Pay a Penny for Email & Eliminate Spam?

Would you pay a penny for each email if it eliminated all of the spam in your inbox? Target marketing columnist, Denny Hatch says "Happily!" Here's the business proposal he suggests to the US Postal Service. The Postal Service creates an email service that charges $7.95 per year plus one cent per email that is sent. For guaranteed delivery and return receipt, the fee would be two cents. All sent and received emails would be archived and there would be no ads. In Hatch's words, " If the message is so unimportant that it is not worth 1 cent to the sender for me to see it, he can send it to my Yahoo! inbox."

Hatch says that under this system, spam would disappear and cites a University of California study to back up his assertion: "A team of computer scientists at the University of California showed that it takes 12.5 million spam messages to sell $100 worth of Viagara. Spammers can't afford 1 cent per message." 

I think he is on to something here. Hatch describes his Yahoo inbox as a "vast sewer" in which he hunts through the contents for something that "doesn't smell." I wouldn't describe my G-mail inbox in quite those terms, but I know exactly what he means. I too would happily subscribe to a service that insures the messages I receive are worth reading, and eliminates spam.  

Artist Fred Stone to Exhibit April 27 & 28

Partners

Equine artist, Fred Stone of Agoura Hills, has a rare solo exhibit scheduled for April 27 and 28 at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery in Newbury Park. Stone is world famous for his paintings of horses and horse racing themes. Among his credits is the world's largest equine mural in the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. But Fred Stone's best known work does not include any horses. It is a poster done to commemorate the heroism of the New York City Firefighters who died on 9/11. The poster, titled "Partners," has raised more than a half million dollars for charity and the families of 9/11 firefighters. In the words of local artist, Kathi Colman, the poster depicts a "weary and heartsick firefighter finding solace in the embrace of his loyal search partner -who has already experienced far too much for any one soul to hold." It is a superbly accurate description of the work, but, of course, the image conveys so much more. It is evocative of a moment in our history when all Americans felt a sense of loss, a sense of empathy and gratitude toward the selfless men and women who serve as our protectors, and, most of all, a deep sense of our connection to one another.

I encourage you to go see the exhibit on April 27 or 28. You will have a chance to meet Fred Stone and to see some of his remarkable work.

Statesmen and Scalawags

The printing industry has had more than its share of civic leaders, patriots and statesmen. Many of us in the industry like to feel that we are following in the footsteps of notable Americans like John Peter Zenger, William Bradford, Isaiah Thomas and, of course, Benjamin Franklin. We take pride in having chosen a profession with a rich history of community service and advocacy for justice and freedom.

Unfortunately, not everyone in our industry is a source of pride. Many of the nation's most notorious counterfeiters, Charles Ulrich for example, were printers. Recently another printer has managed to besmirch the profession with a seedy story of self-indulgence at the expense of the public. Mississippi State Representative Kevin McGee, from Brandon, has been fined $50,000 by the Mississippi Ethics Commission and ordered to repay $346,554.06 to the state for violations of state ethics laws.

The Commission found that since taking office in January 2008, Rep. McGee entered into 259 illegal service contracts with various agencies of the State of Mississippi. McGee is in the printing business and is an owner, along with other members of his family, of Service Printers of Flowood. To be fair here, McGee is appealing the ruling, and in a state as small as Mississippi, a printing company the size of Flowood is bound to secure some government printing orders with no knowledge or involvement on his part. Nevertheless, being in a position of public trust holds him to a higher standard. The Ethics Commission apparently felt that the evidence indicated clear violations of state rules. We hope there is a reasonable explanation, but it is difficult to imagine that a  potential, glaring conflict of interest was not clear to him from the beginning.

Driving the Creek Bed

Here in the Los Angeles metro area we sometimes get news stories that are almost impossible to envision in any other place - like stories about Mel Gibson’s personal church. Last Thursday, January 26, a story appeared in the news about a 53 year old driver who apparently mistook a service entrance to the Verdugo Wash as a freeway on-ramp. The entrance gate had been left open because a maintenance crew was working in the wash. If you are not familiar with Los Angeles, you need to know that this “wash” is a 9 mile tributary of the Los Angeles River that was lined in concrete for flood control purposes back in the 1930’s.

