AccuLink wins PICA Awards

Tweet PRINTING EXCELLENCE IN THE CAROLINAS RECOGNIZED

March 6, 2010 (CHARLOTTE, NC): The Printing Industry of the Carolinas, Inc. (PICA) recognized AccuLink of Greenville as a 2009 PICA Awards winner. Since 1966, the PICA Awards have been the premier symbol of excellence for the graphics industry in North and South Carolina. The PICA Awards demonstrate a company’s commitment to excellence in graphic communications.

AccuLink received four Best of Category Awards in Business Cards, Combination Finishing Techniques, Digital Printing: Booklets, and Foil Stamping, as well as two Special Judges Awards in Digital Printing: Books and Printer's Self-Promotion: Campaigns.

Winners were announced March 6, 2010, at the 43rd Annual PICA Awards Banquet, held at the Embassy Suites Golf Resort & Spa in Concord, North Carolina. The PICA Awards program is open to all printing companies in the Carolinas.

The Printing Industry of the Carolinas, Inc. (PICA) is a trade association representing the graphic communications industry in North and South Carolina. North Carolina ranks as the 14th largest state print market in the United States with $4.4 billion in sales, 889 total printing establishments and 25,709 employees. South Carolina ranks 31st in the nation with $1.8 billion in sales, 337 establishments, and 10,208 employees. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, PICA has been serving the print industry for over 75 years. For more information, visit http://www.picanet.org/.

Targeting the right prospect is crucial...

Tweet The Business Challenge

In March 2009, AccuLink’s client approached them with a unique situation: How to successfully market a home for auction during a housing downturn. Although the house, located in Beaufort County, NC, was desirable waterfront property ‐ times were tight. The average time on market was 249 days. It was the middle of a recession. And, like the rest of the nation, housing prices were way off ‐ in nearby Pitt County, they had fallen nearly 25 percent.

The client’s initial plan was to obtain Beaufort County property tax records and send out a mass mailing.

“He wanted to mail to everybody,” said Tom O’Brien, co-owner at AccuLink.

At the same time, targeting the right prospect was crucial. An auction for luxury waterfront property needed to attract a very specific segment to be successful. “He was worried about getting the right people to show up and bid on the property,” said O’Brien.

Experience told O’Brien that there was a better way to target nearby luxury home buyers. “A general property tax list wouldn’t pinpoint the exact type of buyer he wanted.” After telling his client, “I don’t think I would do that,” O’Brien suggested a different approach ‐ a targeted mailing list from USADATA.

The Solution

Instead of a scattershot approach based on property tax records, targeted mailing lists allow companies to choose the exact demographic characteristics they want their mailer to reach. In this case, O’Brien recommended that his client target high income individuals in nearby Pitt County, rather than people already living in Beaufort County. Additionally, O’Brien suggested that they filter out people who already owned a second home, figuring that they wouldn’t be in the market to purchase another one.

They started the process by using USADATA’s online QuickPick targeting. QuickPick targeting allows customers to select a pre‐defined segment representing their best prospects in just one click. For additional mailing list assistance they contacted a USADATA Data Specialist. The Specialist worked with O’Brien to further refine the mailing list and develop the count and price quote.

“It’s important to work with a mailing list company who will spend time to help you make smarter choices,” said O’Brien. “It’s a much more personalized way of doing business.”

Together, with USADATA’s help, they created a highly targeted mailing list that targeted professionals earning more than $150,000 a year in neighboring Pitt County. Selection criteria included:
· Zip code area
· Age
· Net Worth
· Interest in real estate investing

Results

The auction was an unprecedented success: The house sold for more than $100,000 more than the owners expected. O’Brien was surprised at the auction price, but, then again he’s seen how successful mailing lists from USADATA have been for his clients.

Jon Rapkin, Senior Vice‐President of Sales for USADATA, is pleased with the campaign’s success. “This case study shows the power of a targeted mailing list,” said Rapkin. “This home auction’s success was helped by reaching the right people at the right time.”

