This week’s 60 Second Super Cool Fold of the Week was designed for The Clarrett Group and printed by Cedar Graphics inRonkonkoma,NY. From the outside, it looks like a briefcase with a handle but when you use that handle to open piece… it reveals a large format poster detailing the Clarett Group’s ambitious plans. The gate into closed-gate fold first revels a quad-fold, then a tri-fold until the poster is fully unraveled. Watch the video below to find out more about the Brooklyner Briefcase Brochure!

Looking for more innovative ideas like this? Look no further! Check out OceWOW for more tips for digital print providers.

This post was generously provided by Sourcelink.

We’re all familiar with the phrase “cutting through the clutter,” particularly as it applies to direct mail marketing. But that same mind-set works with your email marketing campaigns, as well. Think about it, how many promotional emails do you get in a day and how many of those really capture your attention? And more to the point, how many do you actually respond to? So, the next time you plan to communicate with your customers via email, pay strict attention to the principals you use for your direct mail campaigns.

Subject Line: Does the subject line accurately describe your intended message? Does it make a value proposition? Think of it like the teaser copy on your carrier envelope. Chances are, if you don’t capture your audience’s attention with the subject line, your open rate is going to be disappointing.

“From” address: Similar to direct mail, email open rates go up when customers know the sender. Make sure your company’s name is conspicuously displayed (myname@mycompany.com).

Visual Layout: Is the content (copy and graphics) of your email attention grabbing? Is it easy for the recipient to peruse and get the essence of your message? Does your offer stand out and is there a clear call to action? Again, consistent with your approach to direct mail, your email should follow the same principals for effectiveness – attention, interest, desire, action (AIDA)!

Similar to direct mail, use segmentation to vary the copy and graphics in your emails to keep the message relevant and timely based on the needs of your target audience. And keep on testing. In fact, an offer test conducted through email can save you time and money in learning which offer to include in your direct mail communications. Finally, remember email communications are intended to entice a two-way dialogue. Make sure you provide an avenue for response – direct customers to a landing page or website and use links for sharing through social media channels, whenever appropriate.

Lastly, keep in mind that email and direct mail still complement one another. One feeds off the other and results are almost always better when both are employed. SourceLink recently conducted a direct marketing program for a B2B client using both mail and email to drive small business customers to a microsite to capture business intelligence. In a head-to-head test, it was interesting to learn that when using mail with an email follow-up, response was 22% higher than simply using email with an email follow-up. Food for thought – please let me know your thoughts and experiences. Thanks.

This blog was provided by Sourcelink. Check out their blog here for more posts like this!

Check out the latest 60 Second Super Cool Fold of the Week. This fold comes from ITP inElizabethtown,Pennsylvaniaand is a piece they created for Global Business travel Association. It is a self-mailing piece that uses an open gate fold format with an interesting tweak. Watch the video to learn more!

Here is the 112th Super Cool Fold of the Week from Trish at FoldFactory. Watch as she teaches you how to create the fun Assymetrical Gate Fold piece with a perfed postcard. It was originally designed by Cayenne Creative Group for International Paper to promote their Elements line.

While there’s been a lot of bad news surrounding the United States Postal Service lately, a heightened level of innovation exists  both within the postal service and externally in an attempt to transform the organization, as well as the concept of mail delivery itself. This past June, the PostalVision 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. brought together senior USPS personnel, technologists, analysts, and journalists to openly discuss the future strategic direction of the postal service under the premise of what it should look like in the year 2020. Many companies are engaged in laying down the building blocks of what could potentially be the future of mail distribution and delivery for the United States and even abroad: digital mailboxes.

The concept of a digital mailbox or digital mail delivery is certainly not new. In the enterprise, vendors like Esker, Océ, and Pitney Bowes offer digital mail delivery solutions whereby each piece of mail that comes into the company is scanned and delivered electronically to employee recipients. EarthClassMail is an early service for smaller businesses and consumers that also scans and manages mail. With a mix of new entrants and existing players, there is aggressive development of digital mailbox services for consumers, designed to reach every household in the United States, just like the USPS. There are a number of key players to watch in this space:

