Dave Hultin, Author at Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

We’ve all been there. The photo that looked perfect when you took it looks a whole lot different when you’re ready to print it. And if you have been in that position, it’s not a big stretch to think that your customers have been in that position too. Now, armed with this new Tech Tip, you can restore faith in humanity and faith in photography! This newest Tech Tip, titled Spot, Heal, Clone: The Perfect Combination, now appears in the Ideas Collection on all websites provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers. With this tip, your website visitor will receive a good introduction to the power available in Photoshop’s Spot Healing Brush and Clone Stamp Tool. They’ll be digitally removing dirt and fixing cracks in walls in no time! Here’s how Spot, Heal, Clone: The Perfect Combination is presented on one of our public demo websites. If you feel like you’re missing out on great content like this, we invite you to experience it for yourself by requesting your own personal demo website. [sc name=”start demo button”]

When you, as a printer, can help set up your print-buying customers for success, they’ll share their success with you! 5 Must-Haves in Every Layout has the kind of information your customers need to be successful in their design efforts. It is the newest Design Tip added to the Ideas Collection on the websites provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers. This tip explores five “must do” items that will help your customers create eye-catching design, including: Engage the Reader Guide the Reader’s Eye Find the Natural Focal Point Balance the Composition Go For a More Asymmetrical Design This informative tip article will help your customers create successful design by themselves, and will also keep you in the front of their minds if they have a need for more help. For printers using websites from Marketing Ideas For Printers, this new tip is found in the Design Tips section of the Ideas Collection. (Not using a website from Marketing Ideas For Printers? You can see the tip here on one of our demo websites.)

All-in-one Print MIS, Web-2-Print and Marketing solution changes the way printers do business. ORLANDO, FL, Sept. 25 – There was a time when taking print orders over the web meant re-entering that information into the Print MIS (management information system) and added time and errors to a printer’s day. Today, Marketing Ideas for Printers (MI4P) announced the alpha release of “Odyssey,” the codename for its new Print MIS designed to end printers’ double-entry dilemma. MI4P is previewing Odyssey at Graph Expo Sept. 25-28 in Orlando. “With Odyssey, we’re staying true to our mission to help printers sell more printing,” says Dave Hultin, President, MI4P. “Eliminating the double-entry headache that has plagued printers is important, but Odyssey will provide value all along the print buying cycle – before, during, and after the print order.” That’s because Odyssey is designed from the ground up to be more than “just” a print MIS. “With Odyssey, the website IS the print MIS,” Hultin says. “Entries made on the web form are automatically updated on the MIS side. If pricing or a schedule changes within the MIS side, the changes are automatically reflected for the print buyer.” In addition, Odyssey expands the scope of Print MIS

How many customer lists are you currently maintaining? One of your most valuable customer lists is the one in your print management information system (Print MIS). After all, that’s where you’re keeping track of everyone that’s placing orders, and everyone that’s paying you for the privilege of doing business with you. That’s a pretty significant list! When do you add people to that list? Do you add them to your Print MIS before they order printing from you? No, because that’s when they’re on your prospecting list. However, that’s also a pretty significant list because, after all, that’s where your customers are coming from. Prospecting for Print Buyers How do you turn prospects into print buyers? It starts by building relationships. Think back even further. How do you build relationships? By telling your story and starting a conversation with your prospect. Consider this: If your goal is to turn your prospects into customers, and your customers are managed by your Print MIS, doesn’t it make sense for your Print MIS to manage the marketing campaigns that target those prospects (i.e. your soon-to-be customers!) right from the start? Shouldn’t your prospect list and your customer list be managed together, as one list? We think so, which is why

Typography is SO important! You know it, and now you can make sure your customers and website visitors know it, too! 5 Rules for Readability with Type is the newest tip added to the Ideas Collection on the websites provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers. The five rules presented in this tip include: Keep typography simple. Stay consistent. Use upper and lower case. Keep lines short and add white space. Use serifs. These rules are presented to your customer in a format that includes examples on why the rule is important, and how to implement each rule in practical, day-to-day usage. For printers using websites from Marketing Ideas For Printers, this new tip can be found in the Print Tips section of the Ideas Collection. (Not using a website from Marketing Ideas For Printers? You can see the tip here on one of our demo websites.)

