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Hyre dahna welcome, i’m tony martignetti, the aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent if you feel that your non-profits smaller midsize is sometimes lost in the shuffle may be lost in the media doesn’t get the kind of attention that it deserves. You have a home here at tony martignetti non-profit radio last week, we talked about your people being the most precious resource that you’re non-profit has how to attract hyre motivate and retain the best employees for your organization. That was last week. This week, my guest is going to be tim kenan, and we’re going to be talking about printing and direct mail tips to save you money and time to get the most out of your printing and direct mail and postage budgets. Tim is the president of mcvicar and higginbotham and that’s, a print and direct mail or letter house shop, which has been around since nineteen fifty eight tim is my guest all this hour, and we’re going to be talking about printing and direct mail, saving you time and money and working best with your print shop that’s all after this break stay. With me. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set to one, two, nine six four three five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Hyre hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable race? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com. Durney welcome back on your host, tony martignetti you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio on talking alternative broadcasting at talking alternative dot com i’m thinking this week based on something that i saw in the new york times this was on august twentieth, new york times piece by judith warner, and it was called the charitable giving divide. It touches on some subjects that i’ve thought about and been thinking about for for quite some time for years, motivations for charitable giving and specifically that taxes are not the primary motivation that there are a host of other factors that typically full ahead of tax incentives. When people are asked what there, why they give and what motivates their giving and those are, you’ll see that they want to motivate and encourage charitable giving in their family from their children that they want to give back to a cause that means a lot to them that that has either inspired them or in a lot of cases been important to them personally in ah, a personal or a family situation, so that there are other factors besides taxes that are motivating charitable giving, and that sort of has implications to for the obama charitable deduction limitation initiative, it’s at this point, it’s still just a proposal, but that is that it would. The proposal is that it would limit the charitable income tax deduction for wealthy charitable donors, and i don’t think that will have the impact on the non profit sector that a lot of people do. A lot of people think that that’s just going to be disastrous for non-profits and i think it will hurt non-profits but it’s, i don’t think it’s going to be the disaster that a lot of people predict, and history has shown that charitable giving always rebounds after depression, recession and tax changes that might popularly think might popularly get people thinking that the but that tax changes going toe reduce giving terrible giving always comes back within two to three years after significant events that people think will discourage giving forever and you know it, just make it fall off a cliff there’s a little more about this subject at my block, which is you’ll find at m p g a d v dot com and what again, what got me thinking about this was the new york times piece by judith warner, the charitable giving divide my guest today is tim kenan, and he is the president of mcvicar and higginbotham, which is a printing in direct mail company. They’ve been in business since nineteen fifty eight tim as president has been with the company. Now for twenty two years, mcvicar and higginbotham works with some of the biggest non-profits in the country, but also importantly for you, our audience works a lot with small and midsize non-profits and our subject today is printing and direct mail. We wantto give you tips too, save money and time and make this budget item these budget items most efficient for you. And i’m very happy that tim kenan’s work brings him to the studio today. Tim, welcome to the show. Good morning. Thank you, tony. My pleasure to have you, uh, let’s start with printing. This is for small and midsize non-profits you know, um, printing can be a substantial budget item. What what sort of opening thoughts do you have for non-profits tto help them save time and money around around they’re printing? Well, the printing is a huge budget item for everybody and especially, you know, connected to direct mail. You’ve got to be very careful who you choose to do your work and you want somebody that’s goingto understand direct mail with printing and direct mail and direct mail in terms of fund-raising non-profits can mean anything from news letters, too invitations to special events, toe acquisitions of new members or donors re newell’s acknowledgments of gifts so there’s a whole realm of types of mailings you’re going to be doing to be successful, but you really want a printer who does understand the male side of it because with all of the regulations and the post office on, they’re constantly changing nowadays, it could be ah difficult trail to go down and be successful. So you’re looking for a printer who has a great reputation. You’re looking for someone who does understand what you’re trying to achieve, and of course, you’re looking for a good price. So the print and the direct mail functions really have to work closely together, and i’m sure in the hour will be we’ll be delving into whether it’s better to have them both done by the same house or or separately and if separately, how to get the two working closely, but it sounds like you’re one of your main opening points. Is what’s happening in direct mail? Really is going to drive what happens in the printing? Yeah. You have to be very careful. But, you know, let’s, go back a little bit here. You