2014 – The Year in Review

It’s been another interesting year for us at Copy Express. We have had a change of location, some great triumphs, the occasional hiccup, and the a few experiments of which some paid off. There is a ton of stuff I could talk about but here’s just a few things that I think you might be interested in: Mass Marketing, Permit Post, Never Tear Papers, Die Cut Labels,  This Blog & Social Media.

The big thing for me this year was mass marketing, specifically mailbox stuffing. In this age where business will spam your email inbox at a drop of a hat, getting a real physical flyer in the mailbox is a bit event. (Copy Express isn’t like these businesses, while we will email once a month, it’s to talk about what’s new in our blog so it’s stuff you can use.) In the last six months I’ve done both a Christmas card mail out to every post office box and bag covering Wellington and the Hutt Valley and personalised flyers being delivered to every mailbox in an electorate. With the personalised flyers, not only were we able to produce all 4278 them in the correct address sequence for hand delivery but do it over a period of 2 business days with a weekend in the middle! The Christmas cards were promoting the twin companies Copy Express and Business Express wishing everyone a Merry Grinchmas and including a promotional offer for Greeting Cards. I would have to say that it was very successful as the number of Christmas cards orders that came from it more than covered the cost of our promotion and made us a respectable profit.

Permit Post has been interesting aspect to my job this year. Now some would say that email technology has largely supplanted bulk mail for most business, and given how NZ Post has to keep increasing their postage rates to cover the shrinking demand, I would have to largely agree. However there is the side of the coin that shows that email marketing, unless very carefully planned, tends to get ignored by most people where as a physical item has a lot more impact. With the cost of standard postage, any way to reduce it is worth investigating. If you are planning to get marking out to 300 or more letters then bulk mail gives you a great saving on postage cost. Give us a spreadsheet of all the postal addresses and we can do the printing on the envelopes with the permit saving you time and money. The only thing you have to do is keep your postal address records up to the NZ Post addressing standards (which can be found here.)

We are always trying out new media on our printers to see if it be useful for our clients. One new product is the Teslon ‘never tear’ printable plastic. We can print, cut and crease it just like normal heavy papers but instead you have a material that is that can be immersed in water and washed clean with detergent. So why use it over normal lamination I hear you ask. Lamination is great when you want to seal something airtight, need it to be quite stiff, or to be very hard wearing. The  down side is that if you want it ‘clean edged’ (no plastic around the edges of the paper) or puncture the plastic then moisture can get in or the laminate can be peeled off. Since it’s the plastic itself we are printing on Teslon doesn’t have those problems. It can also work out cheaper for bigger jobs as there is less costly finishing involved.

Our suppliers are also expanding their product ranges to meet market demands and we will take advantage of it for you. One of these is specialised pre cut peel and stick labels. Once upon a time unless you wanted rectangle or square adhesive labels you would have to have them custom cut for you by a specialist which isn’t cheap. Now we have sources for a whole range of pre made shapes sheets can order in for you. Discs, ovals, stars and bursts, even the classic wine bottle label shape. These suppliers can also give us whole range of different types of material too: plastics, coloured including some fluorescents, even foils. The only limitation is that there are minimum pack sizes we have to order and as they are custom product the client has to pay for the full pack even if they don’t print on them all. Bearing that in mind it still could work out to be a great way of personalising your product to make it stand out from the rest.

Honestly I’m most surprised about this blog. I really didn’t think I had it in me to have been writing 2 to 3 articles a month consistently for over year and half now, but here we are. You know what the scary thing is, I’ve not even begun to scratch the surface on marketing, design, printing and all the other subjects that have a connection to what we do at Copy Express. We have been kicking around a few ideas that can expand this blog even further, giving you even more helpful insight and advice on how to get the best out of your print and marketing. One of the new things is we are now on Facebook (Remember the Petone as, Copy Express on Facebook is a printing company in Greece.) On it we post items on cool jobs we have done, talk about companies we work with, link to articles we know you will find useful. This is under the watchful eye of Tracey, the smiling face of Copy Express.

For this new year, I can only guess at the new and interesting things we will be doing. Want to be kept up to date with all the cool things we are doing that can help you and your business? Watch this blog and our Facebook page to be the first to know.