Proudly Hanging 3 National Design Awards

We're proud to announce that our Design Department has won three 2007 American Graphic Design Awards, which recognize outstanding achievement in graphic design. The awards, presented by Graphic Design USA magazine, honor specific top works from advertising agencies, graphic design firms, and publishing departments across diverse graphic design media, including print, internet, broadcast graphics, and logos.

Linda Bond, our Design Department Manager, created the pieces recognized by the awards: a full color real estate brochure marketing a home for sale, an issue of Healing Spirit Magazine (the 36 page full color publication of the Association of Professional Chaplains), and a logo signifying Green Friendly Printing.

A Real Winner!

The success of the Green Friendly Logo has been a source of special pride for us. We needed a logo to signal our commitment to environmentally responsible printing, and that our clients and peers in the industry could freely use to demonstrate a green friendly pledge. The logo is attractive and fun, and we're seeing its being adopted throughout the industry.

Linda has been with Plum Grove Printers for 13 years and leads an art department recognized by American Graphic Design Awards each of the past five years. Plum Grove designers Lisa Olivero and Rob Frank have also been decorated with awards.

Congratulations, Linda, on this prestigious recognition!

Wishing you all a loving and happy holiday,

Peter the Printer

Holiday Cards: Right About Now

In the name of a less stressful Holiday season, let's do some quick math: you want your Personalized Holiday Cards to arrive during the week and a half before Christmas. This means you want to have your Holiday Cards in the mail between December 5th and December 10th. It takes about a week to custom print and deliver cards to you, so to make sure your happy holiday message decks halls, you should place your holiday card order . . . right about now.

At PetersHolidayCards.com, you have the complete holiday card catalogs of two top studios, Carlson Craft and Birchcraft, organized neatly online. You will find your holiday cards by style (from humor to patriotic to elegant to party invitations), and typeset the cards (and envelopes!) easily online. You'll find it's never been simpler ringing out your warm holiday message to your associates and loved ones.

This holiday season, we're donating 10% of holiday card profits to a charity of your choice. In addition to this donation, we're discounting 20% off all custom holiday cards printing.

The clock's running down on other holiday products, too-- including Promotional Calendars for advertising and Imprinted Business Holiday Gifts.

Don't look now, but Thanksgiving is a week away. We at Plum Grove Printers and Peter the Printer wish you and your families a very happy holiday!

Peter "the Printer" Lineal

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2008 Marketing Starts Today

Its January 2nd, 2008. Across America your best sales prospects are waking up, grabbing a cup of coffee, and glancing to the calendar-- a new calendar for the new year. If that calendar is imprinted with your company logo and contact information you will stick around throughout 2008-- maintaining Top-of-Mind Awareness. Consider the results from a recent Promotional Products Association survey:

• 55% of people questioned said they keep their promotional products for more than 1 year.


• 76.1% of respondents could recall the advertiser’s name on the promotional product that they had received within the past 12 months.


• 75.4% of respondents said they kept their promotional products because they were useful.

Promotional Calendars make an elegant, useful business gift, and an excellent advertising tool. At PetersCalendars.com you custom imprint a variety of calendars, easily, affordably, and entirely online.

Photo Wall Calendars Full color Photo Calendars with imprinted bottom contact strip. From $1.05/piece		Desk Calendars Compact, tasteful, full color desk calendars make a stellar business gift. From $.87/piece
Pop Up Calendars Unique 3-D calendars stick out of the crowd. A sure-fire addition to your client's desk. From $.53/piece		Jumbo Wall Calendars You see them on office walls all over-- huge commercial calendars in a variety of styles. From $1.78/piece
Magnetic Calendars They stick around-- to refrigerators, desks, and filing cabinets. With tear-away contact card to personalize for your area. From $.59/piece		Every Calendar Page can be Custom Imprinted with your Logo, Photo, & Contact Info.

Get your Imprinted Calendars to your clients and leads before the New Year and reap the profits throughout 2008!

Peter "the Printer" Lineal

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Other Holiday Season Products . . .

Personalized Holiday Cards Printing

Business Holiday Gifts

Why Direct Mail Postcards?

Postcards Hit With Impact.

