Today’s post is guest written by Caribou Honig.

Direct Mail: Rumors of my Demise are Greatly Exaggerated.

“I’m not supposed to tell you this,” warns the CEO of a fast-growing NYC startup pitching my firm.  “I was coached that Venture Capital won’t like this answer.  But since you asked, our best performing channel is direct mail.”

Conventional wisdom really has it in for direct mail.  The channel is shrinking.  The post office is scrapping Saturday delivery.  The cost of a stamp is rising.  My personal favorite: Do people even check their mail anymore?

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Galmere Fresh Foods is an Irish manufacturer of fresh soups, premium salads and sandwich fillers. Its brands include Coppingers and Galmere, which are are packaged using folding carton sleeves over plastic tubs. To keep consumers’ interest, Galmere wanted to change the range of its products on a regular basis by introducing new ingredients.  However, Galmere’s lithographic supplier insisted that it must run 50,000 units per order. As the order quantities for packaging were so high, Galmere was left with many pallets of unused packaging. Read the rest of this entry »

For those who like short, simple answers, the reason anyone doing variable data printing should care about PDF/VT is efficiency. The most efficient workflows I see are the ones that reduce complexity and redundancy. Trying to preflight, imposition, color-manage or alter different file formats for variable data work than for static work creates unnecessary complexity and redundancy.  Yet that is exactly what happens today because, while PDF is the standard for static work, it was not designed for variable data jobs. So, our choices have been to use PDF for static jobs and PPML for variable data work, or to generate huge PDF files with loads of redundant data, or to use optimized PDF which is not a standard. That is, until the advent of PDF/VT which has the potential to change everything.

For the rest of you who want to know how we got here and how we move forward, continue reading and plan on attending PODi’s High Impact Personalization with PDF/VT webinar next Wednesday, May 22.

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As I make my way through airports I often come across a person who is walking along talking out loud and for an instant I think he is talking to me; then he turns and I see his blue tooth ear phone. Although a good invention, it’s not the one I had in mind. My dream invention is similar in size to the blue tooth device, perhaps a little smaller, but what it does is allow me to instantly know the highest price my prospect will pay for what I’m selling. It gives me the value of my offering at that moment in time. Then I can decide if this prospect is worth pursuing or not and I’d never leave another nickel on the table.

Since I don’t have that device perfected yet I have resorted to another approach for pricing personalized marketing programs. I calculate the value of my solution based on input from the prospect. Then I know how to price it.

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An Intro Presentation, generally the first formal presentation you make when selling solutions, is your opportunity to build credibility in your company. So what do many salespeople do? They start off with a series of slides about the history of their company followed by facts about their products and services. This is the absolutely the wrong tactic to take.  Why?  Because the presentation is not about you.  It’s your opportunity to hear from the prospect about his/her issues and challenges.

You build credibility by having done your homework upfront to understand the common issues and challenges of folks in the vertical market that you are calling on. You use that homework to get the conversation started.

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Last week I had the opportunity to attend a few days of Kodak’s Graphic Users’ Association (GUA) conference in Atlanta. I had never been to one before and I arrived with three questions in the back of my mind:

• What is the GUA conference all about?
• What is Kodak’s strategy regarding the print industry as they come out of Chapter 11?
• And, since I’m a workflow guy, what is all the fuss about Prinergy 6?

Well, I came away with answers to these and thought I’d share them. Read the rest of this entry »

Check out the latest examples of success with digital print that have been added to PODi’s database.

Interbeverage Successfully Markets Bonfrut to Regional Market

Interbeverage manufactures hot-fill beverages including a line of all natural fruit juices and teas sold under the Bonfrut name in a regional market. Interbeverage needed a labeling solution that would allow it to cost effectively order smaller quantities of beverage labels and open up opportunities for private label accounts. With digitally printed labels Interbeverage has successfully launched six juice and tea products and attracted a private label account.

MINI Garage Sydney Drives New Car Sales with Personalized Posters

MINI Garage Sydney used a personalized direct mail campaign to drive vehicle sales during a slow time of year. Prospective buyers, who recently test drove a vehicle, received a personalized poster featuring an image of the car they were interested in. Two percent of recipients purchased a car from MINI Garage.

The Library Foundation Raises Money with “Buy a Book Club” Campaign

The Library Foundation helps secure financial resources to support the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. The Foundation developed a Buy a Book program to help raise funds for the library. To promote the program a targeted direct mail campaign was sent to a group of previous and potential donors. The campaign achieved a 2.7% direct mail response rate and exceeded fundraising goals by 67%.

To see the full case studies on these solutions and over 500 others visit http://www.caslon.net/Case-Studies/

It’s tough being a printer today, even a digital printer with all the web-to-print, cross-media and interactive bells and whistles you have at your disposal. Print is no longer taken for granted. You have to persuade people that you have a solution that meets their needs and provides a benefit.

I recently came across a Harvard Business Review paperback called “Communicating Effectively”. It is one of a series of collections of the HBR’s perspectives on management topics and business best practices. It contains articles on communicating, persuading, presenting and pitching originally published between 1995 and 2006. One article stands out, The Necessary Art of Persuasion, by Professor Jay Conger of the University of Southern California Business School, because it echoes so many of the best practices in PODi’s own S3 Strategic Solutions Sales training programme.

He describes four essential steps for effective persuasion: establishing credibility, framing for common ground, provide evidence and connect emotionally. The ideas are based on in-depth research the author had done on the techniques used by senior business leaders as well as lower level managers in organisations who had all shown themselves to be effective change agents.

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When your business is on the path to change and growth, you probably have a picture of where you’re headed. However, it’s almost certain that your vision won’t have the same clarity for the rest of your team. This is why you need to create the Destination Postcard.

Now, when most of us think of a postcard we imagine palm trees lining a sunny beach or the Eiffel Tower standing majestically over the City of Light, but yours doesn’t need to be nearly as romantic to still paint a picture of where people want to be. Just as a postcard of Hawaii or Paris makes the recipient nod their head as they read “Wish you were here,” your destination postcard should make your team say, “Yes, this is where we want to go.”

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Making the decision to rebrand a business, including changing the company name, is never easy. Add on top of that retiring a cherished mascot and you run the risk of confusing existing customers.

API-Marketing, formerly known as Auburn Printers & Integrated Marketing, has long been a leader in commercial offset and digital printing. As Auburn Printers it had offered additional marketing services such as Personalized URLs, variable data, mailing, and desktop and mobile web services for several years. But in the business community it was still viewed as “the printer.” Plus having “Auburn” in the company name gave customers the perception that it was just a local printer for the Auburn, California area.

To change these old perceptions, the company went through a year-long campaign to retire the company name and iconic mascot “Prince Perfect” and rebrand itself as API-Marketing. Read the rest of this entry »