Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Better Know a DMI Employee!

One of my favorite segments on The Colbert Report is the "Better Know a District" segment. I thought we could have our own DMI version!

So here's my interview with head of our Graphics Department, who we'll call GD.

L:  How long have you been working at DMI?

GD:  2 years. Time flies when you're having fun!

L:  So speaking of fun, what do you do when you're not working?

GD:  I like to pump iron!

L:  That sounds impressive!

GD:  But seriously I really like to stay physically active in my personal life. I stay in shape by going to the gym, snowboarding, dancing, rock climbing, and paint balling.

L:  I wish I could be that active. Do you have any pets?

GD:  Yes I have 2 house cats named Ace and Sheba.

L:  Nice! Any funny stories about your cats?

GD:  They're full of personality. It's like living with 2 other roommates. One acts like a toddler and the other seems to have a bipolar personality.

L:  Sounds like a handful! I know what it's like to have a crazy pet. Were you always creatively minded or was it something that developed over the years?

GD:  It actually runs in the family. My mom is a florist and a craft maker, my dad is a photographer and my brother & sister are both artists. It's something that just came naturally.

L:  A family of artists. That's really interesting! Thanks for a great interview!

I hope you all had fun getting to know a DMI employee!

--L

Monday, March 28, 2011

Benefits of Barcodes

Hope everyone had a good weekend! I was on the road when Earth Hour happened and was curious to see how dark it would get around me but unfortunately nothing happened. Granted turning off your car headlights would not have been a good idea!

Last month we had written a post titled, Love and the 2D Barcode. It was about those little bar codes we see on advertisements.

Well these 2D bar codes (also called QR codes) are gaining more momentum. In a recent article from Advertising Age, QR codes are being pushed to the forefront by some large companies. Companies like Target, Best Buy, Macy's, and Post cereal are doing large marketing campaigns not only by using these bar codes but emphasizing how to use these bar codes.

Macy's has a nationally running video that "shows shoppers how to use codes and explains what they'll get access to when they scan one with their phone." They have "in-store signs and employees that are armed with more than 100,000 lanyards containing instructions on how to use the codes."

I think educating the public is the most important thing. If people know how to use it and why they should use it, it allows people to embrace the technology more.

This type of marketing can be used as part of a direct marketing campaign as well. Creating a buzz about your company or organization in multiple channels is vital in making your overall direct marketing campaign successful.

Has anyone tried scanning any of these 2-D bar codes? What do you think about this type of marketing? If you knew more about it, would you be more willing to try it?

--L

Friday, March 25, 2011

DMI's Community Weekend - Earth Hour Edition

Happy Friday! Let's hope the rain stops so we can enjoy the weekend.

For today's Community Weekend, I wanted to talk about an event that you can attend in your own home! This Saturday (03/26/11) is Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a "worldwide collective display of commitment to protect the one thing that unites us all - the planet."

In order to participate, all you have to do is turn off your lights at 8:30pm (local time) for an hour! While the lights are out, take a minute to think about what you can do to conserve the environment and make it more sustainable.

For more information about Earth Hour check out these links:

http://www.earthhour.org/Homepage.aspx

http://www.worldwildlife.org/sites/earthhour/index.html

http://www.beyondthehour.org/

Join the movement and turn off your lights!

--L

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Maximizing ROI

Today we have another post by our guest blogger. Take it away!

Here at DMI, we employ statistical analysis to select the best targets for our clients, review campaign performance, and even evaluate our internal production and data processes. 

But here is one we hadn’t seen before - One of my favorite bloggers, Nate Silver, recently wrote an article on how to use statistics to select the best salad: maximizing Return on Investment (ROI) by component/ingredient evaluation.

Regardless of whether you’re trying to get the most for your money out of a salad bar or a prospecting campaign, ROI component evaluation can be a quite a useful tool.

We can more broadly apply this idea to meet our clients’ needs by having them evaluate their internal data resources from an ROI perspective.  Instead of going out and purchasing an expensive, heavily detailed prospecting list, we might advise them to consider going back to lists of lapsed customers or donors, or reaching out to those who are affiliated with their organization in some other capacity.  This information may also be added to a less expensive prospecting list option and then incorporated into a statistical modeled solution.

--B

Monday, March 21, 2011

Mail Delivered Via Missile?

What a rain filled weekend we had! My borrowed poncho was my favorite clothing item over the weekend, and I don't think I'm going to return it anytime soon.

