Our 2011 Calendar is ready!

Thanks to all of the submissions of photos from clients and friends, we have a wonderful calendar for 2011. Our selections range from iconic New Mexican images to places and things you will see in a new way.

Julianna Farresta starts off the year with an incredible wildlife close-up. She and Randy Alberts peek at New Mexico creatures in the great outdoors.

Kathleen Rick’s vivid colors and detail offer a new spin on New Mexico classics like sunflowers and chili ristras.

Gary Cascio’s and S. Byrne’s landscapes remind us of why we like to live here in the Land of Enchantment.

Dan Shaffer shows us a classic car in a new light while Debbie Lujan shows us an insiders view of Harvest Moon at Taos Pueblo.

Lastly, Michael DeYoung provided us with the perfect December image—paddling down the Rio Grande with holiday decorations!

If you haven’t gotten a calendar and want one, let us know.

Starline Printing has been a print supporter of Operation Smile for years. Operation Smile provides free surgeries to repair cleft lip, cleft palate and other facial deformities for children around the globe.

We are happy to see that Jeff Probst, host of the popular reality show Survivor, visited Operation Smile’s medical mission in Granada, Nicaragua, where he was able to experience the miracle of an Operation Smile surgery firsthand. Jeff accompanied little 6-year-old Johan into surgery and watched as his smile was healed stitch by stitch. Watch Jeff Probst speak about his experience in Nicaragua during the ‘Survivor’ reunion episode. http://www.operationsmile.org/news_events/in-the-news/

The Forest Stewardship Council is an international network established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests and their ecosystems. The Chain-of-Custody certification was issued to Starline Printing at the completion of a rigorous audit of Starline Printing’s facility and processes.

According to Bill Lang, CEO of Starline Printing, “Environmental stewardship is part of our heritage and a responsibility we bear for future generations,” Lang says. “Starline Printing is committed to keeping both its workplace and the larger community clean and safe because it is the right thing to do, and because it enables us to offer greater value to our customers.”

Chain-of-Custody certification entitles Starline Printing to apply the FSC’s trademark “checkmark-and-tree” logo, the initials F.S.C. or the words, “Forest Stewardship Council” to projects printed on FSC-certified paper, which is being specified with increasing frequency by client companies and other entities eager to show their commitment to environmentally responsible business practices. “Two of our recent clients, the Albuquerque Academy and US Green Building Council chose us because we had the ability to offer this environmentally friendly process,” says Lang.  Unlike just the “Printed on Recycled Paper” designation, The FSC system requires that the finished product must have flowed from an FSC-certified forest of origin, to a paper manufacturer, to a paper merchant, and finally to a printer that has been granted FSC Chain-of-Custody certification. To learn more about the Forest Stewardship Council, visit http://www.fscus.org.

Obtaining FSC certification is just the latest link in a lengthening chain of Starline Printing’s environmental accomplishments. “We are proud to have achieved Chain-of-Custody certification because it underscores our longstanding commitment to sustainable manufacturing practices within our facility and the community where we do business,” Lang said.

“Equally important, this certification also provides our customers with one means to reduce the environmental impact of their printed materials.”

Starline Printing already is recognized as a leader in environmentally responsible manufacturing, meeting and often exceeding governmental and regulatory requirements. The company has taken steps to reduce or eliminate waste from its operations including recycling ink, washing solvents and paper, and the implementation of new technologies and processes to use electricity and water more efficiently. Old incandescent lighting has been replaced with energy-efficient fluorescent bulbs and the company recycles its paper.

CMYK Blues.

Color Calls. Let’s say you are looking for a color, and you start with a color picker on the web or in a desktop application such as Photoshop or InDesign. You pick your color and it magically displays the RGB value and the CMYK value. It’s not quite that simple. Color picker values are accurate for RGB, but can be wildly misleading when transformed into CMYK “equivalents”. Here’s how to avoid that risk.

The basic premise of this article is that print colors are best specified from printed color guides. A printed guide reflects the realities of ink pigmentation, paper brightness and all of the other factors inherent in how colors reproduce.

There is a larger problem with choosing CMYK colors from so-called Color PIckers like those you will find on the Web. These tools use mathematical formulas to convert the color you select to the color you want. Good in theory but in practice, the best color conversions come from color look-up tables (CLUTs). CLUTs are sets of color mappings where the values are stored in a table or database rather than being calculated on the fly. It’s the method used by high-end scanners and the reason why they generate superior color.

Conceptually, a good example of a color look-up table is the Pantone solid to process color guide. It provides maps the colors of the Pantone Solid Color Guide to their closest CMYK match, providing the CMYK values for each right on the swatch.

Pantone color guides are built into Photoshop. With this capability, you can start with a color picker and map the color to the closest Pantone solid to process color swatch. This allows you to choose the color you want while giving you a predictable standard in the resulting values specified. Here’s how.

1. Open Photoshop and create a new blank document in CMYK format. Click on the foreground color picker tool at the bottom of the toolbar.

2. Choose the color you want from the Color Picker. Since the Color Picker is a screen-display it is inherently RGB. Notice that Photoshop provides an on-the-fly CMYK value. Ignore this value and instead click on the Custom button after you have selected a color from the color picker.