• Accenture, the worldwide consulting and outsourcing firm, is taking the approach of partnering directly with national postal services to help them develop digital mailbox services. It has clearly stated it is aiming to help global posts design their own services to compete directly against some of the independent digital mailbox services listed below.
• doxo is a technology start-up that takes a broad approach to the digital mailbox, enabling users to not only import electronic bills and statements, but also many other types of documents that can either be uploaded or scanned in via its mobile phone application.
• Manilla, started by Hearst Corporation, provides access to over 1,000 companies to enable users to consolidate and manage bills and loyalty programs, including major wireless carriers, cable & satellite TV providers, utilities, financial companies, airlines, and more. Certified Manilla partners can also present targeted advertisements to Manilla users alongside the sender’s content, which offers an intriguing TransPromo play.
• Pitney Bowes announced its Volly digital mailbox offering at the beginning of 2011, although the offering is still in beta. According to my colleague Matt Swain’s blog post on the service after its announcement, “Think of Volly as an extension of a conventional consumer bill consolidation model, incorporating other types of mail into the same platform.” There is no doubt that PB will be highlighting Volly at Graph Expo this year.
• Zumbox, another technology start-up, has made waves recently with its million-dollar giveaway contest to get people signed up for its service. The company has a unique twist on its service in that it uses your physical mail address as your digital mailbox address, as well. Like others, its concept is to digitally centralize the management of all mail being sent to a household.

There is a great deal of innovation occurring in this space right now, and considering the rapid pace of technology proliferation and adoption these days, it would not be surprising if these companies and their services make a big splash in the near future. InfoTrends is investigating this market right now, currently conducting a research study entitled The Emergence of Digital Mailbox Services: Moving Beyond Online Bill Consolidation in the U.S. This research initiative will identify the opportunity for secure digital mailbox services in the U.S. and will include a growth projection through 2015. I’m excited to see how this space shapes up, as these services could have a major influence on how we delivery, accept, and manage our mail.

Direct mailers seem to get more and more innovative every week and create digitally printed pieces that I couldn’t even fathom on my own. This week’s fold is no exception. It is a hexagon-shaped fold that unfolds to a larger hexagon. The catch to successfully recreating this piece is to ensure that each mini hexagon is slightly smaller than the one before it. Check it out!

This week’s fold comes from Capital Printing Company in Austin, TX and was created for Texas State.

For operations executives and marketers alike, the number one challenge in today’s market is reaching the customer. Customers are clearly in control of the media that they consume. Mobile devices, iPods, DVRs, and the Internet have changed marketing forever. Marketing executives of the future will need to leverage every customer touch point with a mix of interconnected channels. One thing is certain — the effective use of cross-media communications will bring better business results. Delivering multiple impressions and giving prospects a variety of ways to respond can have a dramatic impact.

Media Dynamics are Changing

Over the past several years, we have heard about the importance of transforming into a “marketing service provider” with a focus on one-to-one communications and variable data. Today’s media dynamics are changing. As we look to the future, there will be three critical components for success in the much larger cross-media opportunity:

• Data-driven personal messaging
• Delivering messages across all channels
• Campaigns that engage the end customer

We’ll take a look at the first component now…

Data-Driven Personal Messaging

Marketers continue to see the value in developing intimate and direct communication with consumers. Not so long ago, families gathered around the television set. Now, individuals surf the Web and watch videos on personal, handheld devices. Consumers have grown comfortable with — and have even come to expect — a one-on-one dialogue with marketers. Personalized marketing messages are essential to attracting customers’ attention and delivering communications that increase sales. Today’s consumers don’t have the time or the patience to deal with irrelevant information. Data-driven personalized messaging has never been more important.

Organizations that sell products or services (business-to-business or business-to-consumer) must gather and use information about their customers’ purchases, including how much they spend per sale and when or how often they buy. Knowledge about past behaviors is a valuable tool for predicting future purchases. In addition to guiding business decisions, this information is critical for creating personalized marketing messages that increase sales.

Marketers must work with customers to personalize offers based on past purchases and preferences. The marketing must follow the customer (not the other way around), and the offer must be truly customized to the recipient’s specific needs.

In late 2010, InfoTrends published an extensive survey entitled Capturing the Cross-Media Direct Marketing Opportunity. The marketing respondents that participated in this study reported that over 60% of their campaigns leveraged personalized (one-to-one) or segmented (one-to-few) marketing.

From the perspective of the print service provider, personalization is the future of marketing communications. Service providers must clearly understand how to work with clients on data-driven campaigns. The problem is that personalization is not enough to remain competitive in today’s complex cross-media world.

If you want to learn about the remaining two components, visit www.OceWow.com and download the June 2011 Newsletter. You’ll find even more interesting articles there!

If you’ve been paying attention to our blog – or to the world of print around you – then by now you are very familiar with QR codes and how they are being integrated into print almost everywhere. With an increased use of smart phones and the general public’s want of information hear and now, it’s no wonder these have become high profile marketing tools. But did you know that even the United States Postal Service has taken notice of these fabulous barcodes?

Well, they have. So much so that the USPS is offering a promotion on all mail pieces containing barcodes. Between July 1^st and August 31^st, the USPS is offering a 3% discount to all mailers who include 2D barcodes on their mailings. According to the factsheet, all companies, including Mail Service Providers, who mail using a permit imprint and submit their mailing documentation electronically, are eligible to participate.