Direct mail postcards catch the consumer's eye quickly with professional design, conveying relevant information and your unique sale proposition. With only a second to grab a customer's attention, the size, simplicity, and color of business postcards have an immediate effect; there is no envelope screening your message from your potential clients. The continual exposure of a postcard marketing campaign will have an outsized effect in building brand recognition, increase familiarity with your services, and increase your sales.


Postcard direct mail marketing campaigns can be Affordable.

We go out of our way to provide the lowest prices possible on full-color, custom postcards that professionally convey your message. The low postage rates on the cards, coupled with our using every applicable postal discount, means you can mail to a client every month for a year for much less than $10!


Custom Postcards are easy at Peter's Direct Mail Postcards.

Our online software walks you through the process of creating the piece exactly to your specifications: choosing the size, uploading your art, navigating your mailing options. We can help you create a targeted mailing list, too, tailored precisely to your needs.

How to Target your Best Sales Prospects

Imagine you are in a room of 100 strangers plucked at random from the entire U.S. population, and you are trying to start up a conversation about, say, baseball. How many of these folks, plucked from all walks of life, do you think would want or be able to engage in this conversation with you?

Now imagine another room of 100 strangers, placed together randomly except for their being sports fans. How many people in this room do you think you'd be able to engage in conversation about baseball? Maybe 30 people in the room only like basketball or hockey, and another 40 people have only a passing interest in baseball. This still leaves 30 people who like to talk about baseball, and might be happy to speak with you about it, for no other reason than their interest in the topic.

When you are applying your energy and resources in taking your marketing message from person to person, you want to be communicating with the audience most receptive to what you have to say. There's a world of sales prospects out there for whom your product or service represents a solution to a problem, a delightful luxury, or a very useful tool. If you can stack the room with 100 of these leads, you'll be overwhelmed with new clients.

Direct mail marketing cannot deliver you only the addresses of those people ready and eager to buy your special Widget X, but, like the room of sports fans, it can give the addresses of people who have bought other types of Widgets, the addresses of people with the means to buy Widget X, the people whose lifestyle would be made much easier by Widget X. Probably a good number of these prospects would be interested in Widget X.

The Business Holiday Gift Dilemma

The seasons turn, and the Great Dilemma of the Holidays begins to unfold: what gifts to get your valued business colleagues, associates, and clients. A thoughtful holiday gift connects you warmly with your business sphere, but finding the right gift for your professional associates can be difficult. Here are some ideas and guidelines as you start your Business Holiday Gift shopping:

• Food gifts are always a hit. Colleagues of all types will eat and enjoy chocolates, candy jars, meats, popcorn tins, wines, and food baskets imprinted with your company logo.



• Modest holiday gifts can convey a classy holiday message without breaking the bank. Personalized candles, mugs, ornaments, and beauty products are affordable ways to reach out to your holiday "Nice List," especially if its a long one.



• Do not hesitate to get upscale gifts for close business friends and special clients. Engraved golf clubs, crystal, and lavish gift baskets show your gratitude for the special relationships that make your business life possible.

Our Business Holiday Gift solution, www.PetersAdSpecialties.com, makes it simple to find these personalized gifts you want. You can search within a gift category and price range (say, logo imprinted gift baskets for less than $10 per piece) to find the right gifts fast and easy. Search our online catalog of 100,000s of personalized gifts and find the creative holiday gifts you want.

Here's to a calmer, less stressful holiday shopping season!

Peter "the Printer" Lineal

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Other Holiday Season Products . . .

Personalized Holiday Cards Printing

Imprinted Promotional Calendars

Business Holiday Cards Store Says: Choose Your Charity

Peter the Printer's personalized holiday card website, re-launched today, gives shoppers custom control of their printing and charitable giving.

Hoffman Estates, IL October 10, 2007 -- Peter the Printer celebrated the re-launch of its personalized Holiday Cards website today, Peters Holiday Cards, with 20% discount off all printing and a 10% charitable donation of all profits. In a completely online and automated process, shoppers choose from hundreds of Christmas and Holiday card designs, typeset the card (or choose a verse template), and customize the card's envelope. The custom holiday cards store provides a self-service solution for businesses and Christmas shoppers, who will send out close to 2 billion holiday cards this Christmas season.

