July 19, 2011- Fort Lauderdale, FL-Kaylin Printing and Promotional Products, a full-service printing and promotional products company, is proud to announce its 20th anniversary. Through the years, they have built a solid reputation of growing their clients’ businesses by providing a wide range of services and creative strategies that exceed expectations. The anniversary is accompanied by numerous community and industry awards, which consolidates the position of the Miramar based company as a leader in its sector.

“We ask how our services can exceed our customers’ expectations every day,” said Laurie Woodward-Garcia, president and founder of Kaylin. This philosophy is noted by many. Kaylin Printing and Promotional Products was recently included in the “Top 100 Business in Florida” list by Business Leader Magazine, as well as the “Top 20 list of Promotional Product Companies” according to the South Florida Business Journal. Laurie Woodward-Garcia was also named “Small Business Person of the Year” by the Miramar Pembroke Pines Chamber of Commerce. “We are constantly turning our creativity into products that create awareness and bring a profit for every single client,” she added about their work.

The company takes the customer’s time and resources seriously, taking pride in sending affordable quotes and proofs within 24 hours. It is also one of the few printing companies in the country with a full price list online. “We stand behind our service and are always looking for ways to improve our customer’s experience,” said Laurie Woodward-Garcia. “We recently revamped the corporate website to reflect this. The new site facilitates the selection and order process, helping everybody’s bottom line,” she concluded.

Since opening its doors in 1991, Kaylin Printing and Promotional Products has worked with over 3,000 clients at a local and national level offering a full range of promotional products and printing services. With a showroom located in Miramar, Florida, the company’s customer base spans across diverse industries, such as financial, insurance, manufacturing, hospitality, or medical. For more information, visit www.kaylinprinting.com.
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GOOD MORNING :

MY NAME IS JOHN SMITH AND I AM THE DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AT MED CLINIC

( WALK IN URGENT CARE CLINIC )  WE ARE LOCATED AT 650  SOUTH WALES DR

YOUR TOWN,  FL  33333 ( NEXT TO THE  STEAKHOUSE ).  WE WILL BE OPENING IN JUNE

AT THE CORNER OF HILL ROAD AND BOUNTY BLVD IN YOUR TOWN.  WE ARE OPEN

MONDAY – FRIDAY FROM   9 AM – 9 PM  AND SATURDAY AND SUNDAY UNTILL 5 PM.

WE TREAT  ALL PATIENTS FROM 2 YEARS OLD TO GERIATRICS AND WE ACCEPT OVER 200

INSURANCE PLANS ( AND WE CAN MAKE ARRANGEMENTS FOR THOSE UNINSURED ) .

WE ALSO ARE IN NETWORK WITH NEARLY 90 % OF WORKMANS COMP PLANS.  WE

DRAW BLOOD AND TAKE X RAYS ON SITE.  WE ASSIST ATTORNEYS WITH THEIR PERSONAL

INJURY,  WORKMANS COMP AND IMMIGRATION CLIENTS.  WE ALSO ASSIST DOCTORS

AND CHIROPRACTORS WITH THEIR AFTER HOURS PATIENTS. PLEASE CALL US FOR ANY

ASSISTANCE WE CAN OFFER YOU,  YOUR FAMILY OR BUSINESS !!!

SINCERELY,

JOHN SMITH

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

(333) 333 – 3333

1. do not email blast to all names on your list – Perception : Not an experienced business

2. spell check – Perception: not professional

3. do not CAPITALIZE everything – Perception: not familiar with proper grammer

4. do not use images – Perception: lacks creativity

5. please do not pull in professions at large – Perception: not focused marketing strategy

6. I could go on and on but this is too painful.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2555/the-importance-of-free?adref=Nsb3412

I received another really poorly printed Every Door Direct mailpiece (NOT ONE OF OURS!)  in the mail and it made me really sad!

Stop wasting your money on horrible designs and please stop being a DO IT YOURSELFER unless you really know what you are doing (or continue to waste your money). There are three musts to have a successful direct mail piece:

Amazing graphics and call to action

Carefully chosen target area

Consistency

Email Remains King For Promotional Messaging

So sometimes social media gets all the attention for being a shiner medium, but that doesn’t mean email is dead. Not by a long shot. In fact, according to a new survey from ExactTarget [pdf], its email NOT social media that customers seek out most for promotional messages. Interesting, right?

But hold that thought, let’s back up.

ExactTarget’s data comes from the 2012 Channel Preference Study, an ongoing research series that uses data collected through focus groups and online surveys to discover how real consumers interact with brands through email, Facebook and Twitter. None of this “theory” or “assumptions” stuff. They look at the real data behind what’s going on. For the 2012 survey, a total of 1,481 respondents completed the survey between January 27, 2012, and February 1, 2012, answering questions about overall Internet usage, devices owned, personal communication habits, permission, and purchase-behavior related to marketing. You can check out the PDF linked above for the full responses, but it was that last segment that I was most interested in.

Most specifically, it was this stat: 77 percent of consumers stated that email was their preferred channel for permission-based promotional messages.

