Mining For Data Gold

Information is power. You and I both know that, but you may not realize just how powerful information can be or how it can be used. Think of the marketing power behind what you know. The children's shoe shop that collects the names and birthdays of its small customers can use that data to send out personalized postcards with a birthday coupon. Flower shops can keep track of anniversaries. Vets can send out updates about shots.

Your database represents a goldmine of information for all your marketing plans...but many small businesses are awful at maintaining a great database. Are you? Is your goldmine brimming with information, or is it played out?

This weekend, spend some time updating, editing, and cleaning your database. Gather names, addresses, phone numbers, and email information from your invoices, handwritten notes, emails, and existing data. Then put all of that information into one database you can use. Your "database" may consist of little more than a simple Excel spreadsheet, or it may require a more robust solution, such as ACT, Goldmine, QuickBooks, or any number of other options.

Going forward, get your staff to ask for complete information. Create a basic information form or questionnaire for customers and prospects, and use it to get the kind of information you can use to better know – and understand – your customers and their needs.

Comments

Pack Extra Meaning into Your Message with Strategic Color Combinations

Of all the elements of design, color is probably the most challenging to understand. Color originates from a light source that is viewed directly or seen as reflected light. While colors can be displayed in spectrums, prisms, or contrasts, the power of colors is not only in their arrangement, but in the way we perceive them. Want to add depth to your message? The colors you choose can add an extra layer of meaning. Colors Prompt a Specific Response According to Sally Augustin from Psychology Today, research shows that particular colors can prompt measurable responses . Here are the impacts of five particular colors, and how you can use them to your advantage: Green Seeing the color green has been linked to more creative thinking—so greens are good options for pieces featuring innovation, creativity, artistic specialties, or proactive growth. Red People featured in front of red backgrounds are generally seen as more attractive when silhouetted against other colors, so reds are great fo

JPEG or TIFF

The JPEG file format has gained prominence over the past few years, in large part due to its ability to provide a fairly high-quality image at a fraction of the size of other formats, such as TIFF. Of course, that benefit comes at a cost. JPEGs save disk space by eliminating some of the subtle color changes not readily apparent to the human eye. At a minimal compression setting, those changes are fairly hard to see. The higher the compression, however, the more of those changes are lost, and the blurrier the image becomes. Here are some tips to remember when working with JPEG images: • Start at the top. If you’re taking your own digital photos, set your camera to its highest-quality JPEG setting. The images will come out larger, but the quality will look sharp. For photos when print quality is especially important, set the camera to save images as TIFF files, if that option is available. • When editing an image, consider saving it as a TIFF, instead of a JPEG file. TIFF files are large

Print Marketing - What Was Once Old is Now New Again

Recently, a prospective client said they wanted to get customers' attention through non-traditional marketing using printed products. Who knew that in 2016, the printed word would be considered "non-traditional?" Non-traditional? We're saying this about a medium that was developed back in the 1400's by Johannes Gutenberg! While Webster's (of dictionary fame) mind might be little blown by this reference, when you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. For the past two decades, digital media has been rapidly replacing many of our formerly traditional ways of doing things, from watching television, reading the newspaper, to yes...print marketing. With the democratization of information that the internet has brought, more and more people are consuming this information digitally. Social media and search engine algorithms target our interests and bombard us with advertisements directed at those interests, to the point that we've become immune to t

Solid Impressions

Search This Blog