Breaking the Paper Color Barrier

By Sabine Lenz
While there’s nothing wrong with printing on a white, coated sheet time after time, you’ll never know just how much more creative you could be if you don’t occasionally embrace colored paper.

Selecting a colored stock opens up new possibilities and allows for a different part of your creativity to flow. With the right knowledge, pushing this envelope allows for amazing design options.

In most cases, printing on a colored stock also means printing on an uncoated stock – metallic stocks are mica coated (a mineral consisting of shiny, transparent crystals) and thus fall into a different category – which means you are facing the challenge of dot gain, as well as the paper’s hue.

Read the rest of this article here.

6 Email Mistakes that cost you money

Found this article you may find useful for any email campaigns you may be contemplating.

Link to article is at the bottom, just click or scan the QR code.

by Kelley Robertson (via business know-how)
Email is a widely used prospecting tool but it is seldom used correctly or as effectively as it could be. Most sales people and small business owners make a variety of mistakes that prevent them from increasing their sales when using email to grow their business. Here are the top six mistakes they make that cost them money.

Mistake 1–Poor subject line

Never, ever reference your company name in a prospecting email. That’s the fastest way to make sure it doesn’t get read. Also, don’t mention something lame like your new website. Do I REALLY care about your new website? Does anyone other than your marketing team and the person who approved the budget care about it? I highly doubt it.  A prospecting email must start with a great subject line that catches your contact person’s attention. Executives receive hundreds of emails every day and if your email has a dull or boring self-serving subject line, it’s going to get deleted without being opened or read.

Mistake 2–Asking me for feedback

Once again, I’m too busy to give you feedback on YOUR stuff. This is not a compelling way to capture and keep my attention. Because your email is a sales letter (which I have nothing against) I know that your request is simply an attempt to get me to click-through your link. If you want your email to take action make sure that you address a specific problem my company is facing. Then, I might be compelled to follow through on your request.

Mistake 3–Generic approach

The statement, “It describes our services and success with companies just like…” tells me nothing about your product or service. While you or your marketing department might think that it is a creative and intriguing approach, it isn’t. If you really want to get my attention tell me what success have you achieved with other companies like mine. Show me that you have solution to one of my problems. Answer those issues and I will be more likely to click-through.

Mistake 4–Using the wrong company name

If you are going to use a computer-generated list, make sure that your information-gathering system actually captures the right information.
Otherwise, people will know that your email was mass-produced from a list or computer-generated list. Enough said.

Mistake 5–Ask me to sign up for a webinar (or other ‘pitch’)

Most senders do nothing to establish any type of value so why would I waste my time signing up for a webinar? Especially a webinar that I know is going to be sales pitch and may or may not be of value to me. Decision makers are far too busy to sit through a thinly veiled marketing pitch.
Give people something of value and you will get a better response.

Mistake 6–Poor use of the P.S.

It is widely known that a P.S. at the end of a sales letter or email gets read. However, the P.S. statement in most emails focus entirely on the company and do nothing to make people want to click on one of the links in the email. Use a testimonial from a satisfied client or a result you achieved with a particular company instead.
Email is a great way to connect with potential prospects and companies–when it’s used as part of an overall campaign and when it is used properly. Avoid these blunders and improve your odds of successfully connecting with your prospect and increasing your sales.

6 Email Mistakes that cost you money

Guitar Outlet

A new sponsor for next years ISU Marketing Association Battle of the Bands, aka Pokapalooza, is the Guitar Outlet in Pocatello. Here is the logo and stationery I developed for them.

Guitar Outlet Logoalso in black and white

Since they will be online as well, I created a version of the logo with their domain name.

Guitar Outlet Logo.org

A social media avatar is included. Guitar Outlet Avatar

And here is the stationery presentation.

Guitar Outlet Letterhead

Less Sites, More Ads

I am making a subtle change to the kind of business I am pursuing. I will be focusing more on a complete presentation of the business instead of just creating a website for clients. This means folding the website presence into the rest of the mass media presence a company uses to send out their message and acquire customers or clients.

I will still offer logo and graphic design, but I will also be looking at how the website, the brochures, the rest of printed and electronic media and how they all relate to the end goal of customer education and service. The bottom line is profitability, and happy customers make happy business owners.

All this to say I am not pursuing purely website only business. I work and go to school full time, so I will only be able to help businesses that know what they want to say to their potential clients and how they want to say it.

So for the time being, I’m looking at creative projects involving advertising layout and how they can be used in a multiple instances of print and electronic media. I appreciate all the opportunities I’ve received in the past, and I’m looking forward to bigger and more exciting days ahead!

Brick Oven Pizza Menu

Brick Oven Pizza MenuI redesigned the menu for Brick Oven Pizza here in Pocatello. At this point, it looks like they’ll be using it in the future.

Update: Here’s the final version of the menu. Click the picture below to see the PDF that is being used currently.