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

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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.

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.

Choosing a Commercial Printer/ Marketer for Solving your Needs

Knowing how to choose the right visual communication, marketing and commercial printing company is very important. Not choosing the right visual communication, marketing and commercial printer can cost you a lot of money, time, and even your customers. In today’s market, you have unique needs involving, how to increase productivity and generating sales leads. Therefore learning how to effectively choose the appropriate supplier that will meet your demands, such as quality, budget-constraints, ROI, time, and other aspects of your business needs is essential.

Presently, many companies offer quality printed materials, different turnaround and various printing rates. These similarities between companies have made the printed product output a commodity. Even though there are lots of them, when making a selection you need to consider your current and future needs as a print buyer. That is, does the company offer graphic design, web site design, integrated marketing communication planning, free delivery, online digital catalog and fulfillment services. After all, becoming affiliated with a company that can grow with your organization should be a crucial part of the decision making process.

In selecting your visual communication, marketing and printing supplier, you need to identify your needs and how suppliers can meet these demands. As you develop your needs be sure to have a good ideal of the budget constraints and will the output require some type of ROI component. Is this a one time printing or will follow up pieces be required to deliver the message that you want to convey? The various elements of visual and marketing communication leads to a multi media approach that makes the competency of the supplier selected even more important toady than ever. The final consideration is does the company have a commitment to customer service and delivering the required mix of visual and marketing communication pieces on time?

Two big indicators of a suppliers’ professionalism is its brick and mortar appearance and website presence. Does the company have a clean well-organized building appearance that leads itself to an organized work flow? If the supplier has invested in an organized work flow, it should leave you with the comfort that the company will be able to execute your project on time and with same quality that it has done with the professional appearance of the building. Check out the website. If it is well organized and has a good explanation of the products and services you can be assured that, they have the ability to develop a good web site for your organization. Is the web site updated with current information or is the latest update 2 years old. If the information is current, you know that the supplier is passionate about the business and keeping up with the latest trends in the industry.
Doing an Internet search for a visual communication, marketing and printing company will return tons of companies in the business. Many will focus on one aspect of the solution to fits your needs such as printing. However, there are few that can not only offer you a competitive price but also ensure that the print materials are effectively sent to your target audience and implements a measurement component as well. Therefore, make sure you have a good idea of the entire project and what you are trying to accomplish. The lowest price supplier on the Internet is not always the best solution to meet you true needs.

A New Business Model for Marketing

There have been many articles written over the past few months questioning whether traditional print is dead. Some articles have gone on to say that print shops are becoming a thing of the past as the future is all digital. Some articles question whether advertising agencies are doing their part to meet the needs of the future.

My experience is that advertising agencies are not meeting the requirements of business to business marketing needs and traditional print shops are outdated. Therefore you may ask what is the answer. A new model for the business to business marketing customer. This new model needs to offer the customer not only traditional printing but also provide digital media and market planning.

The AlphaGraphics of Mason is one company that is offering this new blend of market planning, traditional and digital print as well as social media. If you are interested in taking your business to the next level then I would visit http://www.alphagraphics.com/centers/mason-ohio-us123/index.html. This company offers marketing material such as variable data, one-to-one marketing and on line catalog solutions. Traditional media would include direct mail, business cards and stationary. Digital solutions include web site design and graphic design.