This seems like more evidence that there is opportunity for print to thrive in the digital age. In this case specifically, we see how the digital aspect of the QR code actually makes print items more popular and increases demand for printed items with this digital functionality. Utilizing these codes for direct mail can improve the quality of your mail piece while allowing you to better reach internet-savvy consumers. It can also add a much needed spark in the mailing industry – a fact which the USPS seems to have noticed.

Production Solutions in Vienna, VA, did something interesting. They took a current mail piece and calculated how much it would have cost to produce the same piece a decade ago (in 2001).

Guess what?

The cost to mail a test package today appears to have fallen 17% below the cost to mail the same package ten years ago. Why? Because savings inherent in data processing, personalization, and mailshop fees offset rising costs in every other area of operations.

Observations:

• Technology has saved us some dollars and definitely enabled more personal, targeted, effective marketing.

• In the days ahead, ratios will shift adversely if the cost of manufactured materials goes up (paper, ink, window patch material, labels).

• Rising postage costs would squeeze margins, possibly out of existence. What will mitigate that? Can technology improvements and controlled labor costs offset the trend? So far, no … but technology delivers exponential surprises every day, so let’s not give up.

• For now, the real budget killer appears to be energy, gasoline in particular. Business owners also must deal with the rising and fixed energy costs inherent in plant operations. Again, innovations in technology may help us deal with super-charged gasoline and electricity prices. On the other hand, water could prove to be a problem most haven’t thought about.

• And then there’s the cost of labor. As states across the country try to regulate and repress wages and benefits for millions of American workers, the cost (and availability) of labor becomes vastly uncertain. Enter the influence of trends in the world economy, import/export practices, and even climate change (think paper production, for example): more uncertainty.

Whether or not one or more of these particular expenses skyrockets or plummets depends on a range of macro influences. Unforeseen technology advances and innovations in the areas of manufacturing, printing, lettershop, and even marketing itself could make us all rich (well, okay.. prosperous). In 2001, none of us really understood how huge email marketing and online shopping would be ten years later. We didn’t even know about QR codes or smart phones back then. So what will the world look like in 2021?

Perplexing, yes? ….. Perhaps direct mail production and marketing operations would benefit from a “Crazy Day brainstorming session” to encourage employees to “imagine the future” … leading maybe to some long-range thinking and planning focused on staying nimble, quick, responsive, and open to the coming deluge of change. I’d love to hear from readers!

In the meantime, thanks to Production Solutions for its thought-provoking article.

Over the past few years, discussions surrounding how legal paper sourcing decisions are made by print buyers have received less and less attention from the press. This doesn’t mean that the issue has melted away; it merely means normalization of the process has relegated it to the board room and to the senate committee. However that could change based on worldwide activities of a similar fashion. In other words, the race is on.

In a mere 22 months if you print on paper anywhere in the European Union (EU), there will no longer be a choice. Verified legal timber product sourcing, including pulp and paper, will become law.

Regulation (EU) No 995/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 October 2010 lays down the obligations of operators who place timber and timber products on the market – also known as the (Illegal) Timber Regulation counters the trade in illegally harvested timber and timber products through three key obligations:

1. It prohibits the placing on the EU market for the first time of illegally harvested timber and products derived from such timber;
2. It requires EU traders who place timber products on the EU market for the first time to exercise ‘due diligence’;
3. Keep records of their suppliers and customers.

The Regulation covers a broad range of timber products including solid wood products, flooring, plywood, pulp and paper. Interestingly though, not included among a few other products such as rattan and bamboo are recycled products and printed papers such as books, magazines and newspapers.

The EU has chosen their battles just as the US has with the now familiar US Lacey Act. By excluding printed matter (for now) but including pulp and paper, the EU’s Timber Regulation leapfrogs Lacey in that European printers will no longer be at will to purchase paper without regard for legal harvests, specifically aimed at imports as of March 2013.

The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011 is still in the consultation phase, but is written so vaguely that if passed in its present form, is sure to create a (common) wealth of issues. For now, we have to take a wait and see approach. Taking their Bill with a grain of Aussie salt, I wouldn’t expect to see it passed anytime soon.

As a side note in its “Comments from the Government of Canada on Australia’s Draft Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011”, the Canadian government is not amused. On May 6, 2011 the Secretary of the Senate Standing Committees on Rural Affairs and Transport wrote; “In particular, Canada is concerned that the Bill may lead to a requirement (whether explicitly stated or implied) for Australian importers to conduct risk assessments (or the ‘timber industry certifiers’ to do so on their behalf) on any unprocessed or processed timber products imported into Australia. Such a requirement would be particularly onerous for complex processed products made of timber sourced from multiple suppliers…” (like paper merchants and printers).

