mailing.
That coordination is where Joe sees an opportunity for print and mail service providers. Many are expanding from printing and mailing whatever their clients send them into managing marketing communications across physical and digital channels, where they can show a measurable return.
Why Is Complex Transactional Print Here to Stay?
Looking ahead, transactional print is narrowing to the documents that are hardest to move to digital. Not all transactional documents are the same. A routine bill or payment confirmation follows the same simple layout every time, so it is easy to move online.
Complex transactional documents are a different story. They are harder to move online. Think of a statement that combines several accounts, or a policy document with language that changes by state and product. These have more pages, more data and more variation from one customer to the next, which makes them much harder to convert.
When the simpler documents move to digital, these complex ones are what’s still being printed. Joe described the shift this way: “the simple applications have gone away.” If anything, these remaining documents matter more.
In our interview, Joe said these complex transactional documents “still need to be managed carefully, they still need to be accurate, they still need to be impactful,” and they still need to reach the right recipient at the right time with the right message.
For a mail production operation handling transactional printing and statement printing, that shift has practical consequences. Instead of a few large, uniform print runs, operations handle a larger number of smaller batches, more exceptions and more manual steps. Joe described this as eroding the automation that high-volume mail depends on.
The people who ask to stay on paper add to the variation. Under a digital-by-default model, they are individuals scattered across every mailing, not one group that can be printed together in a single batch. So while transactional print volumes go down, each printed piece needs more attention to produce well.
How Should Organizations Decide Between Print vs Digital?
With each printed piece needing more attention, it’s tempting to focus on the print room. But print vs digital decisions, and most of the complexity, start well before a document reaches a printer. Joe noted that print and mail technology is already highly sophisticated. The harder problems sit upstream: bringing in the right data, creating and changing content, managing approvals and compliance, and deciding which channel each communication should go to..
When those steps are handled in disconnected tools, or in legacy document-generation systems built only for print, the complexity flows straight into production.
Here is how the print vs digital mix typically breaks down:
| Communication Type | Likely Channel | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Routine statements, bills and notices | Digital first | Routine and high in volume, often seen as a cost rather than a source of value, and customers increasingly handle them online |
| Required investor communications (under the proposed Regulation E-Delivery) | Digital by default, paper on request | The SEC proposal would make electronic delivery the default, but investors could still request paper |
| Marketing mail | Print, as part of a coordinated campaign across channels | Measurable return and higher response from printed pieces |
| Complex, higher-value transactional documents | More variation and data, and hard to convert to digital formats | |
| Communications for recipients who ask for paper | Recipient choice, spread across every mailing |
BlueCrest already invests in software that regains efficiency before print, such as combining work into common batches. A modern customer communications management platform extends that effort further upstream, to where the documents are created. It is also the foundation of an omnichannel communication strategy, because the same data and content can feed print, email, SMS and customer portals.
Kim Cook added two points from MHC’s side:
- First, business users are the people who understand the communications and want to write the rules, so they need to be able to make changes without waiting on IT.
- Second, AI-assisted capabilities can speed up content creation and improve accuracy, as long as the work stays within the right governance. Both matter more when printed documents are more complex and every change has to reach print and digital channels at the same time.
None of this requires replacing print operations that work. As Kim put it:
“We’re not ripping out a whole new printing process or anything like that to go digital. It’s a complementary process.”
~ Kim Cook, VP, Partners and Alliances, MHC
“We’re not ripping out a whole new printing process or anything like that to go digital. It’s a complementary process.” How Fast Can a New User Start Producing Usable Documents?
Onboarding new work is one of the biggest challenges BlueCrest’s clients face, according to Joe, whether they run their own in-house print and mail operations or provide print and mail services to others. Being able to take on new work faster, more easily, and with fewer resources is an important part of keeping their businesses profitable. For print and mail service providers especially, “they don’t know what’s coming at them” from week to week, so the ability to set up new documents quickly, whether physical, digital or both, directly affects their bottom line.