Image from Tropico Station

The driver apparently accelerated up to freeway speeds of 60 or 70 mph once she hit the floor of the flood control channel and did not stop until the car, a Mercedes Benz, careened down a series of steps designed to drop the flow to a lower level. After going down 9 steps, the car came to a stop just short of another drop in the channel. Fortunately, the driver was rescued from the flood control channel and did not suffer any major injuries. There is an excellent description of the event at Tropico Station, a Glendale blog.

The story captured my attention. In spite of its “laid back” reputation, L.A. does have its share of automobile accidents. Every so often, we hear of a Ferrari that flames out somewhere along the PCH or an SUV found at the bottom of a ravine along one of the more precarious canyon roads. But this accident was different. This involved one of the many long stretches of concrete in L.A. that is not a road or a freeway. This is a creek bed!

There have been numerous proposals over the years to turn some of these concrete creek channels into car or bus lanes. Now we have a driver who has taken the matter into her own hands. Personally, I think we should convert these channels back into real creek beds. Real creeks serve a lot of useful purposes for both people and wildlife. Moreover, it is very doubtful that a natural creek will ever be mistaken for a freeway.

  

Rewards Credit Cards

In a  January 16 article, the Wall Street Journal reports that credit card companies are increasingly promoting "rewards" credit cards to their business customers."It's easy to see why," they say. "About 42% of small-business owners carry a credit-card balance, according to July 2011 data from the National Small Business Association in Washington, D.C."

The article points out that the small business credit cards do not carry the same protection as consumer credit cards. "Small-business credit cards were excluded from the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 that outlawed random interest-rate hikes and other practices on personal credit cards." Small business people are usually held personally responsible for the debt placed on these cards. The WSJ urges small business people to consider how using the card might impact their credit score.

I have another beef with the "rewards" cards. The "rewards" offered by these cards are not paid for by the credit card company. Rather, they are charged to the company that accepts the card for payment and deducted from the sale amount as part of the swipe fees. "Swipe fees" are the fees that a credit card company passes on to the retailer who accepts the card as payment. These fees vary, but I have seen rewards cards with fees as high as 4.6% of the purchase.

The seller who accepts the card has no way of knowing what the fees are until he receives his statement from the credit card processor. Moreover, there appears to be no limit to the fee that can be tacked on to the transaction in this manner. The consumer or small business person is happy to use the card for payment because he is collecting a "reward." It is the proverbial free lunch. But the reality is that retailers, and now suppliers who sell to small businesses, are simply jacking up prices to cover the cost of the fees. In essence, even cash customers are footing the bill for these cards.

The main benefactor in this arrangement is the financial services industry and, to a certain extent, those who have strong enough credit to qualify for a rewards card. If more businesses use rewards cards to pay for supplies, in addition to accepting these cards as payment for their products and services, prices will inevitably go up.

Happy Birthday Ben Franklin. Born January 17, 1706

Things We Need and Don't Need in 2012

2011 was a year filled with dramatic events: a devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan; the killing of Osama Bin Laden; widespread uprisings in the Arab world, the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Kaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak; the marriage of Prince William; the death of Apple Founder, Steve Jobs; a horrific car bombing and shooting atrocity in Norway; the occupy Wall Street movement; rioting in London; the phone-tapping scandal which closed Britain’s tabloid News of the World; the discovery of potential earth-like planets; famine in east Africa and North Korea; the survival of Gabby Gifford; the death of Kim Jung Il: and the end of the Iraq War. With all that has gone on, it has been an emotional roller coaster of a year.

As we stumble into 2012, it occurs to me that we may want a different kind of year than the one we just survived. Certainly, most of us would prefer to see less bad news and more good news. So I have started a modest list of things we need more of in 2012 and other things I would prefer to see less of in 2012.
 

What We Need Less Of:

In 2012 we need less earthquakes and tsunamis, less Reality TV, and less TSA pat downs of children and the elderly.

We need fewer people like Rod Blagojevich, Casey Anthony, Conrad Murray, Jerry Sandusky, Muammar Kaddafi, and Kim Jung Il.

We need a lot less drivers texting behind the wheel, less airline fees, fast food, and disappearing glaciers.

We need less traffic, less unemployment, fewer foreclosures, less hypocrisy, and dates that the world will end on.

We don’t need any more $100-a-barrel oil, or deranged people with guns, and we could certainly do without any more Kardashian family events. 

