MFSA Webinar Tomorrow (10/1) – Expanding into new Media
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on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 
at 11:27 AM 
in Tomorrow, October 1st 2009, Karen Sheehey, VP of Sales of interlinkONE, and Jason Pinto, Marketing Manager at interlinkONE, will be participating in a webinar that is being hosted by The Mailing and Fulfillment Service Association (MFSA).
Along with Mark McIntosh of Cedar Graphics, John will be discussing the marketing-related topic “Expanding into New Media”.
The webinar is scheduled for 12:30pm to 2:00pm Eastern Time.
If you’d like to attend, you must register ahead of time. You may do so here:
http://www.mfsanet.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4321
Here is a description of the agenda, from the MFSA website:
“The world of mailing and fulfillment is changing rapidly. Companies that are unwilling to recognize this may soon be left behind. To provide more comprehensive services to clients, lettershops, fulfillment service providers and printers are offering non-traditional marketing services, such as web design, cross media, PURLs, creative services, etc.
Join Mark McIntosh of Cedar Graphics, and Karen and Jason of interlinkONE, as they explore the world of new marketing media on Thursday, October 1, 2009, from 12:30 – 2:00 pm. This webinar is for companies that have dabbled in these new media or are considering it.
Participants will learn:
* The pros and cons of these services – web design, cross media, PURLs, creative services, social media, etc.
* The investments in systems, staffing, processes necessary to succeed in each one
* A timeline to success
* Messages to send to current and prospective clients to promote these new services
* Real-world case studies of clients that have expanded into these media”
Hope you’ll be able to join us!
Tags interlinkONE Exhibiting & Presenting at MFSA Fulfillment Conference
interlinkONE will be at the Mailing and Fulfillment Services Association (MFSA) Fulfillment Conference in Tampa, from October 15th – 18th, 2009.
We greatly look forward to 4 days of discussions on marketing, fulfillment, mailing, printing, and more.
If you will be attending, there are a few ways that we can connect:
At the Booth
interlinkONE will be be exhibiting at the Vendor Forum throughout the show. Please swing by to see demonstrations on how our tools can help you increase your business through building, managing, executing and measuring marketing efforts for your clients.
Also, we will show how our marketing software is integrated with tools that can help you streamline your inventory and warehouse operations, as well as easily build customizable storefronts for online ordering.
We will also demonstrate new features – including QR Codes and Social Media integration.
Friday at the Software Vendor Presentations
On Friday night, we will be participating in the Software Vendor Presentations. We’ll have 16 minutes to show you how our software can help you increase your value and the services that you offer your clients.
Saturday at the Dine Around
After a long day, come and visit the interlinkONE room at the Dine Around. Along with enjoying good food, you’ll have the chance to chat with fellow associates. Also you may have the chance learn a few new marketing tips and tricks, and possibly win a prize or two.
Sunday at the Open Forums: How to use Social Media to Build Business
interlinkONE’s President and CEO, John Foley, Jr. will be presenting this topic on Sunday morning. Here is the official description of what he’ll be presenting:
LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook – these sites are growing in popularity and are being leveraged to promote fulfillment services. In this session John Foley, President of interlinkONE, presents advice in how to use these media to grow your fulfillment business. He presents real-world scenarios and share the pros and cons of each of these popular social media sites.
We always have a great time at the MFSA Conferences. They always prove to be very educational, and are full of possibilities for making strong business connections.
Hope to see you there!
Capture Screenshots Quicker and Easier with “SnagIt”
Since I’ve been working with computers I can’t imagine how many times I’ve hit that “Print screen button”… if I had a nickel 
. The print screen / screen shot key is probably one of the best features on the key board (except for Ctrl + Alt + Del of course). But as helpful as a screen shot can be to show off your software product, latest pc error message to send to IT, or your high score in Tetris it can also be time consuming to bring it into paint, photoshop, whatever you use to edit and crop it down.
So I wanted to bring attention to a piece of software I started using a few months ago to speed up my production on producing screen shots for emails, powerpoints, ect.
A program called “Snag It” by Tech Smith.
Snag It allows you to capture content on your screen in an easier way. You can select the area you want to capture by drawing a square around it instead of capturing the whole screen and cropping it down. Or select the one of your six windows open on your screen you’d like to capture. Even capture a scrolling window instead of piecing it together in an editing program.
Snag It has more options than that and you can see them in the image below but those are the most common functions I use.
Everything is also stored in your Snag It library so if you hit your screen shot key a 2nd time it won’t over ride your first screen shot. The software also allows you to do some minor editing of the images by adding drop shadows, arrows, text, call outs and more.