And as you can see, while the number fluctuated a bit depending on age group, email was still the hands down winner.

Do those numbers come as much of a surprise? No. Email marketing has dominated as a marketing channel for SMBs for years. But it may come as a surprise to small business owners constantly hearing about the benefits of social media in lieu of these other platforms. It’s important to remember that social media is still an emerging trend for most consumers. However, email continues to be a mainstay and comes with a projected ROI of $39.40 for every dollar that is spent on it in 2012. That number has dropped slightly over the years, but it’s worth noting that the projected ROI for social media this year is just $12.90. Is it growing? Yes. But email is still coming in as top dog for promotional messages.

Why?

As part of the survey, ExactTarget identified the six factors that dictate channel preference:

1. Content: Is this a marketing message?
2. Immediacy: Do I need to send or receive this message right away?
3. Accessibility: Will I need to reference this message later?
4. Privacy: Do I want the world to know about this message?
5. Formality: Do I need to convey a level of professionalism with this message?
6. Initiation: How did the conversation originate?

If you take a look at those factors and think about them in terms of your own usage, it’s not hard to imagine why many of today’s consumers will still pick email over social. They want to be able to easily reference the message later, they’re concerned about their privacy, they get more email than they do social media responses, etc.

As a small business owner, use this as a reminder to take a look at and evaluate your own email marketing. Knowing that this is how most consumers prefer to be engaged about marketing messages, how can you improve your efforts? How can you engage customers better or increase the size of your email list?

For most SMBs, the answer will be a combination of: increased relevance, consistency, and awareness.
Successful email marketing is about collecting as much information about your users as you can so that you can segment them into relevant buckets based on things like:

• Gender
• Age
• Do they have kids?
• Where do they live? What neighborhoods?
• What kind of social networks do they frequent, if any?
• What other communities do they belong to?
• Average order size?

In terms of consistency, it’s about getting on a schedule so that both you and your consumers know when it’s time for a new mailing to go out. Depending on your business, you may want to send out a weekly deals email. Or a monthly newsletter. Or a quarterly mailing. Identify what will work best for you (it never hurts to poll your audience!) and then stick to the schedule that you set out.

Lastly, it’s about building awareness by asking your customers to subscribe to your email list. This means including prominent subscribe-to-email calls to action on your Web site, as well as other customer touch points like:

• Store banners
• Promotional materials
• Business cards
• Customer receipts
• Email confirmations
• Site registrations

Email marketing is a SMB’s natural best friend because it’s in intimate, it’s friendly, and it’s cost-effective. Before you drive yourself crazy trying to create a presence on multiple social networks, make sure your already grabbing your customers through more traditional mediums like email marketing. That’s where they’re looking for you.

We just had another “do it yourselfer” trying to save $15 in design charges create his own design. We are now on a reprint because his text was so tiny he decided he himself couldn’t read it.  WE WOULD NEVER CREATE A DESIGN YOU CAN’T READ.

I also had to take pity on the “do it yourselfer” because he put his text in light gray and if we had printed it his name would be unreadable. I insisted it be darkened. He probably could read it on his monitor. NEWS FLASH-just because a design looks good on a monitor does not mean it will look good in print.

TO ALL THE “DO IT YOURSELFERS” STOP CUTTING YOUR OWN HAIR!

There is no free lunch and it has been proved many times over. VistaPrint is just another example, and by the look of it a nasty one.

First of all, there is a lot of spin about the company itself. I remember the PR they were pushing to investors a few months ago. It was saying something about patents and that they will delay entry of a competitor to the market.
Don’t want to be rude, but it’s just bull…. I saw those patents. A pure PR exercise. Read what this guy has to say about investing in VistaPrint.

Another interesting theme about them is … customer complaints and their unwillingless to resolve them. See this post on wordpress.com

And finally, a few ideas on how they make the money from free business cards.
- sell your details as the most accurate to spammers and scammers (they are very accurate indeed and many people will pay premium $$$ to get hold of them)
- sign you up with a reward programm you never asked for. You get charged on a regular basis until you notice and begin to dispute it. The rumor has it that people have troubles stopping the charges and very few got their $$$ back.
Free business cards did you say?

Better Business Bureau ranked VistaPrint the 2nd most complained business.

NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING DOES NOT WORK FOR EVERY BUSINESS

Just because you own a CPA firm or a plumbing company or whatever your business is does not mean if business is slow you should take out a newspaper ad. Shame on the ad salespeople! Stop harassing the poor, unsuspecting business person with the lure of thousands of subscribers. Subscribers mean nothing if your marketing dollars are being spent in the wrong place.

Hint: If you do not see competitors advertising in your newspaper there is usually a reason why. Perhaps your competitors have figured out a better way to spend their marketing dollars.

