Print Buying Direct

Environmental Update – 10 ways to be Greener in Business – 27th March 2009

How to… reduce waste and save money

1. Reducing material waste at source means greater resource efficiency, less pollution and more profits
2. If you consider the cost of materials, treatment, energy and wasted labour, the real cost of waste can be 5-20 times the costs of its disposal
3. Reductions in waste go straight to the bottom line, as raw materials often account for a significant amount of turnover
4. typical waste reduction projects have payback periods of months, not years
5. Accuracy, control, communication and attention to detail form part of any quality improvement, total quality management or just-in-time programme. Concentrating on finished product quality only or throughput may increase waste by increasing rejects
6. Make a flow chart of material and waste flows and try to put numbers on it for amounts and cost
7. Waste is not inevitable. Ban phrases such as unavoidable waste, natural waste, paid for waste and costed waste.
8. Employees are motivated by feedback about a company’s waste reduction programme
9. Report waste as a percentage of production – it’s a good way of monitoring progress over time
10. Find a waste champion to make things happen.

Print Buying Direct and School Prospectus Made Easy are trading names of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe and Nantwich in South Cheshire, UK.

For all your Brochure, Leaflet, Flyer, Business Card, Annual Report, Appointment Card, Letterhead, Wallet Folder print needs.

Don’t forget our award winning Graphic Design Team – we can design your Brochure, Leaflet, Flyer, Business Card, Annual Report, Appointment Card, Letterhead or Wallet Folder and create something special to market your company.

Improving Your Response Rate to Leaflets, Flyers and Brochures – 24th February 2009

A huge number of factors affect the response rate to your leaflet, flyer, postcard or brochure campaign. This tip-sheet is designed to make you aware of the main factors and give you some ideas for how to improve the response of your next campaign.

The List
The quality of the list is the single most important factor affecting response rate. Consider also that people who are not inundated with offers are more likely to respond so you may increase response by using lists that are less frequently used, or by targeting so as to avoid the inundated.

As an example, Fleet Managers are among the most frequently targeted people, and yet owner/managers and directors of similar sized companies without a dedicated Fleet Manager rarely receive vehicle related mailings (leaflet, flyer, postcard or brochure), even though their companies need vehicles.

The Offer
If the product or service you are promoting is lacking the basic features expected or your price is too uncompetitive, your response will inevitably be poor. Assuming these fundamentals are OK, you may consider the following to help to boost response;

• Offer a free sample or trial to enable your prospects to experience your product, quality, service etc.
• Offer an incentive (e.g. a free gift). Be careful with the economics here. Ideally link the incentive to purchase rather than simple response. The gift itself should be relevant to your target audience, or failing that, of universal relevance (e.g. a pen that we all have a use for).
• Offer a discount or special price. Again be careful with the economics. You may find that a 20% discount will increase response sufficiently to cover its cost but that a 30% discount fails to pull the extra response needed. Experiment with different ways of describing the discount – “buy one get one free” usually works better than, “2 for the price of 1”, “half price”, “50% off” etc.
• Always set a limited time to respond if providing an incentive, discount etc. This encourages the recipient to actually respond rather than putting it aside until later.
• Provide some sort of contest – people like to prove they are clever, funny etc – or offer a prize draw but again beware the economics (ideally link it to purchase – not response) and make sure you obey the rules (see the Advertising Standards Authority website at www.asa.org.uk).

The Mail-piece
Don’t let your creativity run too wild – but don’t be boring. Don’t sacrifice clarity and response generation in favour of cutting edge creative genius. Relevant photographs (particularly people’s faces, product close-ups and before/after shots) increase response more than drawings or diagrams.

Timing
Obvious really – make sure you time your mailing to drop at a time when your prospect is most likely to buy (e.g. in time for Christmas, ahead of their busy period etc). For business mailings try to avoid times when your prospect is likely to be away or manically busy (industry trade fairs etc). There is some evidence that business mailings that arrive midweek are more responsive than those arriving on Monday or Friday. This is particularly true for email campaigns.

Many believe that consumer mailings are more likely to be read thoroughly at weekends. Many mailers avoid the holiday period altogether but a growing number have realised that not everyone is away at the same time and that those that are at home are more likely to read a mailing (leaflet, flyer, postcard or brochure) when there is less on the doormat.

Follow-up
Very important. To increase your response rate consider contacting each prospect more than once – and at least quarterly. Increasing the frequency normally increases the response rate and many direct marketers now prefer to contact prospects monthly. According to The Royal Mail Guide to Direct Mail for Small Businesses, a follow-up mailing arriving 10-14 days after the initial mailing will normally increase response by 25-40%.