But you can check out all these features on their website – http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp
Tech Smith offers a free trial download so test it out and see if you like it – if you do let other’s know about your exspeirience by posting in the comments section below.
Using New Technology For An Old Marketing Strategy
Multi-Channel Marketing Today
Multi-Channel Marketing is not a new marketing strategy. But as technology advances, the business world can take advantage of the new channels that have opened up. The cross-over between what was once purely promotional in nature and what was once completely sales-oriented has enabled better integrated marketing and sales platforms than ever before. It’s not just about how you get your message across, but also how you make it easy for your prospects to make that decision and spend their money on your business’ products and services.
The cool thing about all the new technology out there is that allows us to reach more prospects and customers. It makes the means of reaching those people more efficient. And it allows us to customize those messages in order to make the experience more personal for each prospect/customer. The trick is to balance out the message so that it isn’t all about pushing sales and marketing a product or service. It’s important to remember to provide information and encourage social interaction with the consumer.
Remember the days of blasting faxes to random, countless fax machines in offices near and far? Or shipping catalogs to every household within certain zipcodes? Multi-channel marketing wiped out those shotgun marketing techniques and became responsible for the implementation of more strategic campaigns. And we’ve been able to get more personalized with our messages and transform our interaction with prospects and customers due to the advances in both phone and internet technologies.
Mobile marketing using today’s cell phone technology entails sending messages to the target market on their phones. Originally, messages were sent to cell phones as text only. However, the bulk of newer phones with color screens have the ability to receive multimedia messages. These messages can include text, audio and video elements. There are also games developed for phones and some companies have leveraged this capability into an advergaming strategy – furthering their brand through sponsorship or promotional messages.
Websites have evolved from merely stagnant promotional and informational tools. They are interactive and engaging. Many companies choose to have a blog that incorporates the latest news and a behind-the-scenes look, along with inviting comments from readers. They offer downloads, trial versions of products, sneak peeks and discounts. There are contests and giveaways. Then, moving away from the company site, there are discussion forums on which to network with prospects, micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter, and social networking arenas such as Facebook. When you start to think of all the avenues in which you can interact with prospects, develop personalized messages and implement engaging marketing campaigns, the possibilities are endless as technology grows! Regardless of the technology and how new and exciting it is, effective multi-channel marketing boils down to the basics: you’ve got to send relevant messages to your target market that helps to build both your brand and that customer relationship. You want customers for the long haul. And usually, that means combining old and new technology and coming up with a workable mix while serving the needs of the “right” people – your prospects and current customers.
The Rush to (No) Results
The world of marketing can be a very fun one to be in. In the right environment, a marketing department should be filled with ideas, creativity, and excitement. Every day, there are new campaigns efforts to experience and learn from. There are new tools and medias that can help a company promote their product and service.
However, excitement can be put to an end quickly if marketing fundamentals are forgotten.
You may be very excited to tell management and accounting about your social media activities, but if they cannot grasp the ROI, then you may find yourself in a bit of trouble.
So, how can you ensure that your excitement will be shared by your entire company?
Never forget to measure it
For example, maybe you are investing money putting up a banner ad on a website that receives a lot of traffic. Your initial excitement may be about the content of the banner ad… the animation, the video, or the audio that will be used. However, just as much focus needs to be put on ensuring you measure the effectiveness of that ad.
Does the banner ad link directly to your website? If so, will you be able to easily find out how many visitors came to the site from that banner ad?
If not, you may want the banner ad to link to a landing page first, which would allow you to track the click, before they are redirected to your home page.
Or, you may want the banner ad to go to a landing page that provides information about your company, but that also tries to gather data from your visitors. Perhaps you pose a couple of survey questions right on the page, making it as easy as possible for people to request additional information from your company, or to set up a demo, etc.
These same types of tactics could be used from other medias. Perhaps you’ve just launched a new video. Will it display a “for more information, please visit this URL” at the end of the video? Or perhaps you want to track how many people snapped a picture of your very first QR Code/web campaign?
This also greatly applies to social media – perhaps you are posting compelling content on Twitter and Facebook. Do you know if people are actually clicking links from those sites?
Obstacles were made to be overcome
Some companies hesitate from trying new medias because they don’t think they have a perfect grasp on it. We are not encouraging this approach at all. We strongly believe that you need to “Just do it” – use social media, videos, QR Codes, and more in your marketing efforts. The more you do, the better you’ll get.
But never forget marketing fundamentals – no matter what the media, the fundamentals primarily stay the same. Promote and share information as much as possible – and if you can measure the effectiveness of each effort, your campaigns will improve, and your boss will truly be happy.