As well as the 20% discount off all holiday card printing, the store will donate 10% of every order's profit to a charity of the client's choice. Christmas shoppers and corporations may choose from a list of accredited charities, or suggest a charity to donate the proceeds from their order.

"Our clients choose the charity so they feel connected with their donation," explained CEO Peter "the Printer" Lineal. "We prize this opportunity to promote the spirit of giving, as well as some of our favorite, most worthy charities."

Peters Holiday Cards returns as one of the most popular Peter the Printer web services. The firm operates over a dozen do-it-yourself custom printing websites, which offer easy, online design and discount prices on products as diverse as imprinted business holiday gifts and promotional business calendars. Lineal believes that the broad selection and smooth functionality of the holiday cards site explains its success.

"Business Holiday Cards, especially, need to strike the right tone," continued Lineal. "They are not about sales, but about human connection with clients, employees, and friends. We offer the complete catalogs of two of the largest holiday card studios, providing a rare breadth of choice to establish the right personal tone. From humorous holiday cards, Thanksgiving cards, animal cards, to religious cards, Christmas photo cards, and beyond, we offer a simple method to create thoughtfully personalized holiday messages."

"Ordering custom holiday cards is suddenly easy and stressless. We have boiled what used to involve multiple phone calls, in-person proofing, and weeks of wait, into 15 minutes of work or less, with your holiday cards shipping within 3 days. The transformation in this business is amazing."

Peter the Printer, as well as its parent company, Plum Grove Printers, has an involved history with the charitable and not-for-profit sectors. The firm offers a year-round, no-strings 14% off discount to all registered charities and not-for-profits, and counts numerous churches, synagogues, and Boy Scout troops among the beneficiaries of this policy.

About Peter the Printer

Peter the Printer operates web-based, self-service custom printing and marketing services at PeterThePrinter.net. The full-service printing company was founded by Peter Lineal in 1980 near Chicago, IL. An industry-wide leader in environmentally-friendly printing, the firm has been repeatedly recognized as one of the Top 100 North American Printers by Quick Printing Magazine. Peter the Printer is a wholly owned subsidiary of Plum Grove Printers, Inc.

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Small Press Printer Leads by Example in Environmental Responsibility

Peter the Printer has drafted an initiative to show that truly green printing is possible.

Peter the Printer, a division of Plum Grove Printers, Inc, announced today a sweeping environmental initiative designed to transform the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based firm into an industry leader of green printing. The multi-faceted initiative emphasizes strict recycling, renewable resources, and donations to reforestation programs, to minimize the impact of consumption while cutting waste. Peter the Printer, with over 30 full-time employees, wants to become an example of what an environmentally-friendly small business printer can look like, and inspire other printers to take up its initiative.

"Green printing is a very exciting frontier for us," said CEO Peter Lineal. "Environmentally sound industry is possible. It is marginally more expensive, but well within the means of small press printers to adopt green policies. We want to demonstrate how to do it. We want to prove to the world, and ourselves, just how environmentally-friendly we can be."

The initiative calls for changing consumption and waste patterns, increasing staff environmental-consciousness, and designing the firm's new production building to be eco-friendly. Plum Grove Printers is now powered by 100% non-carbon sources, including 60% wind power. The firm intends to increase its use of recycled paper to 90% of its total tonnage, and aims to have a 99% recycling or reuse rate with inks, rags, and incoming packaging and containers. The initiative also calls for completely offsetting paper usage by donations to the Nature Conservancy and the Printer's National Environmental Assistance Center, which replant trees while protecting high-conservation forests.

The company will be producing a brochure outlining cost-effective ways for other small press printers to go green, and offers general use of its Green Friendly logo (available for free download at PeterThePrinter.net

About Peter the Printer and Plum Grove Printers : Founded in 1980, Plum Grove Printers, green friendly Chicago printer] features an award-winning design studio, full mail/bindery services, digital printing, and traditional offset and web printing. Since August, Plum Grove Printers has launched the first dozen of about 50 self-service printing webstores anchored at PeterThePrinter.net. The firm has repeatedly been named one of the 100 Top North American Printers by Quick Print Magazine in its 25 years in the northwest Chicago suburbs.

Promotional Calendars Keep You Around

It's hard to wrap your head around, but soon will be the time to start thinking of end of year advertising promotions-- and few promotional products have as much staying power as Business Promotional Calendars. An advertising calendar keeps your contact information available and in front of sales leads for the entire year, ensuring that you'll be around when prospects need your services.