Today, the client is thrilled with his results. He was so pleased with the success from his first mailing that he’s strategizing a new direct mail campaign with AccuLink ‐ and planning to work with USADATA for their mailing list expertise.

“They are a great group of people,” says O’Brien. “They give a darn about your success.”

USAData Case Study with AccuLink

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 4

Tweet Today we bring you part four of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

Seven tips for improving your email design

In its white paper “Email Design No-Nos Guide for Nondesigners¹”, online marketing solutions provider Lyris offers advice on making sure your email graphics and design lift, rather than depress, response:

· Bear in mind that graphics are often blocked. That doesn’t mean you have to resort to text-only messages. But “when reviewing email layouts ask the designer to show two versions—one with images visible and one with the images blocked. Both need to work equally well,” Lyris suggests.

· Also bear in mind that Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) do not work with all email clients. Outlook 2007 and Gmail, for instance, ignore CSS coding created on an external file and linked to the email. Unless you use Inline CSS to format your design, your emails may not render correctly in all email clients.

· Use your alt tag copy to sell. Alt tags are the HTML code that provides alternative text (hence the name) for images that cannot be displayed. “Many marketers settle for alt tag copy that simply tells the reader how to turn the images on. In today’s environment, you can rest assured that most email users know how to do this. Instead, why not consider giving the customer a benefit to turning the image on to see what it is? Try describing the product if the image is a picture of something for sale. Or selling the event or service through copy if the image is not product-related.”

· Don’t make your call to action a graphic. That goes for phone numbers, URLs, and verbiage such as “call now” or “click here”.

· Include a call to action in the preview pane. The preview pane or window is the two- to four-inch-high space that many recipients see in their email inbox before they opt to open or discard the message. “Enewsletters should include headlines or ‘in this issue’ content teasers. Promotional emails should summarise or highlight the key value proposition and call to action. And definitely do not put any administrative items like unsubscribe or ‘add us to your email address book’ in this space at the top of your email.”

· Make the most of preheaders. Also known as snippet text, this is a brief bit of verbiage that appears in the inbox of some email clients along with the subject line. For instance, Gmail users viewing their inbox on a PC see the first few words of the email message immediately following the subject line. Outlook’s AutoPreview mode reveals a brief amount of text directly below the subject line. The text picked up by the email client is usually from the first line of the email message, so bear that in mind when crafting your messages.

· Test your emails in a variety of email clients to see how each renders the messages. By now it should be apparent that how your email appears to a recipient using Outlook isn’t necessarily how it will appear to a recipient using Yahoo! or reading the message via a mobile device. “A quick scan of your list or database report should tell you which email clients are popular with your audience,” Lyris notes. “At the very least, send tests to Outlook 2007, Gmail, and a mobile device, since these are the email clients most notorious for mangling formatting.”

¹Published: 12th May 2009
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Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 3

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Today we bring you part three of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

5 Not obvious ways to improve your email campaign

Just about everyone knows the basics of improving the effectiveness of an email campaign: keep your lists clean, make the content relevant, segment your file. But in its white paper “20 Quick Tips for Improving Your Email Programs¹,” email services provider StrongMail Systems offers some often-overlooked suggestions as well:

· Know your SNDS rating. SNDS stands for Smart Network Data Services, and according to StrongMail it’s “the Windows Live Postmaster Group’s method for reviewing your IP address(es). Microsoft has introduced the SNDS rating system as a way to fight spam, viruses and other email abuse… Microsoft provides ISPs with mail traffic data from all the domains hosted by Windows Live Mail and Hotmail. The ISPs in turn use that data to help prevent spam from being sent from their IP addresses.”

· Test your template code. “Program your email templates and test them through a rendering tool at the onset of the template introduction,” StrongMail advises. “Keep master copies of these separate from the ones reused in every mailing to avoid code corruption.” StrongMail also suggests avoiding XHTML.

· Determine your top domains and throttle accordingly. “Throttling” email is a matter of making sure you do not exceed an ISP’s limits regarding inbound mail volume or speed. Exceeding those limits can hurt your email deliverability. To ensure that you don’t, make a list of the domains that receive the bulk of your email messages, then check each one’s policies on inbound deliveries and if necessary modify your delivery rules.

