Insights and inputs from our team and around the web.
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- Written by: Ivania Garcia
Marketers should be paying attention to today’s trends in education. The same tools that help young readers learn and absorb information help the target audiences for your marketing campaigns learn and retain marketing information, too. One of these tools is paper. In a new report, “Third Annual Back to School Annual Report,” the Paper and Packaging Board has gathered a vast number of statistics that show just how vital print remains to learning.
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- Written by: Ivania Garcia
What is the most important real estate on your mailing envelope? It is the upper left-hand corner, the location of the return address. It is here that your prospect will often decide to open your envelope... or not.
Here are three reasons this space helps recipients decide to open your envelope:
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- Written by: Ivania Garcia
This case study is shared by the U.S. Postal Service. The name of the client is not disclosed, but the details and results of the campaign are. Let’s take a look...
We all know how difficult it is to get companies to talk about the results of even the best direct mail campaigns. Often this is because the results are so good that they don’t want to let competitors in on their secrets. So when you find a great case study, it’s marketing gold.
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- Written by: Nick Flores
Talking to customers about vehicle wraps will always start with many questions. Getting to know their business model helps you understand what kind of coverage their fleet needs. Having all the information will help dictate the price, so that you can be more accurate.
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- Written by: Juan Fernandez
The future of graphic printing is...roller skating? Faena Art in Miami Beach, Florida commissioned Thomas Printworks to print out a roller skating rink that can easily be installed and removed. The idea behind this project is to bring artwork to the masses via a free event at an exclusive venue.
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- Written by: Ed McCall
A client would like to have all employees sporting their logo every day with each interaction with the public. They have been challenged to require employees to comply because their current vendor’s offering was expensive and the representative was not engaged. Responsiveness and customer service has differentiated our offering from the client’s current vendor choices.
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- Written by: Steve Fowler
There is overwhelming data that supports an investment in a “New Home Owner” or “New Mover” program as a profitable and viable marketing decision. According to NAHB (National Association of Home Builders), analysis shows that during the first year after closing, a typical buyer of a new single-family detached home tends to spend an average of $10,601 on products and services. This is 2.6 times more than a typical household spends. A buyer of an existing home spends an average of $8,233, which is still twice the yearly spending of a typical homeowner.
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- Written by: Cynthia Justice
Are you needing something for an event that will stand out in the crowd? Or maybe draw attendees to your booth, and create a dynamic boost to your brand recognition? What you need is something that will give you an easier working life on the road. Whether it’s a trade show, an industry event, a gala, or just a seminar you need something that will be impressive, display your branding and promote your business.
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- Written by: Kateri Foley
The pairing of traditional print media with digital media continues to prove how both types of media can work together to create an interactive and engaging user experience. A fast-growing trend in digital media is augmented reality. Augmented reality takes an existing environment, such as a printed piece and superimposes digital images, sounds, and videos which can be viewed through the camera of an iPhone or tablet using an augmented reality app. Many brands are beginning to utilize this technology to create a more interactive experience for their audience.
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- Written by: Andrew McConnell
How close is close enough? I’m not referring to silky smooth skin after a shave or the relative positioning horseshoes. I’m talking about how close is it to what your customer was expecting and by extension I’m talking about quality control. I’m talking about providing our customers with not just close, but exactly what they were hoping for in the expected time frame. We often think of quality control as the last stop before a project leaves the factory. Instead, I suggest we think about quality control not just at the end, but throughout the entire project.
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- Written by: Meredith Terrall
Ever since Encad introduced the Novajet in 1991, the large format printing industry has been decorating our sports complexes, wrapping our high rises, wrapping our delivery vehicles and defining outdoor music festivals. All this has been done by “squirting” little droplets of ink onto papers, canvas, synthetics and textiles…a technology called Inkjet.
Until recently, inkjet technology utilized a variety of ink chemistries:
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- Written by: Ivania Garcia
Are most of your marketing campaigns used for direct sales? If so, why not mix it up? Try using your next mailer to offer advice or a helping hand instead. It’s a great way to sell products and deepen customer loyalty at the same time.
Just look at Home Depot. Why do you think it offers free seminars on do-it-yourself projects? Sure, seminars offer great advice, but they also generate additional sales for the home improvement giant. Attendees learn about a new product or technique, then while they are excited and motivated to try something new, they buy materials for completing one of those projects while they are right there in the store.