Which brings us back to the Lacey Act and its implications in the paper and printing industry here in the US. For the time being it seems like no movement on implementation pertaining to US-based paper mills and printers is imminent. That said, with all of the activity on other continents, one has to wonder.

Are you looking for a new idea for a tradeshow leave-behind? Look no further than the 60 Second Super Cool Fold of the Week for the Long Triangle Fold. This collateral piece was designed by The Whitmore Print Group from Baltimore Maryland and created for Edge Technologies in Fairfax, Virgina.

Enjoy!

Transform your customer’s statements into their best customer communications vehicle… with personalization and relevant content.

 TransPromo communications take a standard bill or statement and add meaningful marketing messages — in other words, integrating a TRANSactional document with proactive PROMOtional marketing. The changes in postal rates and technology have created an environment where TransPromo makes good business and economical sense for many companies. TransPromo can be implemented in black and white, yet enhancing a statement or bill with color can significantly enhance response. These formerly routine documents can help you sell additional products and services and build brand loyalty.

 Study after study shows that statements command the most attention among many other common forms of customer communications. With so much attention paid to this document every month, there is huge potential to communicate directly with each customer on a “one-on-one” personal level.

 Through the use of targeted, personalized statements, DST Output has helped customers unleash the power of this opportunity and created deeper, more meaningful relationships with their customers. Cheryl Kananowicz, Vice President and Dave Smith, Operations Manager share how DST Output does it.

Join Trish on her 100th episode as she shows us how to create a super cool direct mail piece from Hyundai. This is another good example of how direct mail can be powerful and innovative and can help your customers impress their target audience.

It’s no secret that marketing departments are savvy when it comes to direct mail. It’s a channel they’ve traditionally owned. They routinely work with vendors – whether it’s a direct mail house or commercial printshop – who provide access to sophisticated tools for conceiving, creating, composing, personalizing, mail-merging, printing and delivering mail pieces to a designated set of recipients and then measuring campaign effectiveness. For direct mail, they have plenty of tools for interacting with the process, from uploading artwork and providing lists to measuring response rates.

However, when it comes to bills, statements, policies and other production print output, many marketers find it more difficult to navigate the terrain (if they even consider stepping onto it in the first place.)

Why do I think marketers are less engaged with production print?

For starters, there’s the cultural dimension: IT and Operations versus Marketing. Historically production print has been the domain of the technology, operations or billing department, a silo neatly tucked away from creative and marketing types. As a result, many marketing execs simply didn’t consider transactional documents as vehicles for their messages. As awareness grows, marketing teams and even CMOs are starting to recognize the value of the transpromo opportunity. This is especially true as they face mounting pressure to deliver more accountability and better results at a lower cost. However, because they’re new to the game, they may be unsure of what executing a transpromo campaign entails, or how to engage with their traditional rivals in IT.

If you’re a print services provider, this is a golden opportunity.

Maybe you’re already providing direct mail or transactional print services for a particular client. You’ve got a new way to add more business and generate new revenue streams if you can help Marketing bridge the gap with IT. Start by helping marketers understand the potential of adding the statement into the marketing mix. Demonstrate the effectiveness of delivering targeted messages to recipients who are highly likely to spend time with the document. Point out the economies of embedding messages in documents that are delivered in an envelope where the stamp is already paid for. Keep in mind that you also have to win over their IT and operations folks who will be concerned about production cycles, data integrity and the ability to test. These guys want to know that a marketer is not going to be sticking their fingers in the code the day before (or even the week before) production.

Once you’ve convinced Marketing and IT that you have the skills, processes and tools to help them “do transpromo” in a quality controlled and measurable environment, help them foster dialogues with other departments and stakeholders. This might entail determining who maintains the library of messages and conditional business rules that define their use. Finally, provide access to tools that make it as easy to manage content for transaction documents as it is for direct mail – and make sure to measure results. In many cases, the very tools that enable marketers to interact with their suppliers for direct mail campaigns can be adapted for the transpromo world.

In a nutshell, educate them, make the appropriate tools available, facilitate the process and help marketers track results and ROI. It’s a consultative sell – but well worth the effort if it cements your relationship with existing customers or helps to bring you new ones.

For Print Providers who specialize in direct mail pieces, the challenge to come up with something new and interesting for your customers can be daunting. However, if you can create something that your customer has never seen before and something that is sure to excite their target audience – you can be sure that they will continue coming to you for direct mail solutions. Check out the Super Cool Fold of the Week for innovative direct mail ideas. In this week’s edition, learn how to create this cube design pioneered by Schmitz Press in Baltimore and produced for the Maryland Institute College of Art.