know, we deal with we have about one hundred twenty clients right now, and they’re very steady clients. We really don’t lose people over the years. But whoever you’re dealing with, you have tio have a good relationship with them. But the point with the print side of everything is that yeah, yeah, just there’s. So many things that could go wrong on that and it’s not necessary for the printer and the mailer to be the same vendor. What is necessary, though, is to be a lot of communication up front when you’re designing that piece to go into the mail. So you want that print shop and the mail shop, which is also called a letter shop. Is that right? That’s? Correct. So when we say a letter shop that’s the same as direct mail, your letter shop is just a wonderful little term for it. You know, when they started out, you know? It was basically personalized letters creating them, and the process was very slow. But that’s what we were known as when we began in nineteen fifty eight letter shop, the letter shop. All right, so when we see that it’s it’s synonymous with with the direct mail, yeah, more often now they’re called male houses, but people from the olden days tend to keep that letter shop term it’s nice and ah, in terms of printing, what about custom sizes? And a lot of people want their piece toe sort of stand out because it’s an odd shape what’s your advice around? Sure. Yeah. You want your piece to stand out in the mail? Somebody goes out to the mailbox, picks up ten letters from magazines. They want their piece toe jump out of them. A lot of times they’re thinking ok, a larger piece and nine by twelve over a much smaller piece. One of the pitfalls many organisations fall into is that they make a square piece and that’s a no, no, because you’re gonna have a surcharge on the post office from the post office with the poster. So you’re going to pay quite a bit extra. For every piece it’s in the mail for a square, a perfectly square piece, yeah, there’s, a there’s, a specific ratio for length and whip for every mailer and that’s where male shops, letter letter shops like idea to come in handy, because there’s, a lot of information need to know when you’re going to design a male piece. Okay, and we’re going to pursue that after this break. My guest is tim kenan, with mcvicar and higginbotham. Please stay with us. You didn’t think that shooting, good ending, you’re listening to the talking alternate network you get in. Thing. Cubine hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo. I will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 at aqueduct racetrack in queens, contending into three p m, we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs, try to jeez and networking, come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack for a Job fair, intending m 23, p m. For more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. I really need to take better care of myself. If only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up. Is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. If you’re expecting an epiphany, chances are it’s not happening. Mind over matter, health and fitness could help you get back on track or start a new life and fitness. Join joshua margolis, fitness expert two one two eight sixty five nine to nine xero. Or visit w w w died mind over matter. N y c dot com are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com. We look forward to serving you. You’re listening to the talking alternative network. Zoho dahna welcome back. My guest is tim kenan, president of mcvicar and higginbotham, a printing and letter shop, and we now know that letter shop is the current term is the old sort of quaint term for direct mail shop tim. Before the break, we were talking about sizing of print pieces and your advice that square is bad. Let’s, let’s go into a little more detail about why square pieces, although they attract attention, what’s the implication there well, there’s a surcharge! I forget the exact amount, but you may be paying up to ten cents more per piece. It’s it’s considered a nonstandard piece by the post office anything that can’t be handled through there. Ah, ocr machinery, which is optical character reading eyes not it can’t be automated, so you’re going to pay extra money but a handling it has to be handled by a person at the post office and that’s one of the things they don’t want it all and this is actually right in line with what you said when we opened, which is your printer needs to know what the direct mail is going to be doing and and vice versa. So your direct mail shop needs to know that there’s a square piece coming because that’s going to impact the price they’re going to give you. Sure, because you’re an organization out there and you’re planning let’s say you’re planning a special event, an invitation, a gala affair. You’re very important to the organization because it’s ah fund-raising event that could pretty much keep them going all year round. You’re talking to your print to you tell him what you want. You talking to your designer first and your printer and you’re coming up with an idea that just may not be good financially. Budget wise, it’s going teo cost you extra money, and it could also cost you extra time getting delivered because of the because it doesn’t go through the standard exact ocr equipped doesn’t go through and these machines at the post office they’re very, very high speed and you know if it has to be handled manually by a postal clerk it’s going to take extra time? First class mail is going to take anywhere between one two through day, three days going across country um non-profit now, which is what a lot of my clients use is going. To take anywhere from basically four to seven days we are seeing non-profit mail going a lot faster nowadays simply because the volumes at the post office there’s so much lower than they were two, three years ago, okay? And we’re going to get into those different postage rates to you’re talking about first class and non-profit we’ll get into those while we’re on the printing. What else besides size on dh shape will will impact printing budget so that people may be can save money by not doing exactly what