Younger Demographics Prefer Direct Mail

Excerpted from Even Younger Demographics Prefer Direct Mail, Chief Marketer Online, by Peter Meyers

Meyers says younger demographics prefer direct mail citing a recent survey conducted by ICOM Information and Communications of 1529 households.

The survey results suggests:

• Young professionals ages 18-34 communicated a strong preference for receiving information in the mail over electronic options. Privacy was pegged as one of the main reasons for this surprising partiality.
• In the survey, conducted in February, those respondents in the 18-34 year old demographic proclaimed nearly a two-to-one preference for receiving product information by direct mail over e-mail or online, across all categories.
• 57.7% of 18-34 year olds preferred information by direct mail, as opposed to only 27.3% preferring e-mail and online combined. In another key category, over the counter medication, 55.8% preferred mail to 29.3% opting for online methods.
• Perhaps most interesting is that the 18-34 year olds harbored nearly the strongest preference for communication by direct mail of all the groups surveyed. Respondents were segmented into the following age breakdowns: 18-34, 35-44, 45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, 65-69 and 70+ years old. As expected, those 65 and older also overwhelmingly chose mail as their preferred information source.

The power of Variable Data Publishing

Until recently, designing and producing customized messages was a time- and cost-prohibitive task. Developments in key areas of the publishing market, however, are converging to make personalized communications a reality. The availability of databases, publishing tools and high-quality digital output systems all combine to make Variable Data Publishing (VDP) more automated, economical, and accessible than ever.

Also known as data-driven, targeted, or one-to-one marketing, VDP has emerged as a key enabling technology that automates the production of unique, relevant communications that resonate with recipients and motivate them to take action. Whether used to acquire leads, increase sales, or secure customer loyalty, VDP is being leveraged by a growing number of communications professionals to achieve unprecedented results.

VDP applications

Where are VDP solutions being applied successfully today? The flexibility and scalability of VDP yields a broad set of applications, from basic data merge for business correspondence to highly complex, customized promotional pieces — with recipients ranging from one to one million.

Business correspondence

Business correspondence incorporates name, address, and simple product information to produce a unique piece for each recipient.

Simple one-to-one marketing

Simple one-to-one marketing incorporates some graphical elements and variable text that are included based on a simple set of rules to produce a unique composition that is customized for each recipient.

Custom publications

Custom publications are business applications that enable a customer to drive specific content into an existing template for immediate publishing or for inclusion in a newsletter or periodical.

TransPromo

TransPromo combines targeted and graphically rich promotional or sales information with transactional documents (bills, statements, portfolios, invoices).

Variable Data Publishing (VDP) is more than just mail merge. In today's economy, every dollar counts and VDP gives you more power for your marketing budget. We have the tools and the know-how to assist you in utilizing the infinite possibilities of VDP.

Excerpted from Adobe's VDP Resource Center

What a Great Vacation

With The Printers, inc. closing again for the week of the Fourth of July, Carol and I decided to go camping at Gooseberry Falls State Park on the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/state_parks/gooseberry_falls/index.html

I thought that you might like to see our pictures from this wonderful locale. I cannot adequately describe the beautiful scenery, the well-kept campground (especially the bathrooms), the hiking trails or the overall relaxing time that we had.

To view all of our pictures click on the url below. When you get to that site, there is a view slide show notice to click on in the upper right portion. Click on that and sit back and watch.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28236411@N04/sets/72157606054411080/

10 Essential Blogging Tools

Add these tools to grow your blog readership
By John Jantsch
Founder of Duct Tape Marketing

So, you finally decided to take the blog leap. You heard all about the marketing and search benefits, so you stepped up to the plate and signed up for a TypePad, MovableType or WordPress blog software package. Now you're a blogger. (At The Printers, inc., we use Blogger, a Google product.)

What next? Add the 10 essential blogging tools listed below and you will be well on your way to creating and promoting a blog that is also a powerful marketing tool. I'll explain the use of the tool and offer some suggestions, including the tools I use on my own blogs.

Feed reader

The best way to learn about blogs and blogging is to read or at least scan lots of blogs. One of the wonders of blogs is that you can have every new post from every blog you want to read delivered to your desktop or to online location so you can easily read and scan the posts of many blogs in a very short time. Newsgator is a good online choice and also has a version that integrates with Microsoft Outlook. I use a free online service know as Bloglines.

Subscriber center

You need to make it easy for your blog visitors to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed - so they can read your blog in their favourite feed reader. The best way to do this is to go to FeedBurner and burn your own RSS feed there and use the tools they provide to set up automatic subscriber links. That way people who want to use Bloglines, Google Reader, MyYahoo or Pluck can click on one button to subscribe. Tech types can figure this out on their own but the buttons make it easy for anyone to figure out. You might also look at a free add-on called Add This. It creates a one button subscribe feature.