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- Written by: Ivania Garcia
Target Marketing recently published a terrific article on generating responses with direct mail. It doesn’t point to data-driven personalization, multichannel integration, or psychographic targeting, although all of these are important strategies. The article talks about the basics of effective marketing. We’ll summarize the points here and illustrate them with a TV commercial most of us will recognize: “Not You” from Realtor.com.
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- Written by: Miguel Correa
Gone are the simple days of rolling up prints, wrapping them in craft paper, and delivering them to your client. This is now the age of custom graphics, custom binding options, and custom boxes, thus making everything a custom project. Even in the AEC market, one will find that clients have a strong desire for custom options. Anything from custom binding strips, which can be made out of brushed aluminum or acrylic, to die-cut, double-mounted business cards. There is even a need for boxes to be made in a variety of sizes, routed out or just with logos for small format presentations. The turnaround is truly remarkable for black and white drawing sets being ordered to now having a requirement for custom delivery options.
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- Written by: Pat Gremillion
While at lunch do you ever surf the internet and look up random facts? Facts like: what horse won the 1920 Kentucky Derby? How many miles is it from the moon to the earth earth? I do this in particular, to escape from my daily routine. As I was doing this the other day, I stumbled upon some items I found to be extremely interesting. Items I like to call, “Did You Know Facts”. These were facts I was not fully aware of, but I found to be very interesting and made all too much sense upon reading. I am going to share these facts, but before you read each fact, please recite the phrase “Did you know that” before each bullet point.
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- Written by: Ivania Garcia
One of the marketing surprises of the last few years has been how strongly Millennials—the smartphone and fully wired generation—respond to direct mail. In fact, according to “USPS Mail Moments 2016,” Millennials are more likely than other generations to read, organize, and sort their mail than all other generations. They are also less likely to discard their mail without reading it.
Why do even so-called digital natives still respond so strongly to print? Could it be, in part, how we are wired? The answer is yes. Neuromarketing research shows that our brains react differently to printed material than to digital media.
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- Written by: Rob Lowe
From our earliest civilizations, have been fascinated with color and have gone to great lengths to replicate the colors found in nature. Starting with the Stone Age man scrawling drawings on cave walls, we have continued find new ways to bring color to life. Commercially, businesses can harness a full gamut of colors to draw attention to their products. All of this color can be produced without driving creators or their audience to an early grave. This hasn’t always been the case. In humanity’s attempt to capture color, there have been some deadly consequences. That’s right: color can kill.
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- Written by: Todd Howgard with Q.M Howgard
Writer’s block (rī-tərz blok) noun
- The condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing.
- A psychological inhibition preventing a writer from producing new work.
The brain is a complex and amazing organ. Two separate lobes being held together with a thick bundle of nerve tissues known as the corpus callosum, which effectively makes a full brain out of two half-brains. But what happens when it doesn’t work? Oftentimes, we are tempted to claim to be utilizing the wrong side of our brain. After all, if you’re a “left-brained” person then you tend to be more analytical and logical. How can you expect to be creative and expressive like your “right-brained” counterparts? It’s not your fault; you can’t help it; you’re just made that way—right? Wrong. It’s a myth!
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- Written by: Ivania Garcia
Looking to freshen up your sales literature? Think carefully and create a plan. Sales literature stands in for you when you’re not around, carrying your brand identity and reputation to the marketplace. It plays a critical role in your business and needs to be planned out carefully.
Start by investing in good design. Eye-catching layouts grab attention, and provocative headlines and compelling text convince the reader to hear you out. Keep your production cutting edge and the marketing content fresh. If you cut corners on printing or circulate out-of-date information, your prospects might subconsciously conclude that you produce cheap, outdated products too.
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- Written by: Darlene Billings
Motivation, as defined in the dictionary, is internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job or subject, or to make an effort to attain a goal. So, what motivates most salespeople? A bonus, satisfaction for a job well done, a great bottle of wine shared with friends at the end of the day, or is there more? Most certainly there is more!
For most people in sales, it is sometimes difficult to stay motivated because they are constantly reminded that they are “only as good as their last year’s performance”. Wow, think about that — the expectation that you must constantly perform better each month, year after year. It can be very difficult to turn what to many see as a negative into something positive that motivates. However, self-motivation, for any salesperson, can be the key to ongoing success.
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