So did you know that the Postal Service used a missile to deliver mail? Well they did!

"On June 8, 1959, in a move that Postmaster General Arthur A. Summerfield heralded as 'of historic significance to the peoples of the entire world,' the Navy submarine USS Barbero fired a guided missile carrying 3,000 letters towards the naval auxiliary air station in Mayport, Florida. Racing along at about 600 miles per hour, the guided missile traveled the more than 100 miles from the deck of the submarine off the coast of Florida to the air station in about 22 minutes."

Wouldn't it be cool to get your mail delivered to you in minutes, instead of days? Maybe not your bills but all the fun stuff like packages or magazines.

Unfortunately this experiment didn't stick and was a one time thing. Granted, I can see where some issues and concerns would arise.

You can read the entire article here:  http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/_pdf/MissileMail.pdf

Can you imagine if this option was available today? Direct mail would be a completely different concept.

--L

Friday, March 18, 2011

DMI's Community Weekend - Save a Life Edition!

How was everyone's St. Patrick's Day? I had a wonderful traditional Irish dinner last night and of course some Irish beer to go along with it.

Due to many recent events, for this week's Community Weekend I wanted to talk about a great event called Save A Life Saturday by the American Red Cross and hosted by Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The event will offer "the basics of hands-only CPR, the treatment of shock and how to treat wounds." These classes will be given all over the country in over 100 locations.

Luckily there will be a class held at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library from 4:30pm-6:00pm on Saturday (03/19/11). Best of all, it's a free class!

This is a great opportunity "to promote awareness and preparedness in an emergency situation in our community."

So get out in the rain and get to the library to learn some life saving skills!

Try to stay as dry as possible and be careful out there. Looks like a wet weekend in the Bay Area!

--L

P.S. Choosing all cinderella teams isn't working out so well for me in my NCAA bracket! Grrr!

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Happy St. Patrick's Day Eve!

I must admit, I am a total holiday person. I love every holiday!

Since I don't usually blog on Thursdays, today will be my St. Patty's Day post.

St. Patty's Day is all about the color green. I always make sure I have a green shirt to wear, or that I have a green marker handy, so I can draw green shamrocks on my hand to avoid getting pinched.

DMI also loves the color green!

We are Green e-certified and a recognized Green Business in Santa Clara County. So what does this all mean?
  • Our energy usage is offset by purchasing renewable energy credits
  • We use energy efficient lightbulbs in all of our light fixtures
  • We use recycled paper for all of our office needs
  • We encourage our clients to mail less and use recycled and/or FSC certified materials
  • Our production floor recycles, reuses, and re-purposes all materials
  • We use soy based ink for our printers
  • Our new office was designed with lots of windows to take advantage of natural lighting
  • Even our soda machine is green! There is a censor that shuts off the machine when people aren't walking by
What are some ways you or your business are being green? What are some ways you or your business are celebrating St. Patrick's Day?

--L

P.S. Someone get me some green beer!

Monday, March 14, 2011

You can do everything with a smartphone!

How was everyone's weekend? Did everyone remember to change their clocks yesterday? I love that our smartphones change the time for us automatically!

Speaking of smartphones, I was given an article from BBC News Technology titled Denmark to swap stamps for texts. People in Denmark are now allowed to send a "text bearing the word 'PORTO' to the 1900 number" and "will get in return a code that must be written on a letter in the place they would usually stick a stamp."

It's pretty cool that the Denmark Post Office is embracing technology. The more accessible the Post Office is, the more people are inclined to use it. But don't worry, this service will not replace stamps in Denmark. They intend to "keep the Danish stamp tradition alive as the stamp adds qualities to a letter." This just gives people another option.

I think it's great that we have the ability to use smartphones to do more and more. I was able to donate to the Red Cross for the Japan relief efforts just by sending a text. If I can buy a stamp doing the same, I'm on board.

What do you think of this service? If this was available here, would you be willing to use it? As always, all comments are appreciated!

--L

P.S. Did everyone fill out their NCAA brackets? I'm rooting for Cinderella teams all the way! :)

Friday, March 11, 2011

DMI's Community Weekend - Women's History Month Edition

Our thoughts go out to everyone in Japan who was affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Click here for information on how you can help!

As many of you know, March is Women's History Month and SJSU Women's Studies is hosting many events all month long. 