Side note - subscribe to each of these yourself and you will force some blog spiders (a search engine's robot that patrols the web for new content) to visit your site.

Email subscription option

A lot of people will never get the whole feed thing, but everyone gets email. Create a way for people to subscribe by giving you their email address - they will simply receive your blog posts like an email message. FeedBurner offers this service for free. FeedBlitz is another option or, if you already have an autoresponder email list service, they may offer this service. AWeber offers this and helps me integrate these blog email subscribers into my other mailing lists.

Blog and RSS directories

There are hundreds of blog and RSS directories, and getting listed in many can be a good thing. I use a piece of software called RSS Submit, but you can also visit Robin Goode's frequently updated list and submit your blog and feed by hand.

Hint: subscribe to the RSS feed he offers and you will be notified when new directories are added.

Ping service

Pinging is a term used for letting the various blog and RSS directories know when you have posted new content. Again, FeedBurner offers this as an automatic option called PingShot and you should activate it. PingGoat and Ping O Matic are other options, but they require that you visit and update your record each time you post new content.

Bookmark manager

As you surf around the web or hop from blog to blog, you may find sites that you want to point out to your readers. Online bookmark managers allow you to bookmark and categorize web and blog pages as you collect them and are a great tool for managing all of the stuff you find on the web. I use del.icio.us but BlinkList does a fine job as well.

Blog stats

I like to track a few key stats in real time because it shows what other blogs might be linking to you or posting about your blog. A lot of people just like to track this kind of thing for fun and frequently visit sites like Technorati. I like to track it for networking opportunities. I use a tool called MyBlogLog because it allows me to see where traffic is coming from but also tracks what links on my blog visitors are clicking on. It's amazing how this data can help you write more effectively.

Desktop posting

With most blog software you must go online and post using a set of tools provided by the blog software. Many bloggers like to use a desktop application to create and submit their posts as it gives them some extra tools and allows them to more easily integrate content and files on their computer.

I use w.bloggar but also like Performancing, with the Firefox extension, Windows Live Writer and ecto (mac folks).

Tell a friend script

My blog software has a feature that allows a reader to click, link and send the post to a friend. This tactic brings me lots of readers. You might try looking here for some simple scripts that do that same.

Republish feed headlines

The ability to republish your blog posts on other web page, sites you own or sites of strategic partners is a great way to expose folks to your blog content. One more time, we turn to FeedBurner for a painless way to republish your blog post to any web page you choose with something they call BuzzBoost.

About the Author:

John Jantsch is a veteran marketing coach, award winning blogger and author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide published by Thomas Nelson. He is the creator of the Duct Tape Marketing small business marketing system. You can find more information by visiting http://www.ducttapemarketing.com.

It's Vacation Time

Take a vacation, for your health's sake
By Alina Tugend

Gas prices are going up, the economy is going down, and it seems hard to justify a vacation when many of us are glad just to have jobs. But now, more than ever, we need to take a break — a real break, not just a long weekend — from our stressed-out lives.

But, it turns out, even before the downturn, a lot of Americans were working through their vacation time, taking fewer and shorter holidays.

Well, vacations are not simply a luxury. There is increasing evidence that they really are necessary for good health.

Using information from the Framingham Heart Study, which started in 1948, researchers looked at questionnaires women in the study had filled out over 20 years about how often they took vacations. Those women who took a vacation once every six years or less were almost eight times more likely to develop coronary heart disease or have a heart attack than those who took at least two vacations a year, said Elaine Eaker, a co-author of the study and president of Eaker Epidemiology Enterprises, a private research company.

The study, published in 1992, was controlled for other factors like obesity, diabetes, smoking and income, Eaker said, and the findings have been substantiated in follow-up research.

"It shows how the body reacts to a lifestyle of stress," she said. "This is real evidence that vacations are important to your physical health."

Another study, published in 2000, looked at 12,000 men over nine years who were at high risk for coronary heart disease. Those who failed to take annual vacations had a 21% higher risk of death from all causes and were 32% more likely to die of a heart attack.

The trick, these days when going on vacation, is not only to physically remove yourself from your normal routine, but mentally as well. Checking your BlackBerry every few hours or rushing to the nearest Internet café doesn't cut it.

For 10 years, the Faculty of Management at Tel Aviv University has conducted a study looking at what is called "respite effects," which measure relief from job stress before, during and after vacations.