That is where ease of use makes a real difference. Joe shared a story from BlueCrest’s evaluation of document composition tools that shows just how much:
~ Joe Eremita, Senior Director, Software Product Line Management, BlueCrest
“Early on, when we were doing an evaluation, we had a summer intern. They were tasked with evaluating a variety of different composition engines and tools and very quickly, within two weeks, this person became proficient and was creating documents and producing output that we could use with the MHC tool. Throughout the rest of the internship, they never achieved document creation with any of the other tools…that’s just unheard of in the space of document creation up to now.”How Does the MHC and BlueCrest Partnership Connect Print and Digital?
The partnership between MHC and BlueCrest follows directly from this shift. BlueCrest, formerly part of Pitney Bowes, has always described its approach as “from data through delivery,” but Joe explained that a strong document composition engine was missing from that end-to-end story. BlueCrest evaluated the market and chose MHC NorthStar CCM for two main reasons: how quickly people can learn to use it, and print-ready output that fits easily into physical mail workflows.
The partnership brings the two sides together. MHC NorthStar CCM manages the data, content, workflow and digital delivery upstream, and BlueCrest handles high-volume print and mail production downstream.
For organizations in insurance, healthcare and financial services, that means one connected process for transactional print and digital communications, built around the production infrastructure they already rely on.
The Future of Transactional Print: Print and Digital From One Place
Digital by default will move more routine transactional communications online, and proposed rules like Regulation E-Delivery will speed that up.
It won’t end print. It narrows transactional print to the complex documents that are hard to convert, while marketing mail stays because it delivers a measurable return. Organizations that plan the mix from one place, with the same data and content feeding both channels, will get the most from each.
As I said at the end of our conversation, this is not about print versus digital. It’s about connecting modern communication creation upstream with proven production and delivery downstream, so organizations can modernize without disrupting operations that already work well.
Next Steps
Watch the full interview with Joe Eremita and Kim Cook to hear more about the partnership and what BlueCrest is seeing in the market.
Get a Personalized Demo of MHC NorthStar CCM to see how it connects communication creation with your print and mail operations.
Subscribe to MHC's newsletter to get the next Expert Insights interview in your inbox.
FAQs
What is Transactional Print?
Transactional print is the printing and mailing of documents tied to an account or transaction, such as statements, bills, policy notices and trade confirmations. These documents have to be accurate, personalized and delivered on time. As simple documents move to digital, what remains in transactional print is increasingly complex.
Will Regulation E-Delivery Eliminate Paper Investor Communications?
No. The SEC’s proposal, released July 16, 2026, would make electronic delivery the default for many investor communications, but investors could still request paper at any time. Firms that prefer their current consent-based process could also keep using it. The rule is still a proposal and has not been adopted.
What is the Difference Between Transactional and Marketing Communications?
Transactional communications are tied to an account or transaction, such as statements, bills, policy notices and trade confirmations. Marketing communications are promotional pieces designed to prompt a response, such as offers and campaigns. Organizations usually measure the return on marketing communications, while transactional communications are often treated as a cost of doing business.
Does Direct Mail Still Work?
Yes, for many organizations. BlueCrest’s clients see higher response and conversion from printed marketing pieces than from digital messages. Because they track the return, marketing mail is holding steady even as postage and production costs rise.
Which Communications Will Stay in Print vs Digital?
Marketing mail with a measurable return, complex transactional documents that are hard to convert to digital, and communications for recipients who ask for paper are the most likely to stay in print. Simple, routine transactional documents are the most likely to move to digital first.
Why Does Transactional Print Need More Attention as Volumes Decline?
When simple documents move to digital, the documents left in print have more variation and more data. That leads to smaller batches, more exceptions and more manual steps in mail production, which reduces the efficiency that large, uniform print runs used to provide.
Do Organizations Need to Replace Their Print Infrastructure to Support Digital by Default?
No. Organizations can modernize how communications are created and managed upstream, using a customer communications management platform, while keeping the print and mail operations they already have. MHC NorthStar CCM produces print-ready output for physical production and manages digital delivery from the same platform.
Sharon Malloch
Sharon leads content marketing at MHC, overseeing strategies that fuel sales and demand generation. With more than a decade of experience in customer communications, Sharon brings deep insight into customer pain points, industry trends, and the critical role of solutions in managing regulatory communications. Before joining MHC, she honed her marketing expertise at Doxim, Messagepoint, and OpenText.
