On-and-Off Relationship

Pennsylvania college uses direct mail to court Facebook users

Targeting

Sometimes to connect with people online you must get their attention through an offline channel first — which is exactly what
Pennsylvania’s Rosemont College did when looking to increase traffic on its Facebook® page.

The private college sent 900 personalized postcards and a series of e-mails inviting recent graduates to a weeklong virtual party on Facebook aimed at reengaging alumni and encouraging future financial support.

The effort pitted graduating classes against one another to see which could contribute the most. It also boosted Rosemont’s
Facebook friends by a whopping 587 percent, says Christyn Moran, Rosemont’s vice president of college relations.

Moran adds that follow-up postcards with personalized URLs were sent to grads not in attendance so they could still connect with the college. — Christine Hansen,discover magazine, volume 6, issue 2, April 2010

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Scouting Donors

Multichannel approach helps ‘Support the Sash’

Multichannel

When faced with declining donations and the need for more volunteers, the Girl Scouts – Arizona Cactus-Pine
Council (GSACPC) launched a multichannel campaign that, ultimately, increased average donations from $50 to $250.

Its “Support the Sash” initiative employed direct mail, e-mail, personalized URLs (PURLs), social media and telemarketing to connect with 3,100 potential donors, most of whom were Girl Scout alumni.

The outreach effort began with postcards tailored to four age groups, creating an emotional connection to Girl Scouting and inviting recipients to visit a PURL. The result? A 5-percent individual response rate, with repeat PURL visits boosting total response to more than 8 percent, says Robin Telle, GSACPC communications manager.

“You need to reach out through a variety of channels to cut through the clutter,” Telle says. “We were successful because we gave people choices on how to engage with the council.” — Christine Hansen, deliver magazine, volume 6, issue 2, April 2010

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Saving Dollars when the Budget is Tight

During the past several months printing and advertising budgets have fallen dramatically. To help minimize your printing costs, thePrintGuide.Com would like to offer these helpful tips to keep your printing project on budget.
The main objective when printing anything is efficiency. How efficient are you? How efficient is your printer? How can I get the printer to be sympathetic to my needs as a consumer? These are questions you must stop and ask yourself before starting your work or choosing a printer.

• Developing a relationship with your printer is the most important objective. You should feel confident asking your printer about optimizing efficiency. Here are a few tips to help you do so.
• Always ask the printer for recommendations. Whether it is paper type or the number of inks being used, a good printer will always be able to help you find what’s best and most efficient for your project.
• Always ask the printer about reducing paper waste. This is very important and can be quite expensive if not accomplished. In most cases, the paper or material cost is the largest part of the printers’ expense. Get the paper or material cost down and the price is sure to be lower.
• Using one color is always going to be least expensive to print. Keep your color designs to a minimum if possible. You’ll not only save money on ink but on the costs of the printing plates as well.
• Consider having your work printed on colored stock. This could save money if you were planning on a two colored print job.
• Print projects with bleeds typically cost more. Avoid a bleed if possible as this will help keep the amount of material lower (therefore lowering your costs).

AlphaGraphics of Greater Cincinnati has skilled professionals on staff that have more than 30 years of experience in the printing industry. This level of experience will assist you with determining the right paper and the right ink at the right price. Since we have both offset and digital printing capabilities you can be assured that the best options will be used with our printing projects.

Once the project is complete, AlphaGraphics of Greater Cincinnati can also assist you with meeting the objective of the marketing collateral. If you need to make sure that the collateral is sent to a target audience, we can help you. If you want to leverage the collateral with other marketing media such as trade shows, social media or web sites we can help you.