Newmark Print is one of the premier full-service commercial printers in the Denver area, providing turnkey corporate printing, mail, distribution, and digital media services. Its services include one- through four-color sheet-fed printing; specialty substrate printing; one- through four-color digital offset and variable data printing; and sophisticated prepress, bindery, kitting, direct mail, and fulfilment. Founder and President Aquiles LaGrave stated, “In 2006, I moved an old banged-up press into a garage in Denver. My dream at the time stretched no further than putting in a full day’s labor, and was borne out of my love for the printed word and ink pressing onto paper. Today, Newmark Print is a solutions-driven digital offset imaging and mailing services company in the Rocky Mountains region. Running two shifts daily, our employees oversee an operation that has over 250 years of shared experience. We run work on our five digital presses, fulfilling tens of thousands of orders and mailing tens of millions of pieces yearly as far afield as Asia, or as close to home as your own mailbox.”

CEO Jim Albany noted, “We have always been a digital shop. We service a myriad of industries and handle extensive direct mail campaigns, newsletters, and label work. In addition, about 25% of our business comes from being a trade printer. We work with other providers to supplement their digital capabilities. We leverage the Océ VarioPrint® 4000 for our black & white work. It has been a real workhorse for us. We also have a Canon imagePRESS C7000VP from Océ for digital color work.”

The environment is very important to Newmark. LaGrave explained, “The commercial lithographic printing on traditional offset presses is an incredibly wasteful and dirty process, regardless of the types of ink you use. Whether it be during set-up, clean-up, or imaging, traditional offset presses waste incredible amounts of paper, chemical solvents, and energy before the first deliverable sheet is even printed. This means that traditional offset outputs ‘Volatile Organic Compounds’ (the stuff responsible for global warming) at rates exponentially higher than that of new offset technologies. This was a driver for our focus on using digital technologies.”

CEO Jim Albany reported, “Instead of a traditional offset press, Newmark chose to invest in print engines that are a quantum leap ahead of older technologies in terms of quality and direct environmental impact. Our state-of-the-art digital printing technology offers offset quality while increasing energy efficiency, dramatically cutting down on waste, and eliminating the chemical baths associated with traditional offset.”

Beyond that, most if not all of Newmark’s paper stock comes from non-bleached, post-consumer recycled paper and/or from renewable resources produced on farms as close to its warehouse as possible. The company refuses to use paper from any company that does not comply with the highest standards of clean air and water or aim to create a truly sustainable product.

Albany concluded by saying, “In the end, engaging in sustainable business practices are not about buzzwords, marketing, or image. It’s about creating a world where we work to first limit, then eliminate the negative ways in which we impact it and reduce the strains we place upon out natural resources. This is why we do it, and why we invite you to engage in a conversation with us about the steps we are taking to help that future become a reality.”

For more articles like this, visit OceWow.com to sign up for the monthly newsletter!

Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, is a reliable name in Hawaiian health care. Established in 1938, it is the largest and most experienced provider of health care coverage in the state. Over half of Hawaii’s population has chosen HMSA for their coverage.

HMSA’s mission is to provide quality, affordable health plans, employee benefit services, and work site wellness programs. HMSA also offers a variety of programs, services, and support to help improve the health and well-being of its members and community.

In the complex and dynamic world of health care, nothing is more important than high-quality, effective communications about subscriber benefits. Assumpta Rapoza, Director of Enterprise Risk Management for HMSA, clearly understands the importance of ensuring clear communications about benefits for subscribers. Rapoza stated, “Quality communications are essential for
customer satisfaction as well as the retention of a loyal customer base.”

Clear Messaging to Drive Loyalty
With health care on everyone’s agenda, HSMA wanted to effectively communicate the true value of the individual’s health insurance policy. The company decided to create an annual cost savings report that raised the subscriber’s awareness of the actual costs for medical procedures and
medications, the amount covered by HSMA, and the resulting financial benefit.

According to Rapoza, “If the subscriber went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, he or she typically didn’t know the actual costs and the HMSA benefit. We wanted an agile solution where we could customize communications based on the specific member profile. We were seeking tools that would enable us to create personalized messaging for each subscriber in the form of an annual summary report.”

Rapoza continued, “We needed to push out the messaging. We knew that we wanted to mail out customized statements. While electronic delivery is a more costefficient way to deliver information, we are cognizant that a high percentage of our membership still prefers paper.”