Consider following up your mailing with a telephone call. Particularly in business to business, a follow-up telephone call 3-4 days after the mailing has landed can significantly increase your response. A call-mail-call pattern can produce even greater results.

The Response Mechanism
The simple rule is to make it as easy as possible to respond. Different people will prefer to respond in different ways so make sure you offer all the options (mail, fax, telephone, email, web-site etc).

Do as much of the work as possible for the prospect. If you provide a reply card, fill in the prospect’s details – this can increase response by up to 15%. Always repeat the main points of the offer on the reply-card – people may just keep the reply-card and wonder later what it was about. Repeating the offer may just get it sent back to you. Consider paying the costs of response. Use reply-paid postage (you only pay for the replies that are actually mailed). Use a free-call or local-rate telephone number. If your prospect must pay the full call charge, use a non-geographic number to avoid the “not local – too
distant” argument. Always tell your prospects how much (or how little) the call will cost –
many people confuse 0945 (local rate) with 0898 (premium rate) and will assume the worst.

Test, Measure, Improve
If you are considering a large volume mailing (leaflet, flyer, postcard or brochure), do a test-run initially to a smaller number to ensure the response is acceptable. You may even try two or more different lists, letters or offers to see which works best (make sure you can tell from the responses which campaign they came from).

Beware of mailing to very small volumes as you may get a very low or zero response and conclude (wrongly) that the campaign does not work when the same campaign sent to 1000 or more would deliver more statistically significant (and acceptable) results. Direct marketing is part science, part art. You will not get everything right first time. You will need to refine your campaign over time to maximise your response. The crucial thing is to measure the response from each campaign and learn from the experience, thereby improving your response rate over time.

The Printing House Ltd

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of design and print, based in Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites

Print Buying Direct is a brand of The Printing House Ltd, Crewe, Cheshire, UK

Eight Easy Ways to Improve Digital Print Sales to Creative and Design Agencies – 11th February 2009

Print Services Providers (Printers) Can Help Design Agencies Improve Business Results for their Clients with Fast-Growing Digital Colour Printing.

The greatest opportunity for printers to grow print volume today is with digital colour printing and a new study finds that creative agencies play a critical role in that growth.

Looking specifically at digital printing. Over the next five years, digital printing is projected to grow 11 percent annually, while the U.S. printing industry as a whole will grow by only 1.5 percent, according to market research from CAP Ventures. The firm further projects that the total revenue generated worldwide with digital colour printers and presses producing 41 pages per minute or more will grow by 26 percent annually.

Creative advertising and design agencies will specify many of these jobs. A recent survey of 250 agencies by the Printing Industry Center at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) found that 83 percent were involved in media buying decisions, accounting for an average purchase of $1.5 million annually and a median of $400,000. And 89 percent say they play either the primary role or a collaborative role with the client in campaign development and direction. According to Victor Basile, senior vice president/director of Print Graphic Services, Publicis N.Y., and chair, Print Management Committee, American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As), Agencies today seek to offer integrated services that tap into all the resources in their network at speeds that weren’t possible a few years ago. Digital printing provides the fast turnarounds that keep pace with these programs. The quality is really good, and it can only get better. If you’re not looking at digital printing today, you should be. Digital colour printing’s economical short runs and personalization capabilities can also improve the targeting, response rates and overall effectiveness of such integrated communications programs. Print services providers who can support these programs and help agencies use new media to better track with their clients’ goals will have an advantage in landing agency business.

Following are eight tips for print providers seeking to sell digital colour printing to creative design professionals.

1. Target agencies with business-to-business clients.
Agencies that support businesses communicating to consumers generally focus on building brand awareness through mass media, such as television and radio. In contrast, business-to-business (B-to-B) agencies tend to have more limited budgets and narrower targets that they reach through trade magazines, direct mail (leaflets, flyers, postcards) and sales collateral (brochures). Digital-colour printing delivers the highly targeted, cost-effective print that makes these programs thrive. One additional point: B-to-B firms tend to have smaller marketing departments than business-to-consumer (BtoC) outfits, so they rely more on the agency for everything from marketing strategy to media and print services provider selection.

2. At the agency, target the production manager.
According to the RIT survey, the production manager is the most common agency contact to the print community. In numerous agencies, the production manager also plays a role in educating the creative department on new technology options (for example variable data printing), making that person both a sales target and a marketing partner, who can help the print provider sell its services to the agency’s creatives.