Today we're relaunching PetersCalendars.com, giving you the Custom Promotional Calendars to make a winning impact with fast, easy design. Our advertising Calendar site offers four custom imprinted calendar styles--

Photo Wall Calendars -- Choose from 20 photo calendars (including wildlife, automotive, golf & more), imprinted with your company logo & info.

Magnetic Calendars -- With tear-away pages, magnetic calendars stick to fridges & file cabinets. A cheap custom calendar.

Pop Up Calendars -- Truly unique, these 3-D promotional calendars are a sure bet for your clients' desks and home. Pop Up Calendars come in a rainbow of styles.

Desk Calendars -- Small & attractive, custom desk calendars make a good, useful promotional product.

Commercial Calendars -- Large commercial wall calendars, perfect for clients to write on.

Envelopes Made from Corn

Every day across America, tens of millions of window envelopes are manufactured and printed. As of this July, businesses at last have the choice to use window envelopes made from environmentally-friendly materials: Blue Corn Window Envelopes. Moving away from corrosive, non-biodegradable plastics, the windows are made from a corn-based resin and have a slight blue tinge. The paper in the envelopes, while not recycled, is FSC certified paper fiber (a recycled fiber envelope would fall apart in the mail!). Blue Corn Window Envelopes cost the same as normal window envelopes.

Our Green-Friendly Policy Making Waves The commercial availability of Blue Corn Window Envelopes is a proud victory for the Green Friendly program launched by Plum Grove Printers. It has been possible to produce these envelopes for a while, but they had never been made or ordered until weeks ago. A cycle of "I won't make them until somebody orders.

Plum Grove President Kim Evans and Peter Lineal (me!) receive Clean Air Counts certification, which recognizes Plum Grove Printers as a committed partner in reducing Chicagoland air pollution by 5 tons of emissions per day.

I won't order until somebody makes them" kept the envelope out of use until Cindy, our representative at our envelope wholesaler, Lewis Paper, inspired by our policy, invested in 100,000 #10 Green Friendly window envelopes. These are our envelopes of choice and can be yours, too!


Make Environmental Friendliness your Business Priority


Our Green-Friendly program means both being a Clean Printer and showing by example how low-cost changes in business practice can significantly reduce your environmental footprint. Curbing the environmental impact of your envelopes is one small way to be a more responsible business while signaling commitment to shared, important values to your clients and business partners.


Your Proud Printer,
Peter

The ABCs of Direct Marketing

By Peter "the Printer" Lineal

How to Select Your Prospecting Mailing List

We hear it again and again in the printing industry: We need to mail every month without fail if we want our business to thrive. Almost all of the big, successful printers have ongoing direct mail campaigns. And there are many newsletter services that offer their creativity to you at a fraction of the cost of you doing the conceptualizing, writing, and art yourself. All it takes is the desire and a good mailing list of prospects.

Your existing and past clients are your number one prospects to sell more products and/or services. Past quotations also are a valid source of list building. But to get things rolling, you can either build your own list from street address directories, chamber of commerce lists, yellow pages, etc., or opt to buy a list from a professional list broker. The benefits of choosing a list broker are having the most accurate mailing list information available, being able to curtail your list to include the most fruitful prospects, and convenient and fast delivery.

Pinpoint Your Target

Once you've decided to use direct mail as part of your total promotional plan, you'll need to select an appropriate mailing list. Pinpoint your target audience as precisely as you can before you begin the mailing list search process. Do you want to reach businesses, consumers, or every mailbox in the neighborhood of your store or business? Do you need names only or will just the addresses do; do you need titles of those in business; could you use telephone numbers for follow-up calls? Other available and very useful information includes level of sales, years in business, number of employees, credit worthiness, and much more. Do you want the list sorted by zip code, city, county, business size, or some combination of these criteria?

The value of direct mail marketing lies in its ability to connect you directly with the audience most receptive to your message. Imagine a room filled with your ten best clients, and ask yourself: do these ten clients overwhelming come from certain industries? Are they mostly women? Do they have similar lifestyles or economic situations? Are they mostly apartment dwellers? A well-designed mailing list serves as a doorway into this room, allowing you to tell these likely clients about your services or products.