3. Choose Pantone solid to process coated from the Book pull-down menu. Photoshop will automatically select the Pantone swatch that is closest to the color you selected, and displays the corresponding CMYK value of the Pantone swatch. Notice in our example, the default generated CMYK is 97C 93M 44Y 27K while the Pantone value is 76C 78M 0Y 47K.

We guarantee that in the vast majority of instances, you will find the Pantone solid to process color far superior to the CMYK value generated by default.

Driving Direct. With successful direct response campaigns, three critical elements converge to entice your readers to take action. Those three elements are the list, the offer and the creative. We provide an overview of these three elements, the situations in which certain combinations will be most effective, and provide a few guidelines to help you tune up your mail campaigns. For more on direct mail insight, we recommend 10 Direct Mail Secrets by Mark Risley at www.entrepreneur.com.

Before we dive into the three key components of your mail campaign, let’s start with the fundamentals. First, we use the word ‘campaign’ because direct mail is far more effective when produced in programs that have at least three impressions or mailings. A message reinforced by frequency pulls far better than a one-shot mailing without a follow-up. You are better off budgeting for three smaller mailings to a portion of your list than one larger mailing with no follow-up.

With that said, your direct mail campaign can provide you a fantastic way of prospecting for leads. Start by considering the goals you have for your campaign. What are you trying to accomplish? The answer to this question drives some of the decisions you will want to make regarding your campaign’s list, offer and creative components.

Let’s start by considering who you are mailing to. If your campaign is directed at cold lists, your campaign will be most effective if your goal is to build brand or take advantage of a transactional offer. For this type of mailing, a postcard is often the most effective format from a creative point of view. Alternatively, if your list is already qualified, a more sophisticated mailing featuring an envelope and more extensive copy may work best.

Converting Cold Lists to Hot Leads. Start by making sure you are able to track your cold lists’ effectiveness. Do you know the source of each contact on your list? For example, is it a name you acquired via a list rental, an inquiry you received at a trade show, a lead derived from a purchase of a complementary product or service? Knowing where your names come from is critical to understanding which lists pull best as you evaluate your campaign’s results. Developing an institutional memory that relies on lessons learned from prior experience will make a world of difference in the long-term effectiveness of your results. This is a business where experience and memory matter.

In the case of a cold list, you want to make the maximum impact as quickly as you can, since you need to grab the recipient’s attention. That’s why a postcard is often the best way to go. It can quickly convey a branding message or communicate a strong offer that motivates the customer to take action. You might want to consider these creative lessons when it comes to postcards:

• A Postcard is typically read from top-right to left-middle to bottom-right. Your reader comprehension will be higher if your message flow is consistent with this norm.
• The order of design elements makes a big difference as well. At nearly 70% comprehension, a design featuring an image above a headline above text has fully twice the level of reader comprehension than any other layout combining these three elements.
• To take advantage of lower postal rates, your postcard must be 4.25″ x 6″ in size or smaller. You will be able to reach more leads with this format.
• With such limited space, make your creative compelling and brief.
• Keep your brand messaging simple and make sure transactional offers quickly and effectively communicate the offer itself and its value proposition.

Converting Qualified Leads to Customers. A qualified list is one whose prospects have already interacted with you in some way. Perhaps they are a prior customer or purchased a complementary product or service. They may have requested more information, or downloaded something from your website. They could have attended an event or seminar, visited your booth at a tradeshow, or filled out a card in your store. These are examples of qualified lists.

When marketing to qualified lists, you can rely on more complex creative with a longer message, such as self-mailers or envelopes containing a letter, proposal or kit. In fact, this format is preferred in a number of situations where pre-qualification has occurred. These include:

• Complex offers where communicating the value proposition cannot be accomplished effectively with an overly brief message.
• Purchases that entail commitments such as subscriptions, financial products or memberships.
• Products of a personal nature, upscale/luxury products and offers targeted at wealthy audiences.

In these situations, it is helpful to consider these creative guidelines:

• When reading a letter, folks typically start at the top-left and skim down, ending at at the bottom left, which is coincidentally where the P.S. is located and why it is generally the most-read component of the letter.
• Make your piece easy to read by using 12 point type or large, and relying on serif fonts for body copy.
• Use a serif font for body copy (it has over five times reader comprehension than sans-serif) and use black type (black has over twice the comprehension of the next best color, blue).
• Always break copy mid-sentence from page to page. Ending a sentence or paragraph at the end of a page encourages readers to stop reading.
• Most people are slow readers; break you copy down into manageable chunks.
• Copy in a caption, call-out, border or sidebar is read first so make your most important points here.
• Generally, warm colors such as red and orange get better response rates than cool ones (blue, green or gray).
• Hand-written addresses are more costly and time-consuming, but consistently draw a nearly 100% open rate, far superior than machine-addressed envelopes.

Consider a set of guidelines to be just that. While none of these points is a hard-and-fast rule, together they provide a solid set of recommendations on using the lessons marketers have learned to increase the pull of your direct response. Good luck!