We’ve heard over and over again about the challenges printers face when they receive an order online and then need to re-enter the same information into their print management information systems (Print MIS). Copy-paste makes the job easier, of course, but who wants to sit around copying and pasting all day when you could be spending that time working and selling more printing? Odyssey Changes Everything! “Odyssey” is the new Print MIS we’ll be revealing at Graph Expo, and Odyssey changes everything! Odyssey powers not only the Print MIS but also the order forms on your website. Any information your customers provide when they place an order on your website instantly and seamlessly becomes data in Odyssey. With Odyssey, your website is your MIS, and that means no more double entry! When your website and your Print MIS are two different systems, online print orders look like this: But when Odyssey eliminates double entry by keeping all of your data in the same system, the process flows smoothly, like a peaceful stream, like this: Six touchpoints are reduced to TWO! Not only is double entry eliminated, the whole workflow is streamlined, communication with your customer is more efficient, and you get more done

A print management information system (or Print MIS) helps printers manage their day-to-day production activities. Would you agree that a Print MIS should connect you with your print-buying customers from the time an order is placed until the time an order is completed? That’s common ground that we can all agree on pretty easily. Would you also agree that you should be communicating with your prospects and customers even when they aren’t ordering printing? Once again we can all come to a pretty quick agreement. Communication is, of course, important. It’s what leads to relationships. You can (and should) be building a relationship with your customers and prospects even before production begins, before they place their very first order! And after the job is complete, you can (and should) continue nurturing and growing those relationships with your customers to make sure they come back to place even more orders! Limits of a Traditional Print MIS What if your Print MIS not only managed your interactions with your customers during the production of their print jobs, but it also helped you communicate with your customers and prospects before and after the time they were buying printing? If your Print MIS removed the “before” barrier,

At some point in your life, we suspect that your mother (or someone else equally influential) taught you the value of sharing. Virtual sharing on the internet isn’t quite the same as the physical sharing our moms taught us, but it’s still important. The importance of sharing is what brings us to today’s big update: sharing the high-quality content on your website from Marketing Ideas For Printers is now a much bigger deal, thanks to a recent website update! Here’s what we mean. Take a look at these pages on a Marketing Ideas For Printers’ website: The Ideas Collection Greatest Treasures Sales and Marketing White Papers These are high-value areas on each website that receive new content from Marketing Ideas For Printers on an ongoing basis, so you’ll want to make sure this content gets shared! Here are two ways to make your mom proud and make sure everything gets shared: 1) You do the Sharing Every time new content shows up in these areas, you’ll want to share the new content through your social media channels. The new sharing icons on those pages make it super-easy to share the content with your social media friends, followers, and connections. Go to your website and give it a

One of our core values at Marketing Ideas For Printers is Positive Attitude. A slightly longer version of that core value reads like this: Positive Attitude: We find the best in every experience. It’s easy to “find the best” in good experiences, but we desire to find the best in every experience, including the not-so-good experiences. We had one of those not-so-good experiences happen a little over a year ago when a customer left us. Finding The Best Gut check. What just happened? Why did they leave us? Their answer: they were frustrated that their website wasn’t communicating with the technology they used to manage production. They wanted a website that communicated with their Print Management Information System (Print MIS). They wanted the efficiencies that would result when a website and a Print MIS can have a two-way digital conversation with each other. What they wanted wasn’t happening. That was the moment we said, “We can never be in that position again. A lack of integration with a Print MIS can never again be the reason we lose a customer.” Print MIS Integrations How do we “never be in that position again” and get our websites and Print MIS talking with each other? We could pursue integrations with existing Print MIS systems, but we’ve been

You will soon witness a landmark number: the 300th issue of the Printer@Work email newsletter! (Printer@Work is an email newsletter available to all Websites For Printers website clients.) Wow! 300 issues! Let’s make that number more real. Newsletter content is provided for delivery on the first and third Tuesday of each month. 300 issues ÷ 2 issues per month = 150 months, or 12-1/2 years. That’s a pretty good run! Each issue contains a unique original cartoon called T.G.I.Monday. Those cartoons start as a pencil sketch, which is then colorized by our design team. Each colorization takes, on average, 45 minutes. 300 issues x 45 minutes = 13,500 minutes (or 225 hours, or 9.375 days) dedicated to bringing the line art drawing to life with color. We always provide the default content, but our customers are encouraged to customize that content. The 300 issues of Printer@Work have been converted to custom newsletters 6,080 times. How many people receive Printer@Work? A lot. 146,111 at the time of this writing, to be exact. And it takes a while to send the newsletter to that many subscribers! When we hit the “send” button on behalf of our subscribers, Printer@Work takes about 6.5 hours to get all 146,111 issues delivered from start to finish. In case you’re

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