What We Need More of:

We need more jobs, more food provided for starving people, and more discoveries of earth like planets.

We need more people like Steve Jobs, Andy Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Duke Snyder, Betty Ford, Harry Morgan and Seal Team Six.

We need more stuff made in the USA, more exercise and more good ideas like Forever Stamps.

We need more public transportation, locally owned businesses, educated graduates and ice for polar bears.

We need more time to spend with family, more banks that actually lend money, more Peace Prize winners, and more miles per gallon.

Those are just some of the things that came to mind about 2011. I am sure I missed a few. So feel free to add your own list of stuff we could use less of or more of in 2012 in the comments. 

Have a Healthy, Prosperous and Happy New Year!

Twitter by Mail?

What would happen if your Twitter tweets were sent via mail instead of online? That's what Giles Turnbull asked himself one morning. Would it work? What would happen? Some of the answers to his questions are obvious, it was sure to cost more in postage and take a lot more time. But there were other revelations about the nature of our communications with each other that were not so obvious when he began the experiment.

First he had to work out the logistics, buy a lot of stamps, get the postal address of his followers, and determine how to replicate a tweet via postcard. Sending a tweet to all of his followers meant writing out the same message numerous times, so he limited the experiment to 15 followers. Still, that meant writing out his "tweet" 15 times and mailing it to 15 different people, some in foreign countries. A direct message, as with Twitter, could be sent to just one person. His followers agreed to respond in the same manner - via mail.

While it sounds like a tedious process, the emotive results were surprising. Turnbull found himself getting excited to receive his mail. "I began to associate the sound of the postwoman’s approach with the arrival of new, unusually personal messages. I’d get jumpy with excitement, and rush out to the hall the moment they’d been delivered." It turns out that getting mail with personal messages is fun. He began to wonder what letters were like before the advent of email and made some interesting discoveries. "Simple, short messages. That’s what the post was for. People love updates."

Today's postcard, Turnbull observes, has become an "obligation" to inform friends about your vacation. That is too bad because the short message on a postcard can be as imaginative, as funny or as interesting as a tweet. He learned the unique value of the written message:  "Conversations took longer, but they made just as much sense. If anything, they felt more real." He gained a new appreciation for the online and the offline.

Turnbull's article and samples of his postcard "tweets," can be seen at The Morning News.

Congress Grapples with Postal Service Solvency

Last October the House Oversight Committee passed HR 2309, a bill that creates a control authority, a kind of receivership, to take over the Postal Service in the event it defaults on its financial obligations. Legislation has now been introduced in the Senate, S. 1789, with a somewhat different approach. S.1789 passed the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees in November and will provide a frame for reform legislation considered by the full Senate.  

The Senate bill has a greater focus on cost reductions in order to get the USPS to solvency. Although both bills create processes to close post offices considered unnecessary, the House bill does so through a commission to oversee the closing while the Senate bill creates a more public process.

The Senate bill also reforms the federal workers compensation system to require that employees who are on workers comp but who are also eligible for retirement must take retirement. This is not now a requirement. There literally are USPS employees in their 90's on workers' comp. The USPS represents about 40% of the workers' comp program of the entire federal government. The National Association of Letter Carriers, NALC, has declared its opposition to the Senate bill saying it "would cause irreparable harm to our nation's Postal Service." The NALC has long maintained that the main problem for the USPS is the unique legal requirement to pre-fund future retiree health benefits.

Class Warfare and Ben Franklin

With all of the political talk these days about "class warfare," I thought it would be interesting to examine what Ben Franklin had to say in his pamphlet "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America." Written in 1784, the essay was intended as information for Europeans whose view of American society was distorted by persistent rumors of vast wealth and limitless opportunity for those born into a life of privilege in Europe. America, he maintained, did not need those talented in "Belles-Lettres" or "fine Arts," and would give no deference to "Persons of Family" and "Gentlemen,doing nothing of Value, but living idly on the labour of others." Instead, America valued the working man, the farmer, craftsman or mechanic who provided useful products and services for society.

He writes: "It is imagined by Numbers that the Inhabitants of North-America are rich, capable of rewarding, and dispos'd to reward all sorts of Ingenuity; that they are at the same time ignorant of all the Sciences; & consequently that strangers possessing Talents in the Belles-Letters, fine Arts, etc., must be highly esteemed, and so well paid as to become easily rich themselves.that there are also abundance of profitable Offices to be disposed of, which the Natives are not qualified to fill; and that having few Persons of Family among them, Strangers of Birth must be greatly respected, and of course easily obtain the best of those Offices, which will make all their Fortunes."