· Link into feedback loops. A feedback loop (FBL) is an ISP’s report to an email sender of recipients who are reporting the sender’s messages as spam. You need to know about these complaints so that you can prove to the ISP that you are not a spammer before it blacklists you in response to the complaints. Various ISPs use different FBLs, so you need to visit the postmaster sites of each to sign up to receive the reports.

· Accommodate recipients who use handheld devices. “More and more people are using handheld devices to access their email, and for those users, it can be an aggravating experience thumb-scrolling through dozens of HTML links before they ever see your first image or text block related to the message content,” StrongMail reports. It offers two ways to accommodate these recipients, though “in either case, you will need to include language at the top of the message and a link to encourage them to click through”: 


1. Program a text message in the text window of your campaign management application. Use the recipient agent data to determine what browser was used to open the message, then flag that recipient record as a handheld user and always send that recipient text.

2. Host the HTML version of your message and ask handheld users to click to view the HTML.

¹Published: 15th April 2008
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Tune in Thursday, January 28 for Part 4: Seven tips for improving your email design.

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 2

Tweet Today we bring you part two of a four-part series highlighting tips for successful email marketing.

Ten tips for improved email deliverability

Email can be a highly cost-effective marketing tool—assuming your emails make it to their destination. To improve the likelihood of your messages getting through, email services provider Silverpop offers a number of suggestions:

1. Minimize spam complaints. That’s commonsensical enough; but how? For starters, be sure to send emails only to permission-based lists, and make it easy for recipients to unsubscribe. “Don’t send unexpected mail,” writes Silverpop in its white paper “Email Delivery Rates Above 95 Percent: 16 ‘Must Dos’ to Make It Happen”¹. “If subscribers opted in to receive your ‘Tips & Tricks’ newsletter, don’t suddenly start sending them your pure product promotion emails, unless they clearly requested them.” Avoid exclamation points in your subject lines, flashing red type fonts and anything else that smacks of spam.

2. Validate email addresses at the opt-in stage. According to Silverpop, you can add code to your sign-up forms that detects typos and incomplete addresses and then notifies the subscriber of the mistake immediately.

3. Make sure your coding is accurate and standardized and that your messages render properly in a variety of formats. Before sending an email, view it on multiple platforms and web browsers, with images on and off. In addition, a number of software programs are available to check your messages and templates for coding, content and other elements that could lead to a spam filter or an ISP blocking them.

4. Unless your email volume is very low or sporadic, use a dedicated IP address. If you share an IP address with other senders of email—even if those senders are other divisions within your company—you could find emails blocked or blacklisted because of problems in messages that they send.

5. Authenticate your messages with the major protocols. Many of the major ISPs check messages for authentication with Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Sender ID and increasingly, Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM). Your IT staff or email service provider can help with this.

6. Use your company or brand name in the “from” line. While you’re at it, make sure the message line is clear. “Avoid overly aggressive subject lines. What might work in direct mail may get you a high spam complaint rate in email.”

7. Keep your list clean. Remove hard-bouncing addresses—those that are nonexistent or blocked—immediately, as well as any addresses that have generated a spam complaint. And don’t retry soft bounces—failed deliveries due to a full mailbox, an unavailable server or another temporary reason—repeatedly. “Most email marketing systems are set to retry bounces from one to three times over the course of about three days,” according to Silverpop. “Many systems will also not retry at all to certain ISPs such as AOL.” Don’t exceed those rules of thumb.

8. Comply with ISP throttling limits. This is how many messages can be sent within a given time frame, and the limits vary by ISP.

9. Monitor your sender reputation. Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Services (SNDS) provides a summary of how Hotmail/Livemail perceives a sender’s IP address; many other ISPs offer feedback loops, listings of recipients who are reporting a sender’s messages as spam. Sign up to receive these.

10. Track your delivery rates and related metrics. At the very least, monitor hard bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes, any blacklists you may have been added to and inbox delivery rates by ISP.

