By Howie Fenton on July 30th, 2010 - Comment
A new study by ForeSee Results and the American Customer Satisfaction Index (A.C.S.I. ) finds that consumers regard social media sites such as Facebook and MySpace as poorly as they regard cable providers, airlines and the I.R.S. The Annual E-Business Report included thirty online media brands including Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube. But most of…
By Guest Contributor on July 29th, 2010 - Comment
You want a window into the human mind? Look at some direct mail pieces. How people respond to them — or don’t — can tell you plenty. That’s because direct mail is all about psychology. It’s understanding what makes people behave the way they do.
By Trish Witkowski on July 28th, 2010 - Comment
This week we have a fancy foiled letter fold with an exotic die cut. Very elegant – take a look!
By Elizabeth Gooding on July 27th, 2010 - 15 Comments
The best marketing ideas today are operationally justified. Envelope marketing is no exception. A variety of solutions for printing messages on envelopes have been touted to marketing departments for a long time. Some companies pre-print messages on the outside of envelopes such as corporate taglines, incentives to go paperless or eye catching graphics to entice…
By Ted Kulpinski on July 26th, 2010 - 6 Comments
By now you’ve heard all about the pending rate increase. If the Postal Regulatory Commission allows this rate case to happen (which by the way is over 10 times the amount allowed by law), I predict you will see a major slide in mail volume and a major slide in the economy. To date, I…
By Heidi Tolliver-Nigro on July 26th, 2010 - 1 Comment
Have you ever gone into your own website as if you were a customer and tried to use it? Have you tried to make a purchase or locate basic items like contact numbers, company address, case study files, service descriptions, and case studies? If so, how did you fare? I went through a humbling experience…
By Kevin Jorgenses on July 22nd, 2010 - Comment
“Begin with the end in mind”, a missive popularized by self-improvement guru Stephen Covey, is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There’s a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation. The idea that our direct marketing is re-created over and over as it is produced certainly applies to…
By Howie Fenton on July 21st, 2010 - 1 Comment
Recently I was asked to address the request by a prepress department in a printing company to be put on a separate network and not part of the overall company computer network. This question has been debated ever since desktop computing combined with PostScript Imagesetters. I wish I could say that there was a right…
By Trish Witkowski on July 21st, 2010 - Comment
This week’s example from Specialties Graphics in Toronto shows a creative combination of an angled guillotine cut with an accordian fold to create a very sophisticated mailer with a “tabbed” look. It’s a fold you can feel good about.
By Vic Barkin on July 20th, 2010 - Comment
The Saguaro (sa·hua·ro) Cactus is an awesome example of sustainable efficiency. For those not familiar, these are the tall cacti growing in the Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest whose upward-curving branches look like arms reaching skyward. Legend has it that they never fall over because as one arm is growing, and the core stalk…
By Heidi Tolliver-Nigro on July 19th, 2010 - 6 Comments
QR codes are the hot topic lately. So I thought it might be fun to share a few facts about QR codes many people may not know. 1. QR codes can be in color. Pick one — red, green, purple. Just make sure the contrast is high enough for the readers to pick it up….
By Trish Witkowski on July 14th, 2010 - Comment
This weeks super-cool fold was provided by Heidelberg – take a look!
By Kevin Jorgenses on July 13th, 2010 - 1 Comment
The digital print revolution- and more so the advent of multi-media marketing that combines print, email and push messaging- has changed the way business speaks to its prospects forever. That the days of producing 20,000 of the same message, checking addresses for the longest record, sprinkling a few seeds into the list, reviewing one piece…
By Guest Contributor on July 12th, 2010 - 3 Comments
Is Direct Marketing viewed as a dinosaur? How has your agency or company expanded the definition and important of direct marketing for your business?
By Howie Fenton on July 12th, 2010 - Comment
NBC Universal’s Oxygen Media recently conducted a survey asking 1,605 young women well versed and deeply immersed in social media about their habits with Facebook, Twitter and other such services. Of the women surveyed, 34 percent stated that they check Facebook literally first thing in the morning, before going to brush their teeth. Nearly 40…