The Solution
HMSA leveraged Océ’s Technology & Software Support (TSS) Solution Development Manager and Systems Consultant resources, its existing investment in Océ digital print technology, upgrades to its Océ PRISMAproduction® workflow software, as well as the GMC PrintNet Variable Data Composition software to design a solution for its annual benefits summary statement. This combination enabled HMSA to design, compose, produce, present, manage, and automate printed documents with individualized targeted messaging that was HIPPAcompliant. The system design also needed to accommodate production in print and electronic formats, created by PrintNet. Rapoza noted, “The end-result was a customerfriendly communication that clearly articulated the value that HMSA was delivering to its membership.”

To read more articles like this, visit www.OceWow.com and download the September Newsletter.

In the social media marketing world, there are plenty of tradeshows and events that you can be a part of to help further your company and network with prospective partners. You can benefit your company if you attend these events. But there are some ways you can really maximize your presence at the next big event, especially if you take the right promotional steps by utilizing social media.

On your corporate Twitter account, create a special hashtag for the event. Use it a couple times a day in the weeks leading up to the event, to generate some buzz about your presence there. Hashtags categorize tweets and make it easier for users to find similar subjects among tweets. Make sure the event also has its own Facebook event page. Post on the page, tweet to the event’s account and retweet relevant tweets.

Think beyond Facebook and Twitter as well. Make sure your colleagues and peers blog about the event and have an e-mail blast focused on it, or maybe even a webinar. The more diverse the methods of distribution, the larger the audience you will reach.

Be sure to ask questions that can spark a conversation. Social media lends itself incredibly well to conversational interaction. Ask questions that will garner some responses, and field questions from followers as well. This is a great way to gauge interest in the event and for companies to have interaction with users that they can retweet and survey. And make sure to keep a countdown to the big day! No need to overwhelm anybody, keep your social media efforts business as usual with just that daily reminder of the event added to it.

So you have done your preparation leading up to the event. The day is here! Now what?

Take pictures! Lots and lots of pictures. Borderline on taking too many. Pictures can be put on all of your social media networks. Make your followers feel like they are right at the event with you. And archive everything; it all becomes great blog content down the road. Also, video is very effective in making your audience feel like they are right with you. Beef up your YouTube channel with some great video content and also use it to spice up a blog in a post-event recap.

When you are in your event, make it very clear where you are at all times. Explain what booth you are viewing, the room you’re in, and always use hashtags. Make yourself noticeable! Use the hashtags that others are creating for the event and interact with them on Twitter. Start conversations and compel people to come to your booth. And when you do meet someone, make them remember you. Exchange social media in a way you would exchange a business card. This is important because exchanging social media accounts can lead to immediate interaction. A business card can very easily slip through the cracks and a contact can be lost.

When it’s all over, make sure you write detailed blogs and use all of the great content you generated to make all of your efforts at the event translate into a great online presence.

By Andy Gerry

I work at a company that is heavily focused on the online user experience for consumer and corporate identity risk management services – and I’m also a print guy. You might think that print wouldn’t be that important of a competency for us, but you would be wrong. Intersections Inc.  is recognized as the preferred partner of major financial institutions providing custom identity management solutions. Clients leverage Intersections’ identity management solutions, offered under their own privately branded labels.

Private labeling. Branding. Corporate Identity– –just a few reasons print is important.

Supporting our customers’ unique brands online is relatively straight forward; doing the same in print is more complex and expensive.  While many of our customers are serviced online for monitoring, alerts and extensive drill-down reports, the majority of our customers still prefer printed fulfillment kits.   

Each customer who successfully enrolls in one of our credit and identity risk management services, either through one of our corporate partners or directly with Intersections, is sent a printed guide for using the services. It is a welcome kit, a user guide, and almost always contains their personal credit data and scores.  This welcome kit sets the tone for the quality of the service that they have enrolled in.

In the past, Intersections created these guides by matching offset printed covers with dynamically produced booklet content. The covers were on heavy, die-cut stock in full color and the booklets were dynamically generated using Group1’s DOC1 and printed in black and white on an IBM 4100 with near-line booklet maker.  While the content was informative and the covers were produced using our clients’ brand colors, the inside didn’t offer a customer experience that was comparable to what Intersections delivers online. For those customers who preferred print to online, there was a tangible lack of color and brand palate inside the guide.