they’d like? Write well, you have to be very concerned with the address side of a mailer or an envelope, and since if you are a non profit organization, which i’m assuming you are, you have to make sure that you have the correct address on there because the return address if you have an incorrect return address, the post office is going to take away your non-profit rape and make you go at either the standard rate, which is commercial bulk or first class. So you need to make sure that your name and address is properly situated in the upper left hand corner you need to make. Sure that that apartment indicia on the right side, which is the indicator of how the postage is going to be paid, is worded correctly with your proper permit number. With the post office it’s going to be entered into, you need to make sure that you have enough space for the address where the addressee it has to be four inches long because you want to be able to get all the information, and you also want to get a barcode in there because the post office requires it what’s this indicia toe a little more about the indicia in the upper right corner. What is that? Well, a lot of organizations, they’re going to use an indie shit teo for posting their mail. You can post your mail by stamp indicia or a meteor strike, but most of the time it’s going to be done first, say, a newsletter or just a self mailer, a piece it’s not going into an envelope. You’re going to have an indy, shawn and it’s important that indicia specifies where you’re dropping off the mail. On what your permit number is the city and the post office, so it has to be. Written explicitly according to post office standards, in a lot of people wing that part, they say, oh, yeah, you know, i know what this should say, it’s a little box on the right side where normally you would have a stamp for a personal piece of mail i see and what else in terms of the printing that’s going to impact budget? I mean, for instance, a lot of organizations like to have bleeds because a bleed looks looks prettier, but that has a big budget impact and things like that it does. But a lot of people are going to, of course, want to bleed on their piece of the artwork looks better. Onda bleed, of course, is where your printing over the edges and then it’s trimmed down so it looks like it was all printed right to the edge. The bleed isn’t going to affect very much most printers air set up to assume a bleed. If you ask a printer about a job he’s going to assume you’re going to believe that piece and he’s going to price it that way, it’s often not even a question, but aside from that, you have to be concerned about how, if it’s a folded mailer, you have to be concerned about where that fold opens up and where it closes. Okay, so now we’re talking about a piece that a cz you’re designing it, so we’re still sort of in between print design and printing it’s a piece that is going to literally be folded, and then it has to be sealed, right? That’s what you’re talking about, right? And in order to qualify for the best postal rates, the automation non-profit rates, you have to have the opening at the top, so you’re looking at a you know, ah ah, five and a half by eight and a half brochure now and those kinds of brochures now you’re going to have three openings because you’re gonna have the spine at the bottom and an opening on the sides and on the top right for that. The post office is gonna want you now to put on three way for seals, which is a lot of extra money and extra time by your letter shop male house. So you have to be concerned about how the pieces designed in terms of golden opening, because, again, they they’re going to be putting this through high speed ocr machines, and they wanted to make sure it’s not going to mangle when it goes through them. If you’re thinking about a piece like that that has a spine and three open sides, might it be cheaper toe put that inside an envelope? Yeah, sometimes it is, but of course, sabelo prices air expensive. It depends on the size of the job. You know, if you’re doing a fifty thousand piece Job that’s 1 thing to print envelopes on dh, then go through the insertion process it’s going to add a lot of cost you may the cost for the extra wafer seal is going to be far less than sticking into an envelope. Okay, but again, your letter shop your mail house needs to know that this is going to be a three sided it’s going to open on three sides, because that has implications for the pricing that they’re going to give you because of this extra seal. Sure, absolutely. And a lot of times we don’t know if our client is printing outside with a different printer that we don’t have a relationship we don’t know until it. Comes into our shipping receiving area what it looks like unless they tell us now we try very hard communication wise to make sure we know up front what we’re receiving. But it’s. Just not the case all the time. Very often we know without a job because it’s landed at our doorstep. My guest is tim kenan, president of mcvicar and higginbotham. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio. Tim, you started to allude teo, the different postage rates let’s, let’s sort of move from now printing to the to the mail function. Although they certainly overlap is you can tell from our conversation what are the different postage rates? And how can we make sense of that? I think this is an area of confusion for a lot of well, it’s, an area of confusion because people do get confused between the rates and how it’s going to be posted. So, first of all, for nonprofit organization, everybody could mail first class and then from first class you paying the exact amount that anybody would pay, mailing one piece so forty four cents right now. Then you can do first class pre sort which will bring down your postage approximately five six seven cents and all depends on the density of the mailing into specific zip codes. You know, if your mailing nationally and your mailing five to ten thousand pieces, you’re not going to get us much of a break on the the postage. The confusing part is that there are so many different rates within even non-profit you could be paying nine cents for one piece