¹Published: 30th September 2008
Article Link

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Tune in Monday, January 25 for Part 3: 5 Not obvious ways to improve your email campaign.

Good Practices in Email Marketing Series Part 1

Tweet As we work on pURL campaigns for clients that involve email marketing, we often find ourselves educating our clients on the best practices needed in order to garner the success expected. In the following four-part series, we will share with you what we have learned through our research in email marketing and how valuable it can be in helping educate your clients.

Quick pointers for better email marketing

In the July 2009 issue of Catalogue e-business¹, DotMailer’s business development director, Tink Taylor, takes an in-depth look at his company’s Hitting the Mark 2009 benchmark report on marketing email. Here are his top five email marketing tips for retailers:

1) Include “forward to a friend” and “add to social networks” links. Half of the marketers surveyed in the benchmark study failed to include any kind of viral link in their emails. Yet viral and word-of-mouth marketing is an inexpensive way to spread your marketing messages, drive traffic, collect contact information, and ultimately boost sales.

2) Personalize your greeting. Seventy percent of the emails reviewed failed to open with a personalized greeting—even though such personalization has been proven to significantly improve both open and click-through rates.

3) Check renderability before sending. Nineteen percent of recipients will delete an email unread if it fails to display properly—and only 20 percent of the emails reviewed rendered correctly in every type of email account.

4) Make sure your template has a good balance of text to images. As well as helping your campaign to pass spam filters, this ensures that an email is readable when an email server switches off the images.

5) Present a clear call to action. The key to the success of an email campaign is to help recipients answer three questions: Who is the email from? What’s in it for them? What should they do next? Provide clear guidance on what you expect a recipient to do once he has read your email—click through to a product page, forward to a friend, contact someone in your sales department, request a catalogue.

¹Published: 9th June 2009
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Tune in Thursday, January 21 for Part 2: Ten tips for improved email.

Selling “Print” in the “Digital” Age

Tweet Bringing today’s technology to your clients can be rewarding and profitable. Selling technology can be daunting and difficult due to many hurdles that must be overcome. If printers are to survive and succeed we must tackle this challenge. With everything in our industry becoming commoditized it is very difficult to maintain profitability selling print alone on such thin margins. Don’t just sell print. Sell solutions. Technology is the key.

Print is the necessary evil all business people must buy to communicate. The first challenge is to get beyond what they think they need based on their understanding of print. You must also get beyond their perception of your role in their business as a printer. You must become a communication solutions provider.

The next step is to introduce and help them understand how technology can cut some of their internal expenses associated with buying print or gain better ROI in a marketing campaign. With that you can justify a higher margin because what you offer is an overall better solution that achieves the goal. The question shouldn’t be “what print items do you need?” It should be “what are you trying to accomplish?” What obstacles are you encountering along the way?” these are the types of questions that can get you an entire body of business rather than just an order for business cards, forms or envelopes.

Probing questions help you to understand the client and gain a larger perspective on what benefit you may be able to offer them. Through this you are better prepared to recommend solutions to minimize their pain and achieve their goals more quickly. It is no longer just selling ink on paper. You must sell yourself as a knowledgeable, trustworthy business partner in fulfilling their business communication needs and objectives. Do this well and you will also succeed in your objectives.

Now for more about the technology part. Maybe you don’t feel you know enough about how to use it to help your clients. PURLS, Storefronts, QR Codes, oh my. Perhaps you feel a bit overwhelmed yourself. What do you do? You must educate yourself about Industry trends and new technologies constantly as these things are changing daily.

Relax though and remember, it is more important that you learn the benefits of these technologies than the details of how it all works. There are many great resources available to assist you with the details so you can sell the benefit and the print. One great place to start is this blog and our website www.acculink.com.

Embrace technology as the powerful tool it is. Be creative or look to those that are and learn from them. Learn all you can. Demonstrate the benefits to your clients of working smarter and more efficiently. The value you bring and the savings you show your customer in these new solutions allow you to increase your margins justifiably. You will no longer be selling commodities. You will be selling solutions.