One of the events is a screening of the documentary "Sowing the Seeds of Justice: The Story of Cruz Reynoso." This film describes the life of Cruz Reynoso, who was the first Chicano Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court. The documentary was written and directed by Abby Ginzberg, an award winning documentary filmmaker who focuses on issues dealing with racial or gender discrimination and social injustices.

After the screening of the documentary, there will be a conversation session with both Cruz Reynoso and Abby Ginzberg. 


All events are open to the public so I urge everyone to attend one of the many events.

Have a good weekend everyone!

--L

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A look at trends of charitable giving

Today we have a guest blogger from our Research department to tell us about trends in giving! Take it away!

In late 2009 and again in late 2010, DMI commissioned five poll questions to be conducted by the Survey Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University.  The questions were asked of respondents in the Silicon Valley area of California.

The results for the 2009 Survey can be found here, and the results of the 2010 Survey can be found here.

So what did we learn from the surveys?  We inferred that the likelihood of a significant donation decreased between the end of 2009 and 2010, mostly for church based organizations, and that the public perception of the importance of Food Banks decreased more than any other type of organization listed, while the public perception of organizations promoting environmental issues increased slightly.

More people in 2010 say that they are donating to national organizations, perhaps driven by political considerations, or even specific issues like the BP oil disaster.  There also appears to have been a shift in preference to Email solicitations at the expense of Postal mail, but Postal mail is still the most popular form of solicitation; there has been an increase in the None of the above option, indicating the emergence of a new solicitation method, perhaps social media driven.  We can also see that more donors say they are restricting their giving to known organizations, indicating perhaps the increasing importance of loyalty. 

In all, people still open their mail, and still want to be mailed, but appear wary of giving to new organizations, or to donating in general.

If you want more information about these surveys and our results, contact us!

--B

Monday, March 7, 2011

Selfless Creativity

How was everyone's weekend?

Most of my weekend was spent hanging out with my dog which may sound boring, but he is like the Tasmanian devil x 100! Besides chasing my dog around, I saw a Cinequest movie on Sunday. As I said last Friday, it's definitely a must!

Today's post is about an article from The Wall Street Journal. The article is titled Week In Ideas, which is a montage of various topics from the week. The topic that peaked our interest the most was from the psychology section. It touched upon ideas from an abstract in the "Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin" which found through various surveys that "people are more creative when they're thinking on someone else's behalf."

So what does this study mean for direct marketing? There is a benefit for getting creative input from other people and/or agencies, such as DMI. Internal creative teams are wonderful but having another opinion is definitely a bonus. We at DMI pride ourselves in being able to work with our clients' creative teams to produce a cohesive message. We are also a great resource if your company or organization does not have a creative team because we become your off-site team.

Please Contact Us if you want to know more information about our creative capabilities!

Also, don't forget to subscribe to our blog by entering your email address in the box on the right hand side!

--L

Friday, March 4, 2011

DMI's Community Weekend - Movie Edition!

I don't know about you guys but I am so ready for the weekend!

For today's Community Weekend, I wanted to talk about the Cinquest Film Festival. It is an independent movie festival that is right here in San Jose. "Cinequest remains one of the last big festival bastions for the discovery of new and emerging film artists."

It's a great opportunity to support our local art scene and see some quality movies! It is a 13 day event (started on March 1st) and movies are shown all over downtown San Jose.

Their website has a great interactive schedule/calendar so you can plan out all the movies that you want to watch. There's also movie info, trailers, and you can even buy your tickets online.

I've already purchased tickets for a movie this weekend and excited to see more!

So check out the website:  www.cinequest.org

Have a great weekend!

--L

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

An insider's view into DMI!

Happy March everyone! Where is the time going?

It seems that we have finally settled into our new office (minus a few finishing touches). 

One of the departments that changed the most was our Production floor. We streamlined the layout of the machines in order to increase efficiency. So what kind of machines are we talking about?









Let me introduce you to our "Winkjet!"

This inkjetting machine:
  • Can inkjet 10,000 mail pieces per hour
  • Handles stock sizes from 3"x3" to 11"x17"
  • Not only inkjets but stamps envelopes and tabs mailers
  • Requires only one person to operate the entire machine
  • Prints variable data as well as simple graphic images
  • Almost all of our projects run through this machine
This is just one of our many reliable machines that help make DMI...well DMI!

Leave a comment if you would like to know more about our Winkjet or our other machines, or if you would like to come by for a visit to learn more about DMI.  

--L