This image is simply not true, he says: "These are all wild Imaginations; and those who go to America with Expectations founded upon them, will surely find themselves disappointed." No, he says, America is a country with "few people so miserable as the poor of Europe," and few people who would be considered rich by European standards. Instead, America is dominated by a middle class, "it is rather a general happy Mediocrity that prevails."

No doubt, Franklin was happy with this kind of America. Franklin was not born into wealth, but had to work and use his native abilities for any success he achieved. He was suspicious of those who were born into wealth or who had inherited a title. He argued against such an aristocracy in America and even favored taxes that would limit land and wealth being passed down from generation to generation.

Are the Yellow Pages Dead?

News&Tech.com is reporting that a study done by Borrell Associates predicts the end of yellow page directories. Writing for News & Tech, columnist Marc Wilson reports "A panel of industry experts predicts that printed Yellow Page directories will be dead within five years." 

According to Wilson: "Fifty-four percent of the panelists believed printed Yellow Page directories will die within the next three to five years. Another 12 percent believed the books will die within one to two years, while 29 percent said they thought printed directories will die within 11 to 20 years. Only 2 percent believed the printed Yellow Page directories will last 20 years or more."

Of course, the demise of the Yellow Pages is not a new prediction. And it is no secret in the business community that revenues from yellow page publications have fallen dramatically in the past few years. Anyone with a mouse or keyboard could have reached the same conclusion. Yet, somehow, these ubiquitous volumes keep popping up on my doorstep. They're not just "Yellow Pages," anymore, but "Super Pages," and "Real" Yellow Pages. There is even an "eco-friendly" sized "Yellowbook." To be sure, these books seem smaller than they were in years past, when they were less "eco-friendly" I suppose. But they are clearly not dead ... at least, not yet.

I always toss last year's into the recycle bin and dutifully stash the current volumes in the cubby-hole that has become their nesting spot. I confess that I have even used one of them within the past year, and not as a door stop. I can't remember what I was searching for or what circumstances led me to forsake Google in that moment of eccentricity. Perhaps the power was out, or I was on a "buy local" binge. Or maybe it was just a  chance resuscitation of a dying habit that hadn't completely expired. 


Perhaps that is the way the Yellow Pages will die off. One day we will notice some dusty volumes in the cubby hole and it will suddenly dawn on us that we have not received an updated version in several years.  We may even toss the world's last Yellow Pages into the recycle bin ... unless the power is out and we are looking for an electrician.

Mountain Lion P-18 Killed while Crossing 405

From a National Park Service Press Release:

On early Tuesday morning, P-18, one of the mountain lion kittens born in the Santa Monica Mountains in May, 2010 was hit and killed while attempting to cross I-405 just south of the Getty Center southbound onramp.

The 15-month-old mountain lion’s movement was being followed via radio telemetry equipment as part of a decade long National Park Service mountain lion study in the Santa Monica Mountains. The mountain lion had been tracked since it was three weeks old.

Earlier this summer, P-18 departed from his mother’s home range in Malibu Creek State Park and slowly began making his way east through the mountains. Male mountain lions have an extremely large range of movement, and often seek out open space away from other male mountain lions as they mature. There are two other male mountain lions with GPS collars in the Santa Monica Mountains. It is possible that P-18 was attempting to disperse out of the Santa Monica Mountains to find unoccupied open space. Previous mountain lion tracking has shown that individual male mountain lions frequently move throughout the entire Santa Monica Mountain range, from the 405 to Camarillo on a regular basis.

P-18 Shortly After Separating From His Mother - NPS Photograph

Freeways are a known significant barrier to wildlife crossings in the Los Angeles area and other urban centers around the country. Caltrans, in partnership with numerous local, state, federal and non-profit organizations is working to identify funding sources and suitable wildlife crossing locations along the 405 and highways 101 and 118 to construct wildlife crossings that would facilitate wildlife movement between the Santa Monica Mountains and other protected open space in the Santa Susana Mountains and Los Padres National Forest. These wildlife crossings would allow animals to move freely between large areas of protected parkland, and increase genetic diversity in the Santa Monica Mountains mountain lion population, a critical need for long term species survival.