Never Buy, Only Rent

You never buy a mailing list. You only rent it. You can rent a list for one-time use or multiple-use (more than one mailing in a 12-month period). If you want to mail only one piece to each name, then one time is enough. But more often than not you'll want to re-mail to the same names and need multiple-use rental. Renting the list for multiple mailings allows you to selectively mail to prospects and track response for future re-mail and phone follow-up. Of course, once a prospect has responded to your mailing, he is "yours" to keep and develop.

Evaluate All Costs

Be sure to get an accurate idea of all the charges involved with a mailing. Cost per thousand, sorting charges, media charges, data conversion charges, labeling costs, etc. Only then can you accurately determine the total cost of your promotional piece by adding, printing, stuffing, folding, metering or stamping, paper stock, labor, in-house management, etc. Peter's Business and Consumer Mailing Lists include a handful of the most popular selects free of charge, but when many additional selects are included on very large lists, the cost per name can add up fast.

Consider Alternatives to Buying New Consumer or Business Mailing Lists

Examine your needs: would you consider sending your mail piece to every address in a neighborhood? Though not as focused as a carefully crafted consumer or business mailing list, neighborhood lists can be a very cost effective means to get your message out. The cost per address is considerably less than in other mailing lists, and by coordinating with mail carrier routes the United States Post Office offers a considerable rebate in postage, potentially saving you big bucks. Its not for every mailing, but definitely an option worth considering. (We offer neighborhood mailing lists at our webstore PetersNewNeighbors.com.)

Another way to save yourself the cost of a new mailing list is breathe new life into your old mailing list. Almost 20% of Americans move every year, businesses move or go under, people pass away, so the addresses on your mailing lists don't stay fresh for very long. Its very inexpensive, however, to vet your mailing list of changed addresses; we offer a mailing list cleaning service at PetersListScrub.com that gets rid of the old addresses (saving you the cost of a new mailing list and a lot of wasted printing) while consolidating your list to make you eligible for postal rebates.


About the Author:
Peter "the Printer" Lineal is founder and CEO of Peter the Printer webstores, a division of Plum Grove Printers, inc. He's been in the business of printing and mailing for 25 years and can be reached at peterl@petertheprinter.net.

Consumer Mailing Lists


Business Mailing Lists


Mailing Lists Home

Custom Business Promotional Products

Shop for more Business Promotional Products Pens Magnets Tote Bags Mugs Shirts & Clothing Keychains Mousepads & USBs Magnets Golf Balls MUCH MORE! Custom Promotional Printing at Peters Ad Specialties

Giving to the Givers

Somebody has been quietly doing a lot of heavy lifting in our communities: the charity and Not-For-Profit sector. Non-profits are a front line in fighting for what's meaningful to our society: stopping hunger through shelters, soup kitchens and food drives, teaching adults and children to read through literacy programs, fundraising for disease research, operating arts projects, running church charities and volunteer programs, and much more.

Enrich...and yet not-for-profit organizations are usually operated on a shoestring budget. A ton of energy and organization is spent trying to locate and sustain the resources needed to do their job!

We give Discounts Every Day to Not-for-Profits

For over 25 years Plum Grove Printers has served as an extension of Non-Profits' toolbox, providing our range of print and mail services at 14% off for all recognized charities and not-for-profits. The discount extends to all Peter the Printer webstores in addition to other discounts. This is our modest way of furthering the noble work of these organizations.

But it adds up. We are proud to say that we are on pace to donate $52,000 of in-kind print and mail services for 2007.

If your church or charity is not registered with us yet, please give us a call at 1-866-PETER-02 or send an email.


Best,
Peter the Printer

Advertising Works in Strange Ways

The Tale of a Tee:

I got the phone call mid afternoon a few weeks ago. John, a long time client (24 years!) who became a good friend was calling from Tampa.

“You’re never going to believe this,” John starts.

“John, why are you calling your printer while you’re on vacation? You should be on the golf course,” I scold.