Professor Dov Eden, an organizational psychologist who has conducted the study, found that those who are electronically hooked up to their office, even if they are lying on the Riviera, are less likely to receive the real benefits of a vacation and more likely to burn out. Here's one trick. My neighbor Mark had a colleague who was a workaholic. But when he went on vacation, he made sure to go where there was no cellphone or Internet service.

Edited from Vacations Are Good for You, Medically Speaking, New York Times, June 7, 2008. For the full article go to

http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/06/07/business/yourmoney/07shortcuts.html
(if it is still online).

---

For your information-

The Printers, inc. will be on vacation the week of the 4th of July. We will be closed from Monday, June 30 through Monday, July 7, 2008. We will reopen on Tuesday, July 8th at 8:00 am.

Carol (without her Blackberry) and I (sans laptop) will be away from it all camping and hiking at Gooseberry Falls State Park on the north shore of Lake Superior. We'll post some pictures in future blogs!

Buy None, Get One Free!

Sometimes you get what you don't pay for.

If you know where to look, you can get some pretty cool stuff for free—and with the price of gas these days, "free" may be just what your budget calls for.

Free Education
Get your geek on with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT offers a comprehensive selection of free online courses that includes nearly its entire undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Downloading materials takes minutes. A newsletter highlights new offerings, from Quantum Physics to American Women Authors. The catch is, users can't enroll, take classes on campus or earn degrees. But if you're looking to broaden your horizons, you can find these free courses at ocw.mit.edu.

Free Photos
If your digital camera is full but you need some good old-fashioned prints, visit websites Adorama, Dotphoto, Kodak and Snapfish. In addition to photo sharing and online albums, these popular services provide 15 to 50 free prints when you register. You have to pay for shipping, but that's usually not more than a few dollars. Get more details at www.adorama.com, www.dotphoto.com, www.kodakgallery.com and www.snapfish.com.

Free Tech Support
Need your own personal help desk? The next time you have a tech issue, don't spend your hard-earned cash for someone's expertise—at least not right away. Protonic.com is an online community that provides technical support to computer users around the world for absolutely nothing. To date, the website has provided over 160,000 answers to computer-related questions. On the site, you can browse through other people's questions and answers or simply ask a Protonic.com technician for help with the tech troubles you're facing. Find out more at www.protonic.com.

And the next time you need a phone number, dial 800-FREE-411. Instead of dialing 411 and getting charged 50 cents to $1.50, call this 800 number for free nationwide directory assistance. You'll have to listen to a 20-second ad before receiving your number, but you won't have to pay a thing.

Consider Statement-based Marketing

5 Reasons It Works

Because other marketing channels are plagued by spam filters and do-not-call lists, statements are becoming an even more valuable component of the overall communication mix.

1. Unrivaled Openability. Statements and invoices are expected — they contain important financial information and usually require action. So it’s not surprising that more than 95% of transaction documents are opened and read each month — far more than any other type of direct response effort.
   
   
2. High Involvement. Bills and statements receive more attention than any other form of communication, including television advertisements. The average customer invests between one and three minutes for statement review.
   
   
3. Trusted Media. While e-security and telephone fraud continue to make headlines, nearly everyone trusts the Postal Service to send and deliver mail — including highly important documents.
   
   
4. Functionality. Not only do statements command more attention when they are initially opened, they are often viewed more than once. The paper-based nature of transaction mail is valued by consumers as they pay bills, submit expense reports, prepare taxes and file documents.
   
   
5. Greater Returns. As statements are already in the mailstream today, marketers are finding TransPromo* to be one of the most cost-efficient communication channels. Statement-based marketing is also more effective simply because of the target audience: current customers. A five percent increase in current customer business can translate into as much as a 50% increase in bottom-line profits.

From Mailing Systems Technology - March-April 2008

*TransPromo is the combination of personalized promotional messages with must-read transactional documents such as statements, invoices, explanations of benefits, policy notifications and other customer-facing documents including receipts and point of sale/purchase documents.

Fun Facts

Wood fiber for paper - Where does it come from?

You may be surprised to learn that about one-third of the raw material used to make paper in the U.S. is residue - wood chips and scraps left behind from forest and sawmill operations. These “leftovers” would probably be burned or discarded if not used by the paper industry.

Another third of the raw material is recovered paper. Although some papers contain 100 percent recycled fiber, papermakers often combine various amounts of recycled and new fiber to produce the desired quality and grade of paper.

Only about one-third of the fiber used to make paper in the U.S. is from whole trees, which the industry calls round wood. It is not considered economical to use large logs for paper when they could instead be used for lumber. For this reason, only trees smaller than 8 inches in diameter, or larger trees not suitable for solid wood products, typically are harvested for papermaking.