We are always trying to deliver greater flexibility and value to our direct clients – the financial institutions who private label our products – as well as the end consumers of those products. By early 2009 we were convinced that going to a dynamic, full-color environment was the way to remain the leader in our industry. After an exhaustive evaluation of technologies on the market, considering both toner and inkjet solutions from a variety of manufacturers, in 2009 we selected the Océ JetStream 1000 system for printing and GMC PrintNet to compose the documents.

The redesign, reengineering and redeployment of our guides and other documents on the new platform has been tremendously successful. Not only can we support dynamic branding with ease, but we can use color dynamically to highlight key information for consumers and draw their attention to personalized information, much the same way that we do online.  This is not to gloss over the complexity and the hard work it took to architect a high integrity solution that supports multiple partners in a true white paper environment.  It took longer than originally scoped and we learned many lessons on the way.

The good news is that originally we knew we needed two engines for redundancy and failover, but were unsure if enough of our clients would be willing to adopt color to warrant the two engines.  The best case has happened and by the end of the year the majority of our materials will now be printed in full on demand color in our new environment.  Along the way we’ve eliminated the risk of managing preprinted inventories, eliminated the matching process and are able to deliver a superior product to clients and our end customers in a very cost-effective way. Making the printed experience consistent with the online experience – priceless!

Since the conversion to full color, Intersections’ financial services product was rated “Best in Class” by Javelin Strategy & Research (September 2010) and we were ranked among the 500 Top Technology Innovators Across America (2010 InformationWeek 500, September 2010). I’d like to think that us print guys (and gals) had something to do with that!

Grow Socially wanted to use a QR Code for Graph Expo 2010 in order to accomplish the following goals: attract people to the booth and be able to engage with people who may have not been spoken to by one of the sales representatives. The first step was to create a large poster that advertised a Flip Camera Giveaway contest.

The first priority was to have the QR Code be large enough for people to scan it from a distance.  The QR Code that was put on the poster is 12” by 12”.  Below is an offer for one of the sales representatives to explain to attendees about what a QR Code is.  The QR Code and offer acts as a buzz-creating method for a product that Grow Socially’s sister company, interlinkONE, provides.  Below the “What’s this? Ask Us!” comment are simple instructions of how to enter for the Flip Camera Giveaway.  Below that is Grow Socially’s logo.

Once the QR Code is scanned by the spectator’s phone, the phone will then open up to a customized landing page.  The layout of the landing page is a short survey, followed by a space for the person to enter their E-mail address.  The survey is:

Once the person completes the survey and hits “Submit”, they are entered in the contest, and Grow Socially is given great information about them.  For instance, the E-mail addresses of the attendees are now an opportunity for Grow Socially to nurture the relationship with them.  The first way Grow Socially nurtured these new contacts was by sending them an automated E-mail thanking them for stopping by their Graph Expo booth.  Other opportunities of nurturing would be to add that E-mail address to Grow Socially’s monthly eNewsletter, so the attendees could learn more about what Grow Socially does.

The survey questions in the landing page were a great sales opportunity.  The first question gives Grow Socially information about what the prospect is most interested in.  This will help sales focus on what to prepare for when contacting the prospect.  Knowing what the public is most interested about will also help Grow Socially know which of their services to strengthen.  The second question is a great tool for a sales team.  Depending on how the participant answered the question, Grow Socially sales representatives would be able to take note of when an appropriate follow-up with the attendee would be.  For the third question, if attendees wanted to become more educated on QR Codes, Grow Socially would be able to automatically send them one of their White Papers via E-mail.  These White Papers would give the attendee more information about QR Codes as an example.  Of course, a survey always needs the fourth question, which allows the participant to have particular questions and comments be addressed.

Once all of the data is filled out, the attendee’s contact information is automatically saved to Grow Socially’s sales database as well.

In conclusion, Grow Socially displayed a poster at their Graph Expo booth that seemed to just be a contest advertisement, but it actually acted as a sales tool for prospecting at the booth.  This poster promoted an interlinkONE product, captured prospects for Grow Socially’s sales database without the presence of a sales representative, and gave great information to the company about what aspects of Grow Socially interested their audience the most.

Even though the USPS is struggling, and digital and social media are all the rage, direct mail is seeing renewed interest and technological advancement—for good reason. Printed material in the mailbox, done right, is still the preferred and most effective way to reach a customer. The key to whether or not the opportunity is a wasted one comes down to format and technique. I’ll give you an example:

Recently, I was involved in a collaboration with Sappi Fine Paper. I provided content for their highly acclaimed educational publication series The Standard Volume 4: Scoring & Folding (you can obtain a free copy of the publication by clicking here).

