MI4P Fun Stuff Archives - Marketing, content, & technology to help printers sell more printing

Marketing Ideas For Printers, MIS, Meet the Team: Justin Carlson, Team

What do you get when you combine the words “creative” and “analytical”? You get “create-alitical,” and that’s the word Justin Carlson on our Customer Care Team uses to describe himself. Justin is our resident comedian. He’s the guy that ensures there’s at least one light-hearted moment at every company meeting. He is quick to listen, eager to help, and seems to have an endless supply of unique ways to solve a problem. I enjoy innovating, creating something new, as well as educating and helping our customers use our services. I’m happiest when I’m connecting people with transformative ideas through creative ways. If you’ve ever called us or emailed us for help with your website, you’ve no doubt had the experience of working with Justin in some capacity. What you may not know is that Justin is responsible for building our latest company website at MarketingIdeasForPrinters.com and is an excellent videographer. In fact, when asked what his favorite project at MI4P has been so far, he says: So far, my favorite company project has been looking at old company photos while making a company history video. Justin has the unique ability of offering as much hand-holding as you need when you’re

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

Raise your hand if you’ve ever been the victim of poor communication. I’m pretty sure I just saw every hand go up. It happened to me last month when I was helping my elderly mother with some loose ends on a recent transition from a senior living community to a skilled, long-term care facility. Here’s the play-by-play: Imagine drawing a line representing “acceptable” when evaluating care facilities. Touchmark, the senior living community my mother recently left, is way above that line on the care they give. On a scale of 1 to 100, I’d rank them at 99. Even with a stellar score like that, like all of us, there’s still room for improvement if you look hard enough. Here’s what I found when I pulled out my “improvement” microscope. My mother’s departure meant her initial deposit needed to be refunded by Touchmark. That deposit was returned to me by certified mail. While certified mail sounds like a good, reliable option, Touchmark could have given me the opportunity to come pick up the deposit at their facility. When Mom lived in Touchmark, I went there often. At the very least, taking a moment to notice the address that the deposit

You’ve probably wondered what real snail mail would look like. (OK, maybe you haven’t!) In either case, we think you’ll get a kick out of knowing that email delivered by real snails exists at www.realsnailmail.net. Image courtesy www.realsnailmail.net

We’ll soon be headed to Chicago for Graph Expo, and we’d like to show off your real-world Ink Inc. direct mail advertising pieces at our booth! We’re giving away up to fifteen $25 Starbucks or Amazon.com gift cards (your choice!) to Ink Inc. customers that send us samples of their Ink Inc. direct mail advertising as it’s being used in the real world. Here’s How to Get Your Gift Card(s) We are looking for customers of each printable Ink Inc. product (Printer’s Press, Business Forum, FastStart, ColorMatters, and Dingbat/Coffee Break) to send 25 to 50 printed pieces. We’ll take the first three submissions in each product lineup. The first step: Contact Rachel Nies (Rachel@MarketingIdeasForPrinters.com, or 800-736-0688 x 7014) to let her know what Ink Inc. package (or packages) you’ll be providing samples for. We’ll take the first three requests for each package. The guidelines: One customer may submit multiple packages. You’ll receive a gift card for each package you submit. The sample collection may all be provided from one issue, but we’d prefer that your samples include several issues. Sending your samples to us means that you’re giving us permission to distribute those samples to visitors at Graph Expo. Samples must be delivered to us by Monday, September 6, 2015.

Around this time of the year in Fargo we all start wondering when winter will end. Yes, we know when the calendar says it will end, but it really ends when the last pile of snow disappears! That might happen quickly, because the past three days we’ve tied or broke the record high for the daily temperature, and we’re going for a fourth day today! That’s a 36-inch yardstick stuck in the snow. It’s at the 19-inch mark now; we’ll declare winter to be over when the snow pile disappears! Let us know, when do you think winter will be done in Fargo?

Have you ever had that feeling that things are “just a little too comfortable?” Your day is predictable. Your next move is on auto-pilot. All of a sudden, you’re in a rut. I found myself in one of those ruts with the way I used my computer, and that’s why I decided to replace my Windows computer with a Mac. This isn’t a “platform war” post on Macs vs. PCs, it’s simply a statement that my day was getting too comfortable and predictable using Windows. I needed to “think different” again and find new inspiration in what would otherwise be a predictable routine. Plus, I’m a Mac guy at heart, so I was looking forward to returning to the Mac! OK, maybe this post has just a hint of “platform war” in it! 🙂 Well, it worked! I broke up the routine on how I used my computer, and learned several new things along the way! Here’s one of my favorite discoveries: One of the biggest challenges was dropping down from two separate displays with Windows to just one on the Mac. (I purchased a 27-inch iMac. It has a beautiful large display, but it was still smaller than the combined

Yes, we’re taking a bit of liberty with that song. Quite a bit, actually … but it’s all in the name of fun seasonal cheer! Last year marked the first time Marketing Ideas For Printers employees experienced the company’s version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was so much fun we decided to make it a tradition! Here’s how we do the Twelve Days of Christmas as Marketing Ideas For Printers: We start by counting backwards 12 working days from Christmas Eve. That’s December 9th this year, and we call that the First Day of Christmas. On that day, each employee gets a gift that ties in with the number one. It may be silly, serious, practical, whimsical … it really can be anything! The next day (the Second Day of Christmas) everyone gets a gift related to the number two. You see the pattern here…we keep going with each of the twelve days of Christmas. We’ve used 10-gallon storage containers, 5-dollar gift cards, an 8-pack of batteries … the possibilities really are endless. Our team has a lot of fun with it, and the team’s families enjoy trying to guess what each day’s gift will be. Here’s a

I love the World Series! I get caught up in the excitement of baseball’s last hurrah, and even though the busyness of work and life means baseball’s regular season goes mostly unnoticed, I’ll turn on the TV to see the last few games of the season. Turning on the TV. A quick push of the button is all it takes to watch the World Series. We’re so spoiled! Early baseball fans would be amazed! Just look at the lengths broadcasters went through to allow fans to “watch” the World Series. Here’s a picture of the “playograph” that kept spectators updated on the progress of the game, with more-or-less real time details relayed by two playograph operators: Early Baseball Simulations If you’re a baseball fan like me, you’ll love this entertaining read about the playograph and other early devices used to simulate baseball games: How Did Baseball Fans Watch the World Series Before TV? At the highest level, yesterday’s playograph and today’s TV do the exact same thing. They provide baseball fans with the most up-to-date game details available. Printing is Like That Too When I was reading that article I couldn’t help but think that printing is kinda like that too. Yesterday’s fax orders have been replaced by

Do you value excellence in your organization? You kinda have to answer “Yes” to that question, don’t you? Chris Locurto is one of my go-to leadership experts, and Chris wrote a blog post that explores the idea of excellence. It’s a two-minute read. Give it a look: Excellence is Created, Not Demanded. Here’s one of the points Chris makes: …put a process in place so people have the ability to point out how other team members are being excellent. Let your team brag on each other. Make sure that you’re continuing to share this message with everyone. If you will do this, people will go out of their way to be excellent. The Excellence Award Here’s how we do it at Marketing Ideas For Printers. Whenever someone on our team catches someone doing something right, they present an Excellence Award. It goes like this. If anyone on our team notices excellence, they take an Excellence Award sheet (shown below on our Employee Communications Wire) and fill it out with the award winner’s name and what excellent thing they noticed the winner doing. The person presenting the award calls a company meeting to present the award. We listen to the presentation, clap and whistle