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

The title of this blog post could have just as easily been, “How an NDSU Bison National Championship Football Win turned into a Salvation Army Donation,” but that title is way too long. Another way-too-long option: “How a Friendly Wager Turned into a Win-Win-Win!” Setting the Stage As the 2017 college football season reached the playoff stage, the top two teams at the FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) level were the James Madison Dukes, and Fargo’s own North Dakota State University Bison. Long story short, these two teams (ranked #1 and #2) were the last teams standing and therefore met for the FCS championship game. It turns out that one of our customers, Dick Olyench of Spectrum Printing in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is a pretty big JMU fan. No surprise, because he’s the father of two JMU alums. The Deal Was Made Once Dick realized that his team was going to go helmet-to-helmet with ours, he became a betting man! The deal was made: if NDSU won, Dick would provide a pizza party for the team here at Marketing Ideas For Printers. If JMU won, we would pick up the phone and order pizza for the “Happy Printers” over at Spectrum Printing.

One of our favorite stories about Printer@Work (the email newsletter available for use with each website provided by Marketing Ideas For Printers) goes something like this: One of our customers (a printer) told us how their customer (a print buyer) replied to a Printer@Work email the printer had sent. The customer’s email simply asked the printer to print X number of items for them. Talk about a great sales story! The printer sends an email newsletter, and the subscriber gets the email and thinks, “I need to order more printing. I’ll just reply to this email!” It’s pretty obvious that the email newsletter made a trustworthy connection that ended with selling more printing! What Goes Around Come Around Guess what? It happened again! A recent issue of Printer@Work was sent out with the Uncommon Product featuring Mini Brochures, like this: One of our printer customers told us one of their customers noticed that Uncommon Product article and thought printing mini brochures for their company was a pretty good idea. They asked our customer, “Could you send us a sample of what that looks like? We want our company to use mini brochures.” Our printer customer wanted to put a printed sample in

What does the year 2018 hold for the community of printers? Here are five of our bold predictions for what will separate successful printers from struggling printers in 2018. 1) Less Competition in Your Mailbox Let’s face it; there’s not as much mail being sent these days. In the U.S. mail volume dropped from a recent high of 212.2 billion mail pieces in 2007 down to 154.2 billion mail pieces in 2016. Same thing in Canada: The volume of transactional mail in Canada dropped from a high of 5.5 billion mail pieces in 2006 down to 3.4 billion in 2016. Successful printers will realize there’s less competition in the mailbox and see this as an opportunity to make an appearance in that empty mailbox and rise above the noise. They’ll allocate resources towards the execution of a regular monthly direct mail marketing campaign. Struggling printers will view the decline in mailpieces as a trend, and decide to participate in that trend rather than take advantage of the opportunity it offers. 2) Popularity of Shopping Online Expands The comfort of shopping without leaving your desk usually trumps the need to gas up the car and make a trip to the mall. Bumping into someone

Improve Your SEO in 3 Simple Steps, Websites, Marketing Ideas For Printers

Remember when you first heard the acronym SEO? Probably not, because it’s such a part of our language these days. You almost certainly know that SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, but we’re going to go beyond the “tried and true” definition and give it new meaning today! Here’s why: You have the desire to remain competitive on the web, but the world of SEO is always changing. You know enough to know SEO is important, but don’t have the time (or money) to keep up. Here’s a plan to improve your SEO in three simple, acronym-based steps: “S” (Seen) What good is content that no one sees?! Did you know we provide Ideas Collection tip articles every month? Printer@Work twice a month? White papers? All of that content has one objective: to get you seen. Pro tip: The content is there, now let your customers know! When you learn from us that new content is available on your site – run with it! Promote your new content to your customers through email campaigns and social media marketing. “E” (Experience and Expertise) You don’t need to waste hours trying to keep up with ever-changing technology. With over 30

five things im thankful for, Odyssey, Print MIS, Marketing Ideas For Printers

Here’s a quote that has really impacted me in recent days: …there’s a danger in overfocusing on the finish line. When you do, you lose the power of seeing how far you’ve come. ~ Jon Acuff When working on a project as big as Odyssey, our Print MIS, that finish line can be elusive. The truth is, there is no finish line for Odyssey because it makes its home in the cloud. The cloud is never “done.” Instead, the cloud allows for a neverending stream of updates that will enable Odyssey to grow well past any finish line. Finish lines are so limiting! There is no finish line, but there’s a definite starting point, and in the spirit of this season of thanks, when I look back at the starting line I see so many things I’m thankful for. When looking through the lens of the work we do here at Marketing Ideas For Printers, here are five things I’m grateful for this Thanksgiving season. Our wonderful team. There’s power in numbers, and there’s super-power in a team that’s united for a common purpose! The support of Odyssey’s Early Adopters. These are Odyssey’s very first customers; we would have never been able