“Investing in connected pieces of parkland and constructing wildlife crossings along major freeways around Los Angeles is essential for long term mountain lion survival in the Santa Monica Mountains,” said park superintendent Woody Smeck. “Mountain lions must be able to move freely between large parklands with suitable habitat throughout the course of their daily movements, as well as exchange genetic material to prevent inbreeding in specific parkland areas like the Santa Monica Mountains.”

The National Park Service began studying mountain lions in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 2002. A total of 21 mountain lions have been tracked via radio telemetry and GPS collars in that time. In addition to studying mountain lion movement, a genetics study is also ongoing to discover indications of possible inbreeding among the mountain lion population in the Santa Monica Mountains.

There has only been one documented successful mountain lion crossing in the study for either of the freeways that surround the Santa Monica Mountains; P-12 crossed highway 101 in early 2009, and has lived in the Santa Monica Mountains ever since. P-12 is father to the young mountain lion who was killed on Tuesday.

Children's Books Exempt from Safety Law

The Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act of 2008, CPSIA, has been amended to exempt "ordinary" children's books from third party product testing. The measure, H.R. 2715, was signed into law by President Obama on August 12, after being passed almost unanimously by both houses of congress.

The 2008 measure was originally passed primarily to protect children under 12 from exposure to lead in products designed for their use. The printing and publishing industry argued that paper and board products used to make books have never contained lead. Books have never been regulated and have never posed a safety hazard according to the industry. Libraries had also awaited the outcome of the revision, since the original law cast a shadow on their ability to lend children's books. The new law applies the requirements only to products manufactured since the original law went into effect. This effectively eliminates libraries’ concerns about lending older books. A stay of enforcement of the 2008 law had been in effect and, barring congressional action, would have expired in December of this year.

The amended law excludes "ordinary" books from third party testing and certification procedures. But it leaves testing in place for "novelty" books that contain materials other than paper and board or are printed on materials other than paper and board. So books with plastic, toy-like elements will still require testing.

A Whole New Dimension to Printing

Old Media vs. New

Here's a conversation I overheard between a man and his teenage son who were sitting next to me at a youth baseball game the other day. The boy was totally involved in text messaging on his cell phone and only rarely looked up to follow the game:

Dad: "You have been texting for almost an hour. What's going on?"

Boy: "I am talking with Wendy." (I've changed the name here, but for no particular reason.)

Dad: "Really? For the last hour?"

Boy: "Uh huh."

Dad: "Hmmm, well wouldn't it be great if you could just talk into your phone and have it send the message  for you? Maybe it could even arrive in your own voice?"

Boy: "Hey, that is a really sick idea." ("Sick" here apparently means "rad" in an older teen lexicon.)

Dad: (After a few seconds in which he stared intently at the boy) "Yeah, well maybe someday someone will invent something like that."

Obviously, phones already have that "sick" capability. I may not have the entire conversation exactly right, but that was the gist of it. The Dad clearly knew what he was saying and was waiting for his son to catch on. Maybe he eventually did, but the game ended and they left before I had a chance to find out.

This episode got me to thinking about the nature of technology. Text messaging allowed the boy to talk to his girlfriend with a degree of privacy even while sitting on bleachers within earshot of a couple of dozen strangers. This is a good thing. But it also appears to have engaged him to such an extent that it numbed his brain to the obvious advantages of the older technology. He could choose to simply talk to her! Text messaging is not necessarily the best tool of communication all the time.

As a society, we have become so enamored with electronic media, that we have forgotten some of the more obvious advantages of print. Email, text messaging, websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and every other electronic media you can think of, all have tremendous value. But their value does not negate or replace the value of print. Think about it, if you are one of those accomplished graduates who will be earning their degree or diploma this spring, would you want the certificate emailed to you?

Creating the Right Brochure

There are few better selling tools than an attractive brochure placed into the hands of your customer or potential customer. Creating such a brochure does not have to be a difficult task. Here are a few steps to follow.  

Decide on Your Purpose
Brochures fall into two broad categories — those that introduce a new product or service to a likely customer and those that turn an already interested customer into a buyer. To be successful, a brochure should have a precise objective and a target reader in mind. It's best to create the least elaborate brochure likely to achieve its objectives. The content of your brochure will depend on the specific service or product you want to promote. Product photos, testimonials, benefits, your unique selling proposition, and contact information are all components to consider.

