Awesome Conference – NPOA 2015

We're back from the 2015 National Print Owners Association Conference in Orlando, April 16 - 18, 2015. Following are our thoughts and comments on the adventure:

Great attendees – engaged, knowledgeable, successful and inspiring

Well organized – efficient, productive and interesting things to do all the time

Delighted – our expectations were totally exceeded

Growing – NPOA formula clearly resonates with small/quick print segment

Impressive – the industry experts at the conference

Overarching messages:

• Value, solutions & unique services equal profitability
• Differentiation of communication solutions is critical
• Data management, personalization & marketing analytics key tools

 We'll be back – San Antonio, TX in April, 2016 - can't wait!

Printers: Stop the Insanity!

STOP THE INSANITY! Motivational speaker, Susan Powter, with her trademark buzz-cut screamed that across the TV airwaves in the mid-90s to educate people on weight loss.

Too many print shop owners, today, display all the classic symptoms of insanity: doing the same thing over-and-over and expecting a different outcome. They repeatedly try selling exactly the same products and services all their competitors sell to all the same customers. Rather than the success they hope for, they most often find other printers get the jobs at a low, low prices

The laws of supply and demand tell us that when demand is stagnant but the supply increases that prices will fall. There has never been so much competition (supply) in the print industry as there is today and the demand for printed material is certainly not growing rapidly. This creates the perfect condition for prices to be pushed lower-and lower until something changes (fewer suppliers or more demand).

The way to escape printers' insanity is very clear: offer products and services different from those everyone else offers. This is much easier to do when you see your product as communications solutions rather pounds of paper. As a communications solutions provider, you look for ways to add more value, such as efficiency and effectiveness, to a print job. Look for ways to get more response or better response while minimizing non-productive communications. Such efforts often require little more than some thought and creativity. 

To stop the insanity…find the best ways to add some extra value for each of your customers.

Stop Sending Monthly Newsletters

If you print and mail a monthly newsletter…Stop it! That's our suggestion. Read on to see why we think monthly newsletters are a waste of time and money and aren't the best way to market your print business.

Before we do, however, you should determine if your newsletter delivers real value to your customers. Or, is it simply a monthly annoyance that immediately goes in the trash? Consider what kind of message that delivers.

If you're like many print shop owners, your customer base is increasingly broad and less knowledgeable about printing and direct mail…perhaps even marketing. Your customer are less likely  to be interested in discussing envelope sizes, bleeds or the nuances of mailing. Newsletters that focus on such topics probably offer little value to most of your customers. This type of narrowly focused newsletter may tell customers that you don't really understand what they want and need.

They want you to make them look good and make their jobs easier and they look to you more-and-more to do what is right for them. For this reason, your newsletter should address broad, simple business communication and marketing ideas and solutions.

Even if you have the right newsletter content, we suggest not sending it monthly.

Mailing a monthly newsletter only demonstrates your capability to print and mail. Why not save money, show more of your capabilities and make customers happier? Consider changing your marketing-communication program to a monthly email and a quarterly printed newsletter.

A monthly email should be short but packed with value for customers. For example, include 4 to 6 very short but valuable/interesting communication and/or marketing tips, tricks, reminders (e.g. ordering Christmas material) and a monthly special offer of some type (buy this and get that, call for a free something, etc.). Short and valuable are the key concepts for the email. The goal is to make your monthly email easy to create yet something customers look forward to receiving.

When your newsletter comes only quarterly, customers will tend to view it as something more special than the monthly version. Since you have raised interest, give your customers something special… something that demonstrates why you are the knowledgeable, creative and talented professionals they want helping them. Make your newsletter such an interesting and valuable piece that they want to save it, share it and act on it. 

Stop sending monthly newsletters, save money, save time and make your customers happier and more confident in working with you. Consider the simple monthly email and a quarterly newsletter. While you're at it, see if your current newsletter provides interesting and valuable content to your customers…or something that might reflect poorly on you.

Do Print Shops Need Big Data?