Here at Marketing Ideas For Printers, we value marketing content. Because we value content so highly, we value the people that create and manage that content. That means we value Rachel a lot! Now it’s time for you to meet Rachel, the Marketing Director here at Marketing Ideas For Printers, and find out why she’s such an important part of our team. Rachel’s Path to Marketing Ideas For Printers Every step of Rachel’s life seemed to bring her closer to her current role as the Marketing Ideas For Printers Marketing Director. In fact, Rachel’s path to Marketing Ideas For Printers started back when she was just a child! My first connection with Marketing Ideas For Printers began in the late 80s when my mom worked for Mike Stevens (the founder of Marketing Ideas For Printers) at Express Press as a typesetter. In the late 90s, I, too, went to work for Mike and Dave Hultin at Express Press, both in the high-speed copy department and then as a project manager. About ten years ago, I connected with Dave Hultin again (his wife, Judy, works with my mom) and came back to work for Marketing Ideas For Printers first as the

A successful Print 17 is in the history books, and all the activity surrounding the event has now been assigned the status of “memory.” To help keep those memories alive, here are my Top 10 takeaways, reflections, and observations of Print 17, which ran from September 10-14, 2017 in the south hall of Chicago’s McCormick Place. #1: The show’s footprint is much smaller. One of my very first experiences as an exhibitor was “way back when” at Print 01. That show filled up both sides of McCormick Place. Of course, that show was overshadowed by the events of the original 9/11, so there’s no way at all to make a fair “then” and “now” comparison. However, excluding the events of 9/11, it’s easy to see that the current version of the show is much different than it was back in 2001. The footprint of today’s show doesn’t fill both halls, it fills just two-thirds of one of the halls. Things change. For the Print show, that’s not necessarily better or worse, it’s just different. Don’t ever count on today being the same as yesterday. Be prepared to adapt to a changing environment and an unknown future. #2: Chicago-style pizza tastes best

Odyssey, MIS, Marketing Ideas For Printers, How Much Does Odyssey Cost?

The countdown is on to Print 2017! Soon, from September 10th through the 14th, our team from Marketing Ideas For Printers will be in Chicago, claiming Booth 351 as our temporary home away from home. Last year at GraphExpo we presented a preview of Odyssey, an all-in-one Marketing, Web-To-Print, and Print MIS system. One year later, we’re ready to show how Odyssey is ready for you, and that’s exciting! Where Do Your Customers Shop? We know it’s important to you to be where your customers are. With more and more of your clients online than ever before, you need a solution that meets them where they’re at. After all, according to a Pew Research Center study published in December 2016, …roughly eight-in-ten Americans are now online shoppers. (Source: pewinternet.org: Online Shopping and E-Commerce) But where your customers shop online and where your team works are two different places. Now, you can close that gap between where your customers order printing online and where your team manages those tasks that make printing happen because Odyssey is a Print MIS that lives online in a web browser. When that gap gets closed, you and your team get to experience the efficiency you’ve been aiming for, and

Last week, my wife dropped her iPhone. She was upstairs, and I was downstairs when I heard the phone hit the floor. This was not your ordinary phone drop; this was the phone’s life-ending “thud!” I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to replace her phone, and it was because of one easy change: flexible pricing. That’s the starting point for the video below (4:28), which explains the new, flexible pricing for websites from Marketing Ideas For Printers. Flexible Pricing Summary: Gone are the three incremental levels of bundles (the Start, Grow, and Conquer bundles). In their place are bundles designed to serve specific purposes. This new pricing structure will take effect for existing customers on January 1, 2018. We’re telling you now, so you have plenty of time to find the right combination of add-ons that work for you. And, if you don’t make any changes by January 1, that’s no problem; we’ll just roll over your current add-ons into the new pricing plan at that time. However, the transition to this flexible pricing also coincides with some other important changes, so you’ll want to keep reading to see how these changes affect you. A Time-Sensitive DesignEdit Upgrade Offer Summary:

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