“Well I was and that is what you’re not going to believe. I am out with my son Phil on a great course down here and I step up to the tee on the Par 3 Signature hole – a beautiful hole with a tough island green. Wind in my face I launch a 6-iron right at the pin. Anyway I am short and it goes plunk in the water. (Editor’s note: For you non-golfers you should know that they frequently put the wrong distance on golf courses just to make it hard to select the right club…)

“I take another ball and a longer club and scrounge around the tee box for somebody’s tee – and I come up with a Plum Grove Printers purple tee. At that Phil and I just laughed and laughed.”

Of course it would be the perfect advertising story with the perfect ending if John got a hole-in-one using our tee. Let’s just say the ball didn’t go for a swim with the fishes.

Plum Grove Printers has given these tees out at Chamber golf outings and other events for a few years as an ad specialty with the idea that somebody meets you and then sees your company name a bunch more times when they play golf we will wind up with some name recognition and maybe they’ll think of us when they need printing. I never thought about the residual advertising value of our golf tees traveling around the world making sales calls for us in tropical places.

I wonder how that tee got to Tampa?


Sincere Regards,
Peter the Printer

Top of Mind Awareness with Top of Desk Promotions

Imagine: you run an ad in the newspaper for your business. Your client
reads the paper, pulls the ad, and leaves it lying out in their house.
Every few days or weeks they return to it, re-read it, and admire it.

Seem unlikely?

Yet this happens with promotional messages everyday in the form of
hotel stationery, magnets from the local pizza place, mouse pads from
trade shows, charity t-shirts, logo mugs, and more. These are custom
printed Ad Specialty products.

Ad Specialties make elegant, useful corporate gifts, offering thanks
to your clients. As Promotional Products the gift gives back -- Ad
Specialties build Top of Mind Awareness, keeping you around when
clients need your services, even years after contact.

We have a mall of 350,000 custom printed promotional items at
www.PetersAdSpecialties.com --- a catalog easily navigated by product
type, style, and price range. You can put your company logo on pens,
shirts, hats, magnets, tote bags, golf balls, air fresheners,
holograms, frisbees and much more online.

Wondering what your business logo would look like on a particular
baseball cap or USB flash drive? Our Ad Specialties store has software
that shows your logo immediately on every product we offer. It's an
instant proof that makes promotional product shopping a lot of fun.

Thanks for the Boom Times

Back in December 1980, I founded Plum Grove Printers with one printing press and my own two hands to work it. 26 years later (some of them pretty lean times), we're growing at an explosive rate and I thank you -- my friends and clients -- for your continuing trust in our quality printing products and services.

From New Production Facility to New Personnel -- A Growth that Goes Deep

In 2006, we grew by over 12% from 2005, and so far in 2007 we've increased our Chicagoland business 28% (!) and 14% overall over our 2006 numbers. It's a growth that touches every part of our operations and is keeping us very busy.

Plum Grove Printers has been adding staff and production space to keep up with demand -- we doubled our sales personnel in 2006, as well as increasing full-time customer service, production, and information technology staff. We plan to break ground on a new 15,000 sq. foot production facility in late-2007, more than doubling our Hoffman Estates campus to 24,600 sq. feet.

How do We Hack it in an Age of Cheap-O Copy Stores?

We are a marketing-oriented printer and understand the importance of quality, consistency, and fair prices to you. The majority of our staff has been with us for over 10 years, so we know how to dependably provide printing that's on time and right. We have a world-class design staff, and a personable, service-oriented ethos.

There are more important things than printing, though, and responsible citizenship is our prerogative. This year we formally instituted a 'green-friendly' program to make us one of America's most environmentally-friendly printers, and we continue to discount printing for religious organizations and charities. Currently we are aiding the Little City Foundation with its book drive; drop your old books at our office, with our drivers, or at the other locations listed here.

The Amazon.com of Printing & Direct Mail

In 2006, we diversified our products to offer advertising specialties, increased direct mail, and, most substantially, new web resources that will be the future of the firm.

We want to change the way people buy their printing, to give them the convenience and control of online purchasing. With www.PeterThePrinter.net, and the dozens of custom printing and marketing products we already offer online, we want to become the Amazon.com of printing & direct mail. We hope to enjoy the growth of Plum Grove Printers long into the future.

Thank you for making it all possible, for bringing me a long way from that cold evening in 1980.

A Stamp That Lasts Forever

The Post Office is my business partner. Every month we mail a million postcards, letters, and magazines for our clients, and if one gets lost, you know who gets the blame. I sometimes feel like a farmer, who has the weather for a business partner.