From - TAPPI - The Leading Technical Association for the Worldwide Pulp, Paper and Converting Industry

Effective Direct Mail for Non-Profits

Donor RETENTION
• First priority
• Maintain Top of the Mind Awareness (TOMA)
• Targets the person who has already invested in you

Donor DEVELOPMENT
• Continue to educate about the mission of the organization
• Your donor learns about the successes and continuing needs of your organization

Donor RECRUITMENT
• Prospecting
• Identify similar groups of people or businesses that have an affinity for your organization

Don't forget to provide an opportunity for people to contribute to your cause! That remains consistent whether you are trying to retain donors, recruit donors or develop donors.

Postcards Work!

What's one of the best values for your buck? Postcards!

Why?

• They cost you LESS to produce and give you great exposure.
• Postcards are a great marketing tool for businesses, individuals (i.e. elections, sales), you name it.
• Immediate impact - no envelope to open; they HAVE to see your message.
• Get them to call you! Give them the info; don't get too detailed; be visual; grab them; make them an offer. The card generates the lead but you must finalize the deal/close the sale when they respond.

Whom do you target?

• Present customers first. They know you; they already have a relationship with you; they like you.
• Seize the opportunity to introduce other products or services. Expand their commitment (loyalty) to your business. It is easier for you to generate new sales with current customers than get new customers in your door. Spend most of your effort with those you already know.

What's next?

• SEAL THE DEAL!
• Be prepared for questions.
• Take care of their needs.
• Fulfill your promises.
• Can't close the deal when they call? Then follow up. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

Postcards Work!

Paper Costs Increasing

Over the past year, we have seen the cost of paper from our suppliers increase significantly. The increase varies a bit from paper manufacturer to paper manufacturer. Here are a couple of snippets from articles specifically talking about price increases and some of the reasons why. With the cost of energy and the weak dollar, increases are to be expected unfortunately.

Prices take another step up
July 1, 2007 12:00 PM , By Jim Tierney
Mulichannel Merchant Online

It's not a great time to be shopping for coated freesheet paper. Nine major paper companies — Domtar, Sappi Fine Papers, NewPage, West Linn, Verso, PineBluff, Appleton, Bowater, and Myllykoski — have announced price increases of $3 per hundredweight (cwt) price for the grade. A tenth, Stora Enso North America, announced a 7% increase on coated freesheet.

Paper prices continue to climb
Jan 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jim Tierney
Mulichannel Merchant Online

If you thought 2008 might bring relief from rising paper prices, think again: Industry watchers say reduced demand, several mill closures, along with rising energy and manufacturing costs, have rendered paper markets extremely tight.

At the moment, Maine says, “nobody is canceling any orders — even if they don't need the paper, which could lead to some inventory building in January and February. If the market doesn't open up by February, it won't open up at all in 2008 — and paper availability will be an issue all year. We expect LWC prices to rise 14%-17% year-over-year in 2008, and the risk is that they might rise even more than this.”

Let us work together to help keep your printing costs down!

Making the World a Better Place

Congratulations Carol!

What do we hope to accomplish with this blog??

“The principal goal of education is to create people who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done.” - Jean Piaget (1896-1980) Swiss cognitive psychologist

Like many industries today, printing is experiencing a technological revolution. The modes of reaching customers, prospects, and employees are not the same as they were several years ago. Together we are trying to make sense out of what works best. We look to educate about our company and our industry with particular attention to our specific areas of expertise. We hope that you will tell us what you need. With a greater understanding, we can serve you better. Together we are capable of doing great things, not simply repeating the past.

Please share our blog with co-workers and friends. We hope there is value for everyone and they too, can be part of our family.

Happy blogging!!

The Printers, inc. Blog

To stay in touch with YOU, our customers and prospective customers, we are starting a blog! We’re not going to post daily but plan on posting every week or two. Blogs are fun. Blogs are interactive. Our goal is to include you in The Printers, inc. family.

So what would a printer blog about??? Printing! Our community! A blog is a work in progress. It’s never complete. It’s a dialogue. We hope that you’ll tell us what you need. Ask questions. Comment. Share your ideas.

In your busy world, we know that whatever time you spend on our blog is valuable, and we thank you. Keeping our posts short will be a priority. If we cannot sufficiently cover a subject in a short amount of space, we will have a continuation at another date or a link for more information.

To be notified when we post, just click on subscribe by email. (You may also set up an RSS feed if you prefer.) We want this blog to be valuable to you so you will look at it often. Thank you for your confidence in us. We are both thrilled, and hesitant, to start.