Printhink Blog

What goes up must come down. Like everything else, the economy is cyclical, but no matter what the current economic conditions might be, it’s important to keep marketing your business. In fact, a little glimpse at history shows that even during the Great Depression, some companies thrived. While other companies were cutting spending, a few businesses, such as Camel and Chevrolet took the opportunity to use aggressive marketing tactics to grab market share from their competitors. It’s proof that the key to long-term success in any economy is to get in front of your target audience and stay there.

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Intuitively you know that minding the details of your business is a surefire way to retain current clients and attract new ones, but often you are too busy tending to the big picture to deal with the little things. Even “hands on” managers have to create enough distance from routine operations to maintain perspective on the many forces shaping the organization, balancing the needs of investors, employees and customers while anticipating and responding to changes in your industry and competitive environment.

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Throughout the history of printing, previous generations have always looked upon new generations of typographic technology with scorn. Thanks to Microsoft Word and other commonly used desktop applications, most computer users are conversant in the fundamentals of type, even if they only know what a font is. This doesn’t mean that they always practice good typography. For example, there are now Web sites dedicated to wiping Comic Sans off the face of the Earth. See, for example, www.BanComicSans.com.

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In casual conversation, the word “profiling” often has a negative connotation, but in marketing, it is a driving force behind success. Building a customer profile helps you understand your customers’ attitudes, interests and preferences, and tailor your marketing to these and other factors relevant to their buying behavior.

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If you are doing any kind of geographic-based direct marketing, you may want to consider a new program from the United States Postal Service, or the current Unaddressed Admail Product from Canada Post. The new USPS program is called Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM). This program and the Canada Post UA program allow you to reach every customer in specific neighborhoods even without needing to have their names or addresses. Best of all, what’s the cost? As little as 14.2 cents per piece on postage in the US and 14.8 cents in Canada.

Sound too good to be true? There are a few requirements, but overall, this is a great deal.

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Whether you’re creating flyers, brochures, or direct mail, at some point, you’ll need to fold something. When you do, it’s easy to default to the basic half-fold or letter fold, but customers see those folds all the time. They don’t stand out. Why go vanilla? Spice it up with some unusual folds that spark interest and make people want to reach out and handle the piece.

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One of the hottest topics in print these days is the use of quick response (QR) codes. When scanned with a smartphone, these codes take people directly to the Web. This gives smartphone users an immediate way to respond to your marketing pieces, even if they aren’t at home or in the office. It also increases the relevance of your print materials in the lives of today’s busy mobile consumers.

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Stay safe and enjoy yourselves!

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What are psychographics? Just as demographics describe what your customers look like (age, gender, ethnicity, income), psychographics describe how your customers think and behave. This gives you another way to segment or personalize your direct mail to make it more relevant.

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Just a quick note to say Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Hanukkah, Happy winter solstice, and a variety of other mid-winter greetings to you all!

We hope you have a safe holiday season, and we look forward to working with you in the new year!

Warmest regards,
The Printhink Team

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If you’re like most professional graphic designers, you’re hesitant to use any font (or, more correctly, typeface) that comes preinstalled on your computer. However, if you use Mac OS X and are looking for an elegant calligraphic font, there’s one that’s worth a second look. After all, it has been literally decades in the making.

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Technology is cool. It opens up a whole new world of marketing opportunities—email blasts, pURLs, PDA pushdowns, RSS feeds, tweets. But what happens to your message when the BlackBerry battery is drained, or your format isn’t compatible with your prospect’s device?

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It’s not surprising that print has held its place as the leading communications medium for centuries. Here are just a few reasons why.

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It used to be that, in order to create powerful 1:1 print campaigns, you had to be a combination marketing wiz and database master. But as these applications have developed, software developers and print service providers are working to make this technology accessible to everyone, whether created offline or accessed through the Internet. It requires a little upfront work, but especially for long-term applications, it can have a big payoff.

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Critics say corporate brochures are glossy, brag-and-boast budget suckers that virtually no one reads. Under the old rules of corporate brochure design, that was often true. Today, however, the corporate brochure has evolved from a stand-alone, one-way promotional piece into an integrated, interactive conversation starter.

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No kidding, humor is serious business. Funny marketing attracts customers by creating a positive association with your brand. When used correctly, humor is an important tool for getting your message heard. Don’t knock-knock it until you’ve tried it.

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The Apple iPhone and other smartphones have spawned an entire cottage industry of applications that are helping these devices move from being simple communication tools to being computing platforms all their own. Some people have become “app happy” and compulsively collect and use many of the bewildering variety of applications available. Can’t identify a song playing on the radio or in a store? An app called Shazam uses the iPhone’s microphone to capture the audio, analyze it and tell you the song title and artist. It’s quite accurate, though it has problems with jazz.

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In order to produce a successful 1:1 printing campaign, all you have to have is a great database, right? Not quite. Producing a successful 1:1 print campaign starts with having a great database, but even once you have the data, you have to figure out what to do with it. Often, that means data mining.

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When you look through paper samples, one of the first things you probably notice is whether the sample is coated or uncoated. Coated papers feel smooth to the touch because they have a coating of clay and other substances. This coating causes the paper to reflect light more and absorb ink less than uncoated papers.

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In this age of Comic Sans, Times New Roman, Arial and other “system” fonts, it’s easy to take type for granted. We’ve all seen documents that use more fonts per square inch than legibility, let alone aesthetics, can handle, resulting in a garish “font-o-rama.”

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