1. Seth’s Blog
Thought leader Seth Godin’s great blog on marketing and innovative business ideas.

2. Branding Strategy Insider
Great articles about effective branding for large companies.

3. Duct Tape Marketing
Author John Jantsch’s articles focused on small business marketing.

4. Web Ink Now
Author David Meerman Scott’s ideas on new marketing.

5. Hubspot Inbound Internet Marketing Blog
Useful and educational articles about online marketing.

6. A Clear Eye
Author Tom Asacker shares insightful ideas on marketing.

7. Brand Autopsy
Word of mouth marketing insights and book summaries.

8. The Marketing Spot
Jay Ehret provides great branding ideas and marketing tips for small businesses.

9. Awaken Your Superhero
The co-host of Marketing Over Coffee provides great information on how to become a marketing superhero.

10. Red Slice
Author and brand consultant Maria Ross shares excellent ideas on effective branding for corporations and small businesses.

11. Marketing Technology Blog
This blog keeps you up to date on the latest marketing technology with helpful howto articles, online marketing tips, and recommended infographics. Douglas Karr also hosts an excellent podcast called MTB Radio and is author of the book Corporate Blogging for Dummies.

12. Return Customer
13. Brand Builder
14. BrandGymBlog
15. Brand Curve
16. Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog
17. Make the Logo Bigger
18. Stephen Denny
19. Responsible Marketing
20. Customers Rock
21. Marketing Tea Party
22. Vitamin IMC
23. Brand New
24. Brand Noise
25. Techno Marketer
26. Forrester Interactive Marketing Blog
27. Brand New Day
28. Ad Pulp
29. Church of the Customer
30. AdFreak
31. BrandFreak
32. Marketing Nirvana
33. Influential Marketing
34. MicroMarketing
35. Fresh Peel
36. Shotgun Marketing
37. Conversation Agent
38. Jaffe Juice
39. Marketing Interactions
40. The Viral Garden
41. Brand Story
42. Own Your Brand
43. Brandeo
44. AdRants
45. Brand Mix
46. Citizen Marketer 2.1
47. The Social Media Marketing Blog
48. Aaker on Brands
49. Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang
50. Flooring The Consumer
51. Modern Marketing
52. Diva Marketing Blog
53. Hee-Haw Marketing
54. Being Peter Kim
55. Logic + Emotion
56. Steve Rubel
57. Lonely Marketer
58. My 2 Cents
59. BrandingWire
60. Marketing.fm
61. Brand Corral
62. CK’s Blog
63. Marketing With Meaning
64. Inside the Marketers Studio
65. John Quelch’s Blog
66. Make Marketing History
67. Buzzmarketing Daily
68. Hard Knox Life
69. Brand Champions
70. Neuromarketing
71. BrandSimple
72. Marketallica
73. Right Brain/Left Brain Marketing
74. Brains on Fire
75. Mainwaring Blog
76. The Big Fat Marketing Blog
77. Conversation Marketing
78. Marketing Genius
79. Brand Rants
80. Marketing Shift
81. Altitude Branding
82. Marketing Productivity Blog
83. Marketing Geek
84. Adverblog
85. Advertising and Marketing Blog
86. The Marketing Blog
87. Dan Zarrella (Social Media Marketing)
88. Beyond Madison Avenue
89. Freaking Marketing
90. Social Media Explorer
91. 9 Inch Marketing
92. Where’s My Jetpack
93. Simon Mainwaring
95. The Harte of Marketing
94. Tagblog
96. Read This
97. The Engaged Consumer
98. Jonathan Salem Baskin’s Dim Bulb
99. Marketing Roadmaps
100. The Branding Blog

More Marketing Blogs:
101. The Toad Stool
102. A New Marketing
103. The Brand Bubble
104. Melodies in Marketing
105. Groundswell Blog
106. Customer U
107. Brand DNA

If your small company has 15 cents, the United States Postal Service wants your business.

The USPS has launched a marketing campaign to promote “Every Door Direct Mail,” a shipping service for small business with postage rates starting at 14.5 cents.

“Every Door Direct Mail is designed for small businesses,” said Paul Vogel, the agency’s president and chief marketing and sales officer. “For less than 15 cents a piece, our customers can send fliers, menus, brochures and advertisements in highly targeted ways.

“The Web tool is free and easy to use, enabling restaurants, doctors’ offices and other small businesses to map their coverage areas online, so they can really zero in on the streets and neighborhoods they want to reach.”

Businesses can target areas by neighborhood, city or ZIP code and do not need the names or addresses for individual households.

From the program’s launch in April 2011 through December, it generated $153 million for the Postal Service, which continues to lose billions of dollars each year.

In February, the agency announced plans to close or consolidate 223 mail processing centers and eliminate up to 35,000 jobs to cut costs.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has said it needs to slash $20 billion in annual costs by 2015.

While the Internet and e-mail have caused the Postal Service’s business to plunge, the agency hopes to capitalize on technology by making Every Door Direct Mail a Web-based service.

“We want small businesses to make the U.S. Postal Service their shipper of choice,” Vogel said. “We are doing that by developing smart tools and product offerings that help businesses grow — both theirs and ours.”‘

The agency also announced new tools to help small businesses ship their products, such as a redesign and re-launch of Click-N-Ship, which enables users to ship packages online in four steps. Half of the program’s one-million-plus registered users are small businesses.