To launch the project, we did a seven-city speaking tour, which included myself and world-famous designer Kit Hinrichs, who was responsible for the design of the piece. Sappi sent out a save the date email blast in each city, which received some response. They followed it up with an exotic “Twist Fold” direct mailpiece in a brightly colored envelope, and the RSVPs skyrocketed the day that piece hit mailboxes. Hundreds showed up at each venue for the events. Print can be powerful.

For this instance, the concept was on target, the design was great, the fold was interesting, and the envelope was attention-grabbing. This was a special piece mailed to a targeted audience and they got the response they were looking for. So, is the moral of the story that you have to spend a lot of money, use a funky fold and an envelope that screams to get good results these days? Of course not. The lesson here is that email alone won’t cut it. Print alone may not cut it, either, but good design and smart decisions along the way can save money, while getting you the response that justifies the expenditure.

Here are a few tips:

• If you want to use an interesting folding style, go for it—but do your research first. Some folds that are generally hand-folded can in many cases be finished by machine if the quantity is high enough. There are specialty binderies that can do this kind of work. On the flip side, if your quantity is low, the expense of hand folding isn’t a very big deal.
•  The Sappi piece finished to a square format, which we all know is more expensive from a mailing perspective, but there are many, many interesting folding configurations that can finish to rectangular formats that fit within USPS aspect ratio. Why spend an extra $.20 per piece if you don’t have to? This tip seems like common sense, but I have samples in my folding collection that miss aspect ratio by 1/8 inch. What a careless and costly mistake.
•  Make sure your list is clean. It sounds obvious, but if your mailing list isn’t current or targeted, then you’re wasting money. The goal should be to spend an appropriate amount of money on a quality piece that is sent to a clean list of targeted customers.  
• For self-mailing pieces, watch fold placement. If the folds are vertical, the lead edge (the edge to the right of the mailing address) must be closed. Other edges must be closed or tabbed. If the fold is on the horizontal, the fold should be below the mailing address. Also, mailing address should always be parallel to the longest dimension. Defy these rules and you can kiss your ROI goodbye to the tune of an additional $.20 per piece non-machinable surcharge.
• Utilize as much automation as possible. Ask your printer how you can maximize the efficiency of your direct mail projects. Many have invested in inline finishing equipment that can score, perf, slit, glue and fold inline. Any time you can automate the process, you can save money. And automation doesn’t necessarily mean limited creativity, either. There are some very sophisticated computerized folding machines that can blow through gate folds, stepped accordions, and lots of other interesting configurations. If you’re printing digitally, various forms of customization can be very effective and efficient with some advanced planning. 
• Don’t forget about the envelope. A great printed piece can be overlooked in a boring envelope. Consider full color printing, personalization, custom windows or pulls—do something to get attention and motivate the recipient. 
• Spend money to make money. If you’re going to put in the effort and expense to produce and mail a piece, shouldn’t it represent your best efforts? Maybe you saved money with a cheap sheet, a tri-fold format, and a #10 envelope, but if nobody noticed, didn’t you ultimately lose a lot more than you saved? 
• Lastly, don’t get caught up in gimmicks. It can be tempting to go in the other direction and pull out all the stops, but there must be balance. A really cool folding style with a confusing message will just end up in somebody’s “cool idea file” or maybe even their “circular file.” A successful direct mailer involves many components and those components must work together to send the right message and provoke a call to action. For best results, resist the urge to get sidetracked solely on “wow-factor” and focus on the objectives and the quality presentation of your content.

Real life stories are the best examples, so here are a few that tout the value of QR codes.

Perfect for social medial: TDN recently featured a post by Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, “What Are You Doing To Compete with Email?” Richard Munoz, one of the commentators, noted that “more and more personal messages are reaching me via social media rather than through my primary email address .. Perhaps it’s time for printed direct mail to do the same. 2D barcodes that link a direct mail piece to a Facebook profile are one way.”

Great for print ads, too. QR Codes popped up on my radar in another way this week. Target Marketing asked me to participate in a survey evaluating ten of their advertisers. Only one of the 10 featured a QR code in the ad. Why? Where’s the response vehicle? Ads used to feature 800 numbers, but everybody knows that meant talking to a salesperson. QR codes are different. These can lead straight to information, not marketing … and information is the new marketing? Right?

