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
We received notification from one of our content partners, alerting us of their decision to discontinue distribution of twice-weekly content from Consumer Reports. For you, that means the Consumer Reports content that is linked to your Printer@Work email newsletter will be phased out. Here are some dates for you to be aware of: The last Consumer Reports content that will be published to your website will appear September 6, 2017. The last issue of Printer@Work that links to that Consumer Reports content on your website (including all archived content) will be delivered September 19, 2017. Future issues (delivered after September 19, 2017) will no longer link to the Consumer Reports content on your website. The archived content will be available on your website through September 29, 2017. Even though Consumer Reports is making an exit, your subscribers will continue to enjoy articles and cartoons from Close to Home, Bottom Liners, Non-Sequitur, Focus on the Family, and this gem from Moderately Confused:
Back in December 2010, Canada passed a sweeping anti-spam law that entered into force on July 1, 2014. The super-short version of the law that’s important to our Canadian printers is this: Before sending any electronic messages, you are required to have the consent (permission) of the recipient. (Note that “electronic messages” means more than email; it also includes messages sent to social networking accounts and text messages sent to a cell phone.) At this point, you may be thinking, “It’s 2017, and this is old news. Why are you telling me this now?” Well, although you may already be aware of the law, what you may not be aware of is that this new law is wrapping up a “breaking in” period of three years, with the full force of the law taking effect this summer. Starting July 1, 2017, individuals or organizations affected by those violating the law will be able to pursue court actions to seek actual and statutory damages (up to $1 million for individuals, and $10 million for business). Some Quick Tips To make sure you’re prepared, here are some quick tips to help you navigate Canada’s anti-spam law: If you obtained express consent from your recipient before the law went into effect
If you’re looking for a creative way to grow your business with a loyal following of print customers, you’ll want to check out the Printer@Work email newsletter! The Choice is Yours The Printer@Work newsletter is emailed on your behalf on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month, and contains ten minutes of fun, engaging content that your audience will look forward to reading. Each issue includes an inspirational letter from the owner, a humorous business cartoon, marketing tips, useful ideas, tech tips, and unique print products. Have your own content you want to include? No problem. You have the control to completely customize the Printer@Work newsletter to suit you, or you can use the quality content provided and take more of a hands-off approach. Great Content and More Printer@Work also increases traffic to your website with links to your homepage and “sticky” areas, such as the Ideas Collection and Fun@Work. Check out this example of a recent inspirational article, “The Boots.” Here’s a comical story that anyone who has taken care of small children can relate to… One day, a kindergarten teacher was helping a student who was struggling to put his winter boots on. The teacher was pulling and the
If the toughest part of business is landing that new customer, the second toughest part is getting them to come back! The innovative Printer@Work email newsletter helps you sell more printing by generating that much-needed repeat business, with style! This time-tested feature has been a part of our websites for more than 12 years, with more than 300 publications produced. This subtle marketing tool is a win-win proposition: your customers get to enjoy the educational and entertaining content, and you get to stay front-and-center in their mind so that the next time they need to get started on a new printing project, you will naturally be their first choice. With a regular delivery schedule and consistently valuable content that your customers and prospects actually look forward to getting, the Printer@Work email newsletter helps you sell printing to your customers again and again. A Simple Idea with Powerful Results The idea is simple: each issue includes a thoughtful, uplifting message as a “message from the owner”. For example, a recent issue showed the Seven Wonders of the World through the eyes of a child: “to touch, to taste, to see, to hear, to run, to laugh, and to love!”, wrapping up with
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
Some Websites For Printers clients have recently received a notice from Getty Images regarding the use of one of their copyrighted photos in the Printer@Work email newsletter. In this letter, Getty is requesting a settlement amount of a few hundred to, in some cases, over a thousand dollars for the “unlicensed” use of this image. This has prompted a number of calls to our office asking for advice/resolution in this matter. Here are the nuts-to-bolts facts in this matter: All of the content provided on your website by Marketing Ideas for Printers is licensed by us for your use on your Websites For Printers.com website, The Buzz social media feeds, and Ink Inc. direct mail marketing newsletters. Because of this, rest assured, you are completely and legally in the right here. The content in question (a photo of a mother and daughter in front of a washing machine) that has triggered the “Getty Letter” is provided for use by a syndication service we use for the Consumer Reports publication. This image is licensed for distribution through the syndicator’s feeds, and it is completely legal for you to display this image on your website as per our syndication agreement. In recent months,
Let’s get the play on words straight right from the start. Moderately Confused is a cartoon, and it’s been added to all Websites For Printers websites! Here are a few samples: Moderately Confused is described as: A whimsical, slice-of-life view into life’s fool-hardy moments. That pretty much nails it! You’ll find the Moderately Confused cartoon in the Fun@Work section of your website, which is promoted through the Printer@Work email newsletter. Here’s where you can view more Moderately Confused cartoons, on one of our Websites For Printers public demo websites. We love all the cartoons in Fun@Work; they provide fun, “sticky” content that always entertains website visitors! Keen eyes that visit Fun@Work will notice something missing: the cartoon Kit ‘n’ Caryle is no longer in the lineup because its creator, Larry Wright, has retired. In its place, we welcome Moderately Confused to our content lineup! You’ll love this stream of fresh comedic content, but there’s so much more. Did you know there are over 78 pages of content added to Websites For Printers website every single month? Check out the complete content lineup found on Websites For Printers websites.
I truly can’t get enough of graphic design. There’s always something new to learn, and often times it seems there’s more than one way to get successful results. Some routes save more time than others and, incredibly, the time saved using Adobe Illustrator’s Symbolism Tool can be measured in hours. Wow! That’s pretty amazing, no matter how you look at it. The Symbolism Tool helps you create elaborate, professional designs that use the same graphic element with varying colors options, sizes, positions, opacities, and tints. It takes something tedious and frustrating and condenses it down to a few simple, easy steps. No matter what your experience level is with Adobe Illustrator, this tool is incredibly quick to learn and user-friendly. My first exposure to the Symbolism Tool was in creating the design for the newest Design Tip added to each Websites For Printers website’s Ideas Collection: Add Some Sparkle to Your Next Design With the Illustrator Symbolism Tool. As I was working on this Design Tip I was pleasantly surprised by the versatility and power found in the Symbolism Tool. With a few simple clicks I was able to create visually stunning design both quickly and easily. It was exciting for me to learn about this new tool. I have