Big Changes In My Partner’s Business

The price of stamps has been steadily increasing: 13 times in 32 years, and set to rise again from 39 cents to 41 cents. With the cost of gasoline and transportation, and the automation of so many transactions, it is not a big surprise that the Post Office needed to increase rates.

There are some common sense reforms hiding behind a price increase: stuff that costs more to deliver will be charged more money. My Postal Partner continues to invest major dollars in machines to improve productivity, speed the mail and enhance service. From now on rates may go up every year by a little bit (FedEx and UPS go up by 3% or 4% every year like clockwork).

To decrease the impact of these small increases on consumers, the Post Office is introducing a First Class stamp that's valid forever. Making its debut on May 14th, a Forever Stamp purchased in 2007 (for 41 cents) will be sufficient to mail a letter in the year 2012, 2050, or beyond (when the price of letter stamps will be 41 dollars). The days of plastering your letter with 1-cent stamps to meet the latest stamp price are over.


You Can Minimize the Postal Increase Bite – and We can Help!

Here are a few things you can do:

1. ListScrub™ your mailing list – it’s dirt cheap and pays for itself in postage savings – and we guarantee it. Visit http://www.PetersListScrub.com/ for information.

2. Design Your Mail Piece to Automate. The Post Office says, “We’ll give you big discounts if you give us a piece of mail that runs through our machines.”

3. Make sure the address you are mailing to really exists. My Postal Partner says, “Give me a good address and I will give you a big discount.” Some postal costs have gone up by fractions of a penny – and one of the categories of mail we have huge volumes in has even gone down. Visit my partner’s website at http://www.usps.gov/ for lots more information. Or give us a call at 1-866-PETER-02 -– we’re glad to help!


Happy mailing,
Peter

Custom Promotional Products Get Easier with New Online Service

Online distributer Peter the Printer improves Advertising Specialty printing with new web service offering thousands of custom promotional items.

Hoffman Estates, IL April 13, 2007 -- Peter the Printer announced today the launch of http://www.PetersAdSpecialties.com, offering printing of over 350,000 custom promotional products online. Marketers will receive discounts of up to 40% off all Advertising Specialty items for the site's opening.

Peter's Advertising Specialties gives marketers a dizzying variety of customizable products for brand promotion and trade show giveaways in a searchable database. Marketers navigate common custom products like promotional pens, mugs and work shirts by the price they would like to pay, product features and manufacturer. The ad specialties can be customized with a message or corporate logo online.

"Peter's Advertising Specialties is unique marketing service," explains CEO Peter "the Printer" Lineal. "The quantity and variety of custom promotional items is really astounding. For example, we offer thousands of styles of logo magnets, but also really exotic things like custom air fresheners, holograms and logo toothbrushes. You can comparison shop all the different Custom Product Suppliers to find the one that's right for your business."

"Custom Promotional Products are an affordable means to have a lasting branding impact on your sales prospects. Your business message and logo will linger before your client's eyes for weeks or months, building top of mind awareness for your marketing message. And for our opening, we're offering a sale discount that -- depending on order quantity -- can exceed 40% off your Advertising Specialty products."

The arrival of http://www.PetersAdSpecialties.com coincides with a boom for custom promotional product printing. The 2006 spending on marketing promotional items set a record for the Advertising Specialty industry -- exceeding spending on Internet display advertising, outdoor advertising and cable advertising from the same period.

About Peter the Printer
Peter the Printer is an environmentally-friendly, full service printing company located near Chicago, IL. A subsidiary of Plum Grove Printers, named one of the top 100 North American Printers by Quick Print magazine, it has been providing custom printing and direct mail services for 25 years. Peter the Printer operates an expanding network of self-service custom printing and marketing websites, with custom business labels, direct mail postcards, wedding invitations and much more anchored at http://www.PeterThePrinter.net.

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Our Mailing List Hygiene Tool Makes Your Business Smarter

In an age where 16 percent to 18 percent of Americans move each year, Peter the Printer, producer of self-service printing websites, has developed a new approach to mailing list data cleansing that provides direct marketers and membership organizations a powerful, simple way to maximize their direct mail marketing dollars while lowering their costs. At http://www.PetersListScrub.com, marketers securely upload their mailing list information, and within 24 to 48 hours, it is returned with address standardized for postal discounts and corrections and revisions made to the list so that it is ready to mail.

