August 2006

Internet Experience:
August 2001 to July 2006: Director of Marketing and Business Development, PsPrint.com. During my tenure, grew revenue from $3 million to a projected $25 million in 2006. PsPrint was named among the 50 fastest growing companies in the bay area by San Francisco Business Times for 2003, 2004 and 2005.

• Selected and managed marketing channels that drove three years plus of 50% growth funded entirely from profits.
• Initiated, designed and implemented Cost Per Click campaigns that delivered over 1,000,000 clicks with an average 30 day ROI of 200% and a one-year ROI of over 400%.*
• Designed and implemented the Search Engine Optimization program that resulted in top 10 search engine results placement in Google for dozens of competitive keywords and produced over $1 million/year revenue in 2005 and 2006.
• Worked with the IT team to design, implement and test functionality for the first web based printing workflow that enable customers to upload, proof and approve jobs online.
• Monitored and reconciled multiple web analytics systems on a daily basis to track trends and identify opportunities for conversion improvements.
• Negotiated Business Development relationships with national brands such as Guitar Center, FedEx-Kinko’s and Iprint that produced $300,000 revenue/year.
• Negotiated outsourcing relationship that reduced costs by 50% and saved over $100,000 per year.
* Revenue traceable to each click using KeyWordMax 3rd party cookies. Revenue traceable with a hybrid of KWM, Google Conversion Tracker and PsPrint gift code redemption data is 50% higher.

July 1996 to September 2001: Web Consultant, adventmedia.com. Partner in a web design and engineering company focused on database driven websites. We built sites from concept to completions for over 100 companies ranging from venture funded dotcom startups to divisions of Intel.

• Conceived successful proposals for website creation and improvement projects ranging from $2,500 to $150,000.
• Primary relationship manager from initial contact through project completion.
• Interviewed all stakeholders to identify the target audience and mission of the site.
• Reviewed existing websites for usability lessons and conversion obstacles.
• Created and discovered features to enable the core mission of the site.
• Created feature specification documents and forged consensus around the feature set from all stakeholders.
• Designed information architecture and taxonomy for all websites.
• Managed content acquisition from stakeholders and developed additional content as needed.
• Designed user testing for completed sites and A/B test plans for ongoing improvements.
• Maintain SEO best practices knowledge base and monitored customer sites performed well in natural search.

Education: Bachelor of Arts, Antioch College Institute of Management Studies, 1986.

We live in an era of marketing saturation. We are bombarded with advertising on television, radio, billboards, in our mailbox, online and via email. Two thirds of Americans said in a recent study that they want to reduce the amount of advertising in their lives. The highest approval rating for any law in the last 10 years is the Do Not Call Registry. Over 70% approve of the law, but a majority of the rest say it didn’t go far enough to stop telemarketers from invading their living room.

In the face of this onslaught of messages, consumer resistance and the predictions of pundits and doomsayers, the volume of direct mail has been steadily increasing. Smart marketers don’t continue to throw money into something that doesn’t work. Well managed campaigns have seen an increased response rate while all other media says we are over saturated. Postcards and brochure mailers remain amongst the most cost effective marketing available.

For many industries, the cost per customer acquisition for direct mail is lower than for cost per click advertising, which is generally considered to yield the highest ROI. Plus, direct mail doesn’t require a huge investment in an ecommerce website and a full time staff dedicated to the internet.

The reason for the continued success of direct mail in the face of so many other messages is the power of color images to convey complex emotions, circumstances, meaning and desire in a few seconds. In the time it takes for someone to sort through the mail, a good direct mail piece has already registered its message.

The purpose of the above 260 odd words of facts, assertions and opinions is to get enough trust from you, Dear Reader, so take this advice to heart. Great direct mail marketing starts with GREAT PICTURES.

Don’t rely on someone else to pick images for you. Don’t think you can find something that is “good enough” flipping through the stock photos on some royalty free picture site for a minute. Don’t settle for an image because it is cheap or already paid for. Don’t grab your photos of a Mexican beach and try to shoe horn your message where it doesn’t fit – while sneaking in a tax write off for your last vacation. If you want effective direct mail marketing, you have to start with a powerful photograph and tailor your message to fit it!

The cliché says a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s an average picture. A great picture can tell a whole story—in less time than it takes someone to toss it in the recycling.

Professor Print

Color printing is a high impact marketing tool — when you know how to use it.
The difference between ho hum results and hitting the ball out of the park is a great print piece. One that combines an attention grabbing image with a catchy message that is right on target for your audience. It isn’t enough to slam some stock photographs together with your logo and a snappy message with Word and send them off to your favorite online postcard printer.

Marketing with printing is a combination of art and science. The art begins with the synergy of the message and design. In the last 10 years working with marketers, creative teams and graphic designers, watching them struggle through the process of developing marketing collateral, I have witnessed the best and the worst results of this colaboration. I have seen tens of thousands of different postcard jobs leaving our shop on the way to the customer. I have received twice that many pieces in the mail. The bottom line is that something is either a great piece or it isn’t worth sending.

I have learned one simple way to know if the piece is ready to send. Show your final three designs to 10 customers or other impartial people. If 6 out of 10 don’t pick the piece you want to print, and like it, you aren’t ready to mail it. If more than 8 out of 10 pick the piece you like, you should pick people who are not afraid of you.

The science is easier to explain than it is to practice. Successful print marketing begins like any other successful marketing…with the ability to measure. Many companies will heavily invest in testing and usability studies for their website and spend countless hours staring at web analytic programs trying to fine tune their Search Engine Marketing, then throw their hands up when it come to measuring direct mail. Marketers too often claim that there is no way to measure the effectiveness of a postcard mailing campaign. This claim is born out of laziness.
Measuring effectiveness is more difficult than say, online CPC advertising, but this is simply a challenge requires creative solutions.

• Ask customers where they heard about you. If your business has a strong repeat customer base, make it a priority to discover the source of EVERY CUSTOMER. Add this objective to your CRM system and offer an incentive to your staff every time they find out where a customer originated.
• Match new customers to your mailing list and identify records that match.
• Add a coupon as your call to action.
• Use a special 800 number for each postcard or list

I swore to myself when I started the blog that I would focus on print marketing and leave the SEO stuff to the thousands of SEO blogs out there. I figured with company insiders like Matt Cutts from Google and the ever insightful Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiry and Aaron Wall from SEO Book, I wouldn’t have much to offer. Well, my resolution lasted all the way to my first post.

I have a friend who is trying to get a new company out of the sandbox and indexed by Google, MSN and Yahoo. One of the challenges faced by any new site is how to get links from “Trusted” domains. This company in question has the advantage of being included in the Adobe Certified Partners Section as a Master Printer. The problem is the listings are all hidden behind a “dynamic firewall” because they are only shown in response to a particular query.

The solution was so simple that it reminded me that marketing professionals frequently out think themselves. If you want a spider to find a page, you post a link to it. Find the direct link that takes you to the dynamic result and post it where the spiders will eventually find it. In this case, link directly to results of the Adobe Printing Partners page and voila, a link from a trustworthy site will shortly send the spider on to the site you want discovered.