PrintWorthy Advice

My Resume as an Online Magazine

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Thanks for entering your Code: Here is Joel Osteen's Message

This post demonstrates how easy it is to send an enthusem greeting card and link it to your own special online attachment anywhere on the web (the link is included in the cost of your card). Take a minute and browse around my blog to learn more about enthusem or visit the primary enthusem blog here.

Your "Issuu" of Develop Magazine

This post is intended to show how easy it is to send an enthusem postal mailer that drives readership to your online magazine that you stored at issuu.com. (Scroll down this post to view a sample online magazine)

Issuu.com is a great site that lets you create online magazines and link to them or embed them on your site - and now with enthusem you can create custom mailers to promote your online magazine and excite advertisers. In case you did not actually get a mailer from me yourself, here's what it looked like: Download Enthusem Sample Pretend you walked out to your mailbox and found a beautiful gloss-coated card in a vellum envelope waiting for you.

Here's how enthusem magazine mailers work: You send an enthusem postal mailer (with your magazine's image on the front) to a subscriber or any new influential reader who you want to target. It takes under 40 seconds. The inside message of the mailer entices them with copy about the great articles you have inside and a tasteful message about one of the important advertisers that you might want to highlight, such as Ubisoft, the advertiser I have used in this example of Develop Magazine. Get as creative as you want.

Readers will go to your site (just like you went to enthusem.com) and enter the code in the mailer. Here's the really cool part: Readers can skip going to enthusem.com entirely and enter codes on your site or your advertiser's web site instead - they will love added traffic and exposure!)

Plus: You as the publisher get instant data on who is reading your online magazine because enthusem not only sends you an instant alert when a code is entered, but you get full reporting data that you can download.

Think about it: When you send an enthusem mailer with your digital magazine attached you avoid spamming the people you want to reach, your new readers get a four-color, glossy 'hybrid' magazine in the postal mail at very low cost to you, your advertiser gets new value and added exposure for their ad dollars - and most importantly, you get a fresh new way to convert traditional print subscribers away from your expensive full print edition and shift them to a superior online viewing experience at issuu.com

Issuu.com - Online Print Publishing

Take a look at Issuu.com. Upload a PDF and voila you have a page-turning, zoomable, magazine or journal or publication. Here's a copy of The Printable Blog, that cool new and REAL newspaper being done by that brave new start-up in Chicago founded by Joshua Karp. I imagine TPB won't mind to my using their pdf to demonstrate Issuu. Come to think of it, some combination of our very own enthusem web app and online print versions would be a great new concept for both magazines and newspapers who are struggling to build new readership while containing escalating printing costs. It would open up a new revenue model for advertisers as well. You heard it here first folks. I'll be working on that idea over the weekend. More to follow.

The-first-thing-in-the-morning-card

Everything you have learned and read over the years about success in sales often has one recurring theme: Good Habits. You have to have them and to develop them everyday.

Having good sales habits is easy to prescribe but a bit hard to do consistently when you're pressed for time, your sales manager is asking for a new forecast and you have a list of things on fire you have to deal with.

Still. You have to squeeze in time and actions to develop and nurture your leads. You have to invest in the future and keep your pipeline of future customers filled.

One way to do that is to make sure you send or schedule an Enthusem mailer first thing in the morning everyday. It's easy and a better habit than talking about Tiger Wood's last round with the guy in the next office.

Take 45 seconds and send a single mailer to a prospect that just says you'd love an opportunity to talk in the future about new developments at your company. Send a mailer that simply says you hope to do business in the future because you are personally committed to good service. Send a card that relates a recent success with another client that you know you can make happen for them. It can be anything. The important thing is that as you start your day you will be confident that whatever happens later, inside that day, that you will have invested in developing a customer, a lead or a friend. Sometimes that simple act, done every day, makes the rest of each day easier because you know you have done something for your career and that every one of them will pay big dividends down the road.

And the special offer of the day? Well here it is: if you have 5 or more sales reps in your company and would like each one to have his or her own personal direct mail system - then email me directly and we'll give your team an additional 100 mailers when you sign up for the $999.00 Corporate Package. This offer is good through January 31st. So act fast.

What enthusem could mean for your company: in 10 short slides

It's not a relationship if you have to 'manage' it

The phrase customer relationship management (CRM) has always interested me. It seems odd that relationship and management are used together. After all, do we really "manage" relationships? Try that with your spouse and see how it works.

Perhaps customer interaction management would better describe what we’re really doing when we track activities, tasks and customer details in a CRM system. Don’t get me wrong, I think CRM systems are invaluable business tool but do they really help build relationships?

Relationships – at least as I define them – are a one-to-one thing. We have relationships with people, not organizations and those relationships are developed as a result of personal communications, not marketing “touches”. Think about it … How many “relationships” do you have with companies that you don’t really know anyone at?

So, when we set out to develop “stronger business relationships” what do we need to get the job done? Answer … people who actively interact (on a one-to-one basis) with other people (customers, prospects, vendors, etc). It’s not a new idea; not by a long shot. In fact, it’s so old that to some extent it’s been forgotten.

Our parents and their parents had it right. In their personal life and in business they succeeded based on their reputations and the relationships they built. They sent thank you cards, and personal notes regularly and expressed their feelings in ways that no database could ever do.