3. Demonstrate the image quality.
Designers are unforgiving judges of image quality, yet many may be working with dated references for toner-based print, which has only recently become an effective substitute for offset in most applications (even Annual Reports, Parish Plans and Brochures). Bring designers up to date and set correct expectations with a sample book that shows offset and digital prints of the same text and image files. Consider enabling designers to submit test files via the Web to receive a free digital print sample of their design.

4. More advanced technical infrastructure supports stronger partnerships.
Supporting a sophisticated integrated marketing campaign typically requires a set of advanced capabilities that can include variable information colour printing, Web systems programming and design, telemarketing, fulfillment and other services. Some print providers develop these capabilities, others partner for some or all. Most count digital colour printing among their base core competencies, and most find that broader infrastructure support strengthens partnerships with agencies.

5. Demonstrate effective return on marketing investment.
For the best results, print providers should link their service offerings to the agency’s media selection criteria: reaching target markets, cost and budget considerations, and marketing strategy implementation. In other words, print providers need to demonstrate that digital color is the most cost effective alternative for successfully reaching target markets. The pitch is most effective when backed by examples showing a significant return on the marketing investment.

6. Quality and dependability are more critical than price.
That’s right: price is not the agency’s key factor in print vendor selection. The RIT survey found that pressure on the agency to meet deadlines and deliver quality led respondents to select dependability as the top factor in selecting print services providers. Quality was second, followed by turnaround time and ease of doing business. Price ranked fifth.

7. Help creatives design for digital.
Print service providers can help creative designers improve their printed work by providing guidebooks and seminars on designing for digital. Many print providers and industry associations publish materials and can provide assistance to help in this effort. In addition, color variable information printing introduces new design challenges, such as accounting for all the possible image and text variations in a piece. That requires close collaboration with variable information programmers, relationships that print providers would do well to foster.

8. Measure the results.
Print services providers should ensure that a measurement system is in place for programs they run, and the best measurements use ‘boardroom terminology.’ For example, one creative group in the study was able to show that every dollar spent on marketing communications in one campaign resulted in $6,000 in revenue. Such measurements increase the likelihood that the agency and its clients will buy into future programs, and they are useful as a sales tool for prospects and for fine-tuning programs to optimize results. The RIT study found that a change in sales was the most frequent measurement (29 percent), followed by the number of sales leads (24 percent), the response rate for a direct mail piece (ie postcard or leaflet) (23 percent) and return on investment (six percent).

Most measurement programs were conducted by clients (37 percent), though client-agency partnerships were nearly as frequent (34 percent) and agencies sometimes took on the task alone (22 percent).

Help Lead the Transformation
More than ever before, marketing executives are looking for more efficient ways to communicate and share business information. Many are finding these efficiencies in integrated communications that mix old and new media to deliver improved business results. Digital printing technology plays a critical role in this more efficient media mix, while also offering printers their best opportunity for revenue and business growth. Print services providers who help lead this transformation by building strategic partnerships with creative agencies around integrated communications opportunities will be well positioned to capture this growth.

For more information please see our websites

The Printing House

Print Buying Direct (Print Buying Direct is a brand of The Printing House Ltd, Crewe, Cheshire, UK)

At Print Buying Direct we have been producing property detail sheets, letterheads and Wallet Folders (presentation folders) in vast quantities for Letting Agents.

So we thought we would put together a package of Special Discounts for Letting Agents to enable them to purchase cheap Printing & Design. To help launch this offer we have built a special webpage for letting agents show details of the very competitive pricing.

The items we have highlighted as being especially fast moving for this market sector is Wallet Folders (Presentation Folders), property detail sheets and letterheads.

For more information on the offers please visit our dedicated webpage.

Print Buying Direct (The Printing House) – Crewe, Cheshire, UK

There’s never been a better time to buy print, with the recession starting to bite many companies are cutting down on their marketing and print spend, which may in the short term see a saving on company expenses but will undoubtedly cost more in the long run, especially if your competitors aren’t cutting back.

Here at The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we’ve always offered great value and great quality, combining this with the recent reduction in the rate of VAT, there’s never been a better time to spend on print.

So whether your requirement is for a flyer, leaflet, stationery (letterheads, business cards, compliment slips etc), design and artwork production, brochure, point of sale or pull up banners, give one of our print professionals a call on 0870 950 8444 and let us show you how you can improve your sales by spending your print budget with The Printing House.

We’re finishing on the 23rd of December for our Christmas Break, but we’re back on 5th January, re-invigorated and ready to go.

Keep an eye out in January as we will be launching our Big Wallet Folder (Presentation Folder) Sale, with some great prices on Wallet folders.