"We want to change public understanding of mail database scrubbing," said CEO Peter "the Printer" Lineal. "Businesses that mail regularly waste a lot of printing and postage by using outdated information -- duplicate addresses, moved households, deceased persons and seasonal addresses. Peter's List Scrub rejuvenates what may be the most important asset of your company -- your mailing data. This can add up to thousands of dollars in annual savings."

List scrubbing coincides with the firm's environmental priorities, Lineal added. "The better the mailing list, the less environmental waste there is in energy, paper, ink and gasoline to deliver millions of mailing pieces to people who have moved. This is one of the key steps we are taking to meet the Federation of European Direct and Interactive Marketing (FEDMA) recommendations for environmentally green marketing, even though these best practices are yet not common in the USA."

The service compares mailing list information against the United States Postal Service National Change of Address as well as other national databases, updating or eliminating addresses from the mailing list that have gone stale. Mailing list scrubbing includes reports on duplicate records, undeliverable addresses, seasonal and vacant addresses, and persons in prison or deceased. The service also identifies registrants on the national voluntary Do Not Mail list, as it corrects records registered in the National Change of Address (NCOA) directory.

"We don't know why data cleansing is such a well-kept secret," continued Lineal. "With http://www.PetersListScrub.com, we want to push this service into the marketing mainstream by making it simple and low-risk. The service is one-step, with fast delivery. We're offering 20 percent off every mailing list cleaning, and guarantee to save our clients the cost of the list scrub on their first mailing."

Online Marketing Campaigns Have Bloomed for Landscapers and Garden Centers

PetersGardenCards.com and PetersLandscapeCards.com, two new direct mail resources launched today, cater to the unique marketing needs of garden centers and landscapers.

Hoffman Estates, IL (PRWEB) February 16, 2007 -- Peter the Printer, developer of self-service printing websites, announced today the launch of two web services aimed at the green industry:
http://www.PetersGardenCards.com and http://www.PetersLandscapeCards.com.
These websites guide landscapers and garden center professionals to craft their own direct marketing campaigns online, tailored to their neighborhood, target demographics and budgetary constraints.

"With PetersGardenCards.com and PetersLandscapeCards.com we've set out to deliver a marketing-campaign-in-a-box for the green industry," said CEO Peter "the Printer" Lineal. "We have an assortment of full-color garden and landscape postcard templates, which can be personalized with custom offers and messages online. The postcard is matched with a custom mailing list -- also designed online, and tailored to the green industry. You can make a full-scale, targeted postcard marketing campaign in less than 20 minutes."

Marketers either securely upload their customer mailing list or design one for free online as part of the ordering process. The mailing lists can include all the residences in the region of a landscape or garden center business, or be constrained by demographic and lifestyle data. The lists can include only gardeners, for example, or focus on affluent households. Peter the Printer prints the cards, then addresses and mails them.

The site also offers printing of the cards without mailing, as well as a line of laser-ready preprinted perforated cards.

The postcards are printed in full color in two sizes on green-friendly 10-point coated stock. http://www.PetersGardenCards.com and http://www.PetersLandscapeCards.com include a variety of distinct templates with colorful, attractive designs.

"Direct mail works," continued Lineal. "Garden center businesses can extend their season or fill their lots to overflow with direct mail. Landscapers can focus on the best neighborhoods for major project work, or to grow their maintenance work and get rid of the driving around. We've laid out a whole box of marketing tools oriented to garden centers and landscapers, making it easier than ever to communicate meaningfully with clients. And with free mailing lists, direct marketing rarely comes so affordably."

About Peter the Printer

Peter the Printer http://www.PeterThePrinter.net, a subsidiary of Plum Grove Printers, Inc., has 25 years of direct mail experience. An environmentally-friendly, full-service printing company located near Chicago, IL, with a staff of over 30, the firm has repeatedly been named one of the 100 Top North American Printers by Quick Print Magazine. Since August, Peter the Printer has launched over a dozen self-service printing webstores specializing in custom label printing, mailing lists, wedding invitations, ad specialties, and more.