Use Color
Today’s market place demands color. Full color is especially important if the product or service you are offering needs color to show its features. Most product brochures, for example, won’t work effectively in anything other than full color. Can you imagine any food, cosmetics, florists, or auto brochures being done in black and white? Even service businesses can benefit from a color presentation. Financial or legal services may get by with black and white or single color, but dental services, veterinarians, home improvement, hair stylists, or similar services will usually opt for color. Take a look at the mailers you receive or the ad inserts in the newspaper - color is now the norm.

Get Good Design
Of course, a lot more goes into an effective brochure than just color. Type fonts and sizes, white space, choice of images, and layout, along with the essential message, all combine to determine if your brochure will have the intended result. A professional designer who thoroughly understands your marketing message is the optimum way to go. If you do not use professional design, be sure to collaborate closely with your printer to insure that your final product will print as you intend.

Tie into Your Website
We live in a digital world. Your brochure, like your business card, should contain information that will direct your customer to your web site. You might even consider using a QR Code that will allow a customer or prospect to access your web site immediately with his smart phone.

 10 Common Mistakes to Avoid
 1. Not emphasizing the unique selling proposition of your business.
 2. Being concerned with the looks, but forgetting the sales objective.
 3. Omitting essential contact information.
 4. Omitting product information critical to the reader’s decision-making.
 5. Including details that become outdated too quickly.
 6. Giving insufficient thought to how the brochure will be distributed.
 7. Using text that is lost in the background color or too small to read easily.
 8. Including low resolution or poor-quality images.
 9. Allowing a busy or complex design to distract from the key selling message.
10.Not proofreading very carefully before submitting your file for printing

Promoting Your Brand

You may not have the budget to employ a high powered marketing firm for your company. But there are some steps you can take to get started promoting your brand that won't cost you a lot of money. First, you must be clear about what your brand is, and what you want it to be. Only you can determine what you want your brand to be. But only your customers can tell you what your brand really is.

Perhaps you have built your business around great customer service, or the very best quality merchandise. You want your customers to think of you in those term, helpful service or top quality. But it is not enough to claim great service or top quality. Everybody already does that, so it won’t set your brand apart. Instead, focus in on a specific of that product or service. Ideally, the specific also conveys a benefit to the customer.

There’s a plumbing company that advertises its staff as the “smell good” plumbers. Now that is getting specific! Chances are, you may not want to go there. But you can hone in on something that will resonate with potential clients. A dentist who minimizes discomfort for his patients may claim “You’ll always leave with a smile.” A pizza restaurant that believes it has the best tasting product could boast “a taste of old Napoli in every bite.”

In each case, the brand, revealed by the specific attributes, is aimed at the consumer you need to attract. And, in each case, it allows for multiple means of expression. The pizza with a taste of “old Napoli” comes in a box adorned with colors or scenes of Naples. Similarly, the restaurant is decorated and plays background music to evoke the same theme. Ads or flyers convey the same message. Likewise the dentist, who wants you to leave with a smile, decorates his office, trains his employees, and manages the conduct of his practice to elicit a smile or good feeling from every patient. His office will be cheerful, maybe even a little whimsical, and his ads will be full of smiling testimonials.

“Okay,” I hear you say, “but I manufacture submersible water pumps. What can I do?” Start with who is buying your pumps and why. What is it that makes your pump successful in the market? Maybe it’s reliability. If so, build your brand around the reliability of the product. It becomes the pump that “will never let you down,” or “just won’t quit.” Associate it with the most reliable things you can think of – “the Acme Pump, as reliable as tomorrow’s sunrise.” You might put a bright, golden sun in the background in your marketing collateral. You could also stress a benefit that is very important to your customer – “You’ll never get a call-back with an Acme Pump!” What is important is that your materials evoke your brand – whatever it is – and stress the benefit. Of course, developing those materials, brochures, ads, web pages, or whatever, may take professional assistance. But having a clear central message already spelled out, will save you time and money in the development of your marketing materials.

How do you know if your branding is successful? Well, as I said at the beginning, only your customers can tell you that. And that would be the subject of another post.