Superb for mobile. And then there was my email exchange with a friend who owns a successful small biz in D.C. Here’s his message to the coupon pitchers: Get a QR Code: “Maybe it’s the guy in me, but I hate having to remember coupons. Starbucks sends me the free drink coupon for my loyalty. Yaay. Except when I’m in Starbucks, the coupon is always at home. I put it in my bag, then I don’t go to Starbucks. Now I’m worried that I’m gonna lose it before I use it. I like online coupons that I open purchase and use from my phone. I know my phone is always with me.” And, how about all those plastic keychain doohickies that generate discounts at grocery and drug stores, etc.? Those, too, can be converted to smart phone barcodes.

There’s more. A lot more. So how ‘bout it? If you’ve got a story to tell, queue up!

Wow! It’s Folding Nirvana (check the T-Shirt). This video shows a super-cool direct mail piece and includes cost and production details. It’s not a proprietary fold but it does require some hands work. If you’ve got a clean, well targeted list this is worth serious consideration. Check it out.

This example is from ColorTree Marketing Solutions by way of FoldFactory.com. If you’re interested in efficient, completely automated folds for digitally printed direct mail – take a look:

As always, super-cool!

Employee Benefits News provided an overview of winning campaigns in their 2010 i-Comm Awards.  The subtitle is: “EBN’s 2010 i-COMM Award winners show how expansive, targeted campaigns can cut through communications clutter to engage workers around health, retirement.” Sounds like our cup of tea right?

There are some interesting notes in here for our industry on the importance of paper in certain circumstances, the necessity for plain language, and the overall importance of clear communications in the success of employee benefits programs. Generally speaking, if you are serving clients in the health and benefits business, EBN is an excellent source for marketing and regulatory information.

How much time do you spend researching pain points and opportunities for your target vertical markets? What sources do you recommend for getting up to speed on various verticals?

This week’s example comes from Creative Squall in Texas who put together a fun series of direct mail pieces featuring cool photos and the reverse accordian fold. Take a look – it’s super-cool!

Reverse Accordion Direct Mail Series:

This weeks fold is a wrapped accordian example from Alli. A wrapped accordian fold with wafer seal is a great way to add interest while keeping the job fully automated. Take a look.

Here’s an example of  2 brochures in one. This piece is designed with 2 covers – open from one side and get one set of information, open from the other and get a different set of info. In this case used for a Summer and Winter schedule. What makes it all work? The Super Cool Reversible Accordion Fold. Take a look!

Grant Stewart, Founder of Vectis

The Vectis Agency in Australia has a great track record of helping their customers, who are typically printers, mail houses and postal organizations, to sell the concept of Transpromo, or Integrated Insight Marketing to their end customers using case studies.

 According to Grant Stewart, the Founder of Vectis, “we have pursued case studies that prove a marketing point, for example: can the statement deliver value long after the other channels have stopped working ?” They showed the answer to be “yes” in their Bartercard case study.  “Or can the statement deliver better value than competing channels?” Again, the answer was “yes” according to a case study for Lombard. “Or can the statement offer a unique competitive advantage to winning business  as demonstrated by our Sutherland case example, rather than the traditional print-legacy type color vs. B&W vs. paper vs. electronic discussions.

Stewart believes that the best way to get a Transpromo program going is to articulate the opportunity cost of not doing it. The Vectis  case studies  were used to articulate early opportunity cost which gained initial traction and cross section (marketing, operations, finance) buy-in. Most programs have since gone on to far more sophisticated levels, and continue to fuel themselves under a rigorous, measurement structure.

“I also believe printers need to spend a bit of time learning from direct markets” states Stewart. “When was the last time you heard a printer talk about a response rate’s statistical margin of error?”

Printers and Direct Marketers have a lot to learn from each other to make a more compelling Transpromo argument to end users but, the challenge to me remains simple: help the customer articulate the opportunity cost of not doing it using the tools the customer has. Only then can you move these programs to levels that you might both aspire to.

I’ve included a link to a variety of Vectis case studies here. I cite them often because they tend to be simple, straightforward proof points for one decision criteria at a time. Thanks Grant.

The super-cool fold this week is from Monadnock Paper. It is a beautifully printed piece with very well executed finishing. Take a look.