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.
• 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).

At Alphagraphics Mason we have over 40 years of print and marketing experience. You can feel confident that we will combine the right look and feel to meet your budget constraints. Additionally, it is all about ROI at the end of the day. By working with Alphagraphics we will work with you to design a solution that will exceed your expectations. We have the ability to acquire a targeted customer list, graphically design the direct mail, implement the latest PURL campaign methodologies and follow up with your customers after the mailing.

Elements to Consider in Developing a Direct Marketing Plan

Posted On: MBDA website


What is the best way to reach my customers directly?

The four elements to consider in developing a direct marketing plan are goals, target customers, strategy of the offer, testing of the program and measuring success.

Goals

Generally speaking, a direct marketing program is used to secure sales directly from the producer of product or provider of service to the intended customer. A response rate of 2 percent is considered successful. This does not imply that 98% of the program was unsuccessful; just that those targeted customers were not ready to purchase at that particular time. The targeted customers certainly became more aware of the product or service and will be given the opportunity to buy again at a later date.

Other goals for a direct marketing approach can be assisting the sales process by identifying prospective customers or educating the targeted customers. Be clear about the goals of the program so that you can measure the program’s success.

Target Customers
Crucial to the success of any direct marketing program is the target market. The more qualified the customer, the more likely the sale. Qualifying issues can be age, gender, income, education level, geographic location, previous mail-order purchases, etc. For most start-up businesses, targeted customer lists can be obtained through groups such as the Chamber of Commerce, professional trade associations, etc.

Lists are available for sale with either some minimum dollar value or minimum number of prospects. Purchasing a list is a good way to supplement your target customer database, but external lists can have duplicate names, incomplete data, etc., so testing purchased lists is always a good idea.

Strategy of the Offer
It is necessary to develop an effective offer strategy that meets the target customer’s needs. Included for consideration are the product or service, the offer (reason to buy at this time), the medium and the distribution method.

Choose the product or service that is the most attractive to the targeted customers and create an offer that will move the customer to purchase. For example, if your business is carpet cleaning, your offer might be targeted for spring cleaning and include a discount of two rooms cleaned for the price of one. The more convenient and attractive the offer, the better results will be obtained.

Choice of medium is also important. Oversized postcards can be very effective, since there is no envelope to open and the offer can be stated boldly so the potential customer doesn’t miss the message. If your choice is included in an envelope, be sure something eye-catching is printed on the outside of the envelope; preferably printed in color. A telemarketing campaign might also be a good choice, depending on your budget and ability to launch an effective campaign. Telemarketers need a good script, practice and training to be successful. One advantage of a telemarketing campaign is the ability to obtain information about your product or service, whether or not the potential customer purchases the item offered.

Testing the Program
Each element of the program should be tested. Was the choice of product or service the appropriate item? Was the offer attractive enough? Was it offered to the right customer? Was the medium the best choice for reaching the customer? Follow up is necessary to determine that each element was the appropriate choice, and follow up should be directed to both customers who purchased the product or service and those who did not.

Measuring Success
Success of direct marketing programs can be measured in two ways: the tangible results of dollars spent versus revenues produced and the intangible results of information obtained about the market and customers.

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

Let me desgin a PURL campaign for you. Visit us at http://us123.alphagraphics.com

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

We can help!! http://us123.alphagraphics.com

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.

Digital Marketing and Printing Company

Digital printing is a common requirement of any type of business that wants affordable and quality marketing materials. When you combine the products and services of a marketing company, you have a combination that is hard to beat. Marketing companies typically bring solutions that allow any business to increase their brand awareness, generate sales leads and participate in several cross market media with the same message. With this type of printing and marketing service, any business could have any type of marketing materials created with high resolution and plenty of customization---all for very reasonable prices.

Digital printing and marketing is the ideal printing/marketing service for any size of business whether it is a small, medium scale business or even a large size business such as corporations can gain benefits out from utilizing this type of printing/marketing service.

Digital printing encompasses various types of printing services such as:

• Digital color printing
• Digital B& W printing
• Offset printing
• Screen-printing
• Large format printing
• Variable printing
• Discount printing

Marketing products and services encompass various types of marketing solutions such as:

• PURL campaigns
• On-line marketing solutions
• Cross-Media marketing campaigns
• Integrated Marketing Communication planning

The best thing about digital printing with an Integrated Marketing Communication focused company is its inexpensiveness especially when compared to advertising agencies and the printed product is purchased in large bulk orders or when you require custom small quantity orders which is the usual requirement for any type of business marketing endeavors.

Quality Vs Color

With the advent of personal desktop color printers and copiers many professional business people have chose to use low quality copy paper and printout their PDF file with their desk top printer. If you listen to all of the commercials, they will try to convince you that the quality that you receive is as good as anything that you can get at a professional digital printing business center. Nothing could be as far from the truth. Just ask yourself, if you drive a $5000 car do you really think that it will be as enjoyable as driving a $50,000 car? In many cases the difference is stark. Today I had the pleasure of meeting with a local area non-profit that has used desktop copiers to produce their associations marketing materials. While the information was useful, I could not understand how such a prestigious organization would allow itself to be presented with inferior marketing materials. The color copies bled with two colors, the paper was very low quality and did not hold the colors and the business card stock and folder was very thin making it feel cheap. While I realize that everyone is on a budget during these economic times, there is a cost of presenting yourself to customers with a poor professional image. Would you go to an interview with jeans? In the final analysis, make sure that your marketing materials represent you in the manner you wish to be represented.