Every Door Direct Mail

Direct mail is usually regarded as the most effective advertising medium there is. But for a lot of small businesses, acquiring mailing lists and postal permits and meeting all of the requirements of the USPS appears to be too much of a hassle. This is especially true if your market area is small.  Now, suppose your business could reach all of the potential customers in your neighborhood without the need for a mailing list, permits or the associated fees? Well, that is exactly what Every Door Direct Mail is designed to do.

With Every Door Direct Mail, you can create a saturation mailing without applying individual names and addresses to each mail piece. You can target a location by a specified distance from your retail site. Your target area could be a city or a specific neighborhood within that city. Want to reach only those households on your side of the bridge? You can do that. Want to blanket all of the doors in the industrial section? You can do that too. By selecting specific carrier routes, you can pinpoint the geographic area best suited for your marketing message.

Of course, there are some requirements. You have to mail at least 200 pieces but fewer than 5000 pieces. They must be Standard Flats and each piece must weigh 3.3oz or less. You can plan your mailing yourself using tools provided online by the USPS. Or you can use a mail service provider, like CR Print, to plan, prepare, and deliver to the post office. Either way you save the cost of buying a mailing list, a permit, and individually addressing each piece. It is a great opportunity for small businesses to take advantage of the effectiveness of direct mail at a minimal cost.

USPS to Offer a Sale on Postage

Does postage ever go on sale? It looks like it will this summer. The USPS is set to offer a special 3% discount in July and August for any letters or flats that include QR codes.

QR Code for CR Print website

QR codes are those two-dimensional mobile barcodes that can be read by smartphones like the iPhone, Blackberry or Android. Smartphone users have to first download an app to read the code. Scanning a QR code with the phone's camera opens the app which launches a browser taking you directly to a page on the internet. The uses of this technology are limited only by your imagination. A printed ad can immediately take you to a web page with detailed information about the product or service in the ad. A postcard promoting a restaurant could have a QR code that opens to the menu, a view of the dining room, and a link to make an online reservation. Want to know what seats are available for a performance? Scan the QR code on the poster for a seating chart. The QR code on any packaged item might provide detailed information about assembly, warranty, accessories, nutrition, or innumerable other options.

So why is the Post Office offering a discount to mailers? The Post Office believes that, over time, QR codes can increase demand for mailing services. According to Thomas Foti, the Postal Service manager of marketing mail, “As customers continue to use QR codes, we think this increases the effectiveness of mail, which encourages the demand for mail, and hopefully longer term it increases our volume.” Marketers already know that direct mail is an very effective advertising medium. Adding the ability to connect quickly and efficiently to an internet landing page increases the power of that medium exponentially.

What is Branding and Why Should it Concern You?

The condition of the economy over the last couple of years has brought an increasing emphasis on marketing and, with it, lots of talk about “branding.” Just what is “branding” and why should it concern you?

Let’s deal first with why it should concern you. You have a brand, even if you do not know it. That brand may be something positive or negative. In the mind of your prospects or customers, you or your organization are identified with certain attributes. You can be identified with speed, integrity, youth, sophistication, comfort, fun, prestige, masculinity, reliability, pride, romance, the opposite of any of these, or a thousand other attributes impossible to list here. Your customers consciously or unconsciously connect you with your “brand.” Years ago my kids rented videos from a store where the owners did some cooking in the back room. To them, it became the “smelly” store. I don’t think this is what the owners intended, but we discovered that lots of people could easily identify the store by that attribute rather than its name. Hopefully, your brand is not an aroma – unless you are Chanel #5.

Your brand is the principal attribute, or sum of attributes that your customers associate with you or your organization. It can be elusive, a feeling or emotion, as in “the ultimate driving machine,” “you’re in good hands,” or “the happiest kingdom on earth.” Or it can be more tangible or measurable like Wal-Mart’s “lowest price” brand. Of course, these slogans are not the brand, but merely material that carries the brand. Large companies generate marketing collateral, their advertising, brochures, business cards, jingles, etc., all intended to convey the attribute they want you to associate with them. Thus, Nike will choose material for its marketing collateral, like the slogan “Just do it,” or the swoosh symbol, or the star athletes in its commercials. All are intended to convey athleticism or physical performance. You are not just buying the shoes; you are buying the brand - performance.

Odds are you don’t have the budget these large companies have to promote your brand, so you have to use your more limited resources wisely. There are steps you can take to get started that won’t cost you anything. I'll write more about those in another post.