Many print shop owners cringe at the mere mention of anything that includes the word or the concept of data. If you react the same way, you’d better get over it. Marketing and communications are now almost completely reliant upon and driven by data. As simple evidence, we now have what’s called “Big Data” and even “Little Data”. Business cards, letterhead and the like will always be part of the printing business, but opportunity and growth are in those products incorporating the use and management of data. Not convinced? Don’t care? Perhaps the following will change your view about data…

Collecting and applying data to find and cultivate buyers, members, donations, etc. for products and services has become its own industry. A groundbreaking 2013 study developed under the auspices of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) concludes that the data-driven marketing economy (DDME) in U.S. was worth $165 billion and involved some 675,000 jobs in 2012. It also suggests that small business and innovation are the biggest beneficiaries of the DDME:

“Thanks to data, startups and small businesses today face lower barriers to market entry than they have since the 1870s. The exchange of data enables small businesses to compete effectively with big players, allowing new market entrants to challenge mature players." 

You can download the study, “The Value of Data: Consequences for Insight, Innovation, and Efficiency in the U.S. Economy”. The summary (4 pp) is here… | The full study (105 pp) is here… 

You’ll see that data in the DDME isn’t financial, accounting or transactional data. It is data needed to communicate…seller to buyer…maker to user…marketer to consumer. It’s data businesses of all sizes use to reach and motivate their target audiences. Many of these businesses can be customers, if you are willing and able to help them use their data. The DDME study explains: 

“Today, data-driven marketers still spend more on the postal channel [direct mail] than all digital channels [online] combined. In the current DDME, data is equally vital “offline” where the cost of interaction with a customer is much higher. By acquiring data, and using it for segmentation, targeting and measurement, marketers aim to reduce expenditures on non-valuable interactions as close as possible to zero, while ensuring that the expenditures they do make maximize the number of valuable interactions. The efficiency derived from smart use of data makes the process of marketing significantly more efficient.” 

Translated into simple English:Small businesses want to use data intelligently to target high potential customers and avoid low potential customers to maximize the return on money spent on direct mail. Unfortunately, many print shop owners ignore this because they don’t know how to deal with customer data. 

So we don’t leave you hanging…Big Data is a general term referring to data sets too humongous to be stored and managed with conventional techniques. Big Data is, for example, Amazon’s 237 million active customer accounts or the more than1 million sales transactions Walmart processes every hour. Little Data is all about you…how many calories you had for breakfast…how many minutes you watched what TV program…how often you do this…when you do that. You may not want to know that much about yourself, but there plenty of people who will do just about anything to get (and use/sell) all that information about you.

You don’t need to worry about Big Data or Little Data, but you do need to understand why and how your customers use data (or want to). There's no need to staff up or gear up to do data work…don’t waste your time and money…simply outsource all your customer data work to specialists. Differentiate your business the fast, easy and effective way by learning how to get things done rather than learning how to do them yourself.

Carpet Bombing Marketing

Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM), a.k.a "carpet bombing" marketing is very good for businesses whose target audience is geo-dependent (located in the neighborhood) and largely independent of gender and other demographics. This includes health clubs, family, fast food and takeout restaurants, car repair, veterinarians, oil change shops, etc.

When the target audience is more specific, carpet bombing becomes less effective..."men don't buy lingerie and women don't buy truck parts". For specific audiences, it's best to use a more targeted, segmented, personalized communication techniques...drone strike marketing!

Read more at PrintShopMarketing.com and EZ-VDP.com 

What's the Value of Value?

Value is invaluable!


Customers, clients, donors ... all the people you send communications ... are constantly bombarded by messages, advertising and blather. They make decisions on how to allocate their limited time and short attention spans. This is where value makes a difference.


Send them messages with value and you will command more of their time. Send them dumb stuff just to be in their face and they probably think about making you and your messages disappear... for good.


Value varies by recipient. In general, value is found in three areas:

• Information - unique or timely news, announcements, dates, etc
• Education - details, advice, tools, etc. that make life or work better, easier, etc
• Entertainment - generate smiles or laughs or stimulate thought in a positive way. 

Try a combination such as edu-tainment ... humor and education ... sort of like this blog ... maybe.


Put value in your communications and your recipients will be waiting to get your messages.

Know your audience, segment them and personalize to add value...we can help you.

PrintShopMarketing.com or EZ-VDP.com