and sixteen cents for another piece in the same mailing say, if you had ten pieces just going to california, you’re mailing five thousand let’s say you have three thousand going into manhattan at at five thousand. Those pieces could probably go for nine, ten, eleven cents, while the other pieces that are going far outside to other states are going to cost you up towards fifteen, sixteen, seventeen cents, so that could be a confusing part. Then, of course, those are the rates. So you got first class, first class pre sort and then non-profit and a lot of people say bulk mail, but really it’s on the commercial side of standard and on the non-profit side, it simply caldnear non-profit standard but that’s, what a lot of my clients are using especially for their newsletters and communications like that. So it’s called non-profit standard and that’s. What that’s, what people mean when they say bulk or that’s, what you interpret, they mean when they say that’s, what that’s, what they do, they’ll get confused and say, non-profit pre sword or first class non-profit and all kinds of terms like that. But generally, if you’re talking to a good male house letter shop, they’re going to explain all this to you. How it can be posted as i mentioned earlier stamp, indicia or meter strike. So you get that at it away now. What rate of male of what class of male do you want to use? First class, first class? Pretty sort or non-profit and then you go from there. And are you familiar with the research? Are there are there ways of determining whether the live stamp gets better reply rates, return rates than the indicia or the or the postage meter? Well, we we use stamps on probably ninety percent of our work non-profit stamps or first class stamps or first class priest sort stamps, we believe there’s definitely a difference, because when that piece comes in the mail, you know, the everyday person getting their piece of mail from a non profit organization, whether it be a hospital of school or club, they belong tio, they’re not quite sure what a non-profits stamp is, so when they’re getting it, they’re looking at it and they’re not going to treat it as a third class mail. They’re going to see a stamp on it if they see an indy show on it and it’s in an envelope, they may think, ok, this has a little bit of a junkie look to it, and i don’t need to open up right away. And the most important thing, of course, is to had the recipient opened up the piece of mail as soon as possible. So you do see a difference with your clients work? Sure, because, as i say, the step teo putting on the stamps is another one in a cost, money and it’s done very quickly. It could be done during the addressing process stamps or a fixed there fixed it a high speed, but the using the stamp can have ah good effect on your mail and it can get it open quicker and it just makes it look more natural. So i see the really again sort of pervasive in our conversation is the need for the communication between the printer. Well, really, starting earlier, the designer? Yeah, the printer and the and the male house sure, a design that it does have a good knowledge of the mail system and how mail pieces should be designed, starting with that is really a big step, because when you look at your cost to do any kind of a mailing your thinking, okay, you know, my this is going to cost the printing is going to cost this design is going to cost this and then the letter shop, but what you’re not considering is the mistakes that can happen, which can cost you a lot more in time and money, postage wise or just extra services that are going to be needed to get it in the mail. And time is usually critical. Your example of the gala thes pieces, whether it’s, the save the date or the actual invitation, these need to be on time. Absolutely. Tony, you’d think that, you know, a lot of organizations have the entire year planned out. They’ve been doing the same things for years. They’re having the gallery there basically on the same night every year or that friday of that weak or tuesday, whatever it might be, but it always comes down to for one reason or another, and it might start on design. They’re running late, so we were very often behind the eight ball once the printing is done, because the printing is thought to take x amount of time. But the mailing is thought to be magical and just go out there to the post office. But you have to allow a good amount of time for that male process to happen correctly, and it sounds like there is advantage than teo bringing the printing and the male house operations into one place. Well, of course, i believe so, and, you know i do on a letter shop and print shop on dh, i think it’s critical to do both at the same place for any number of reasons. One of the most important ones is to make sure you’re printing the right amount of materials. What will happen is you, bill, to put in a print daughter for let’s, say five thousand pieces. Well, there’s going to be wasting that process of printing and we may only get forty, five hundred forty, six hundred from the printer, although they said they sent us five thousand it’s critical when ordering printing toe always order ten percent more so that when it does get to your letter shop, they have enough to complete the mailing. Because if you get to the end and you’re not able to mail to four or five hundred people, you’re going to have to go back to the beginning and it’s going to cost you an immense amount of money. What accounts for this loss? What? Why should we be factoring in an extra ten percent? Well, basically it’s finishing in the printing process. You know these whatever your printing, whether it be an invitation or ah, newsletter flyer, a brochure especially talked about bleeds earlier that as toe after it has dried, it has to be cut that it has to be bound or folded in some way. So you have a final peace that’s suitable to go into the mail. So there’s, where you need to, you can have a lot of waste and you need to make sure that with that waste with the cutting, folding, etcetera finding possibly you have to order enough to make sure the final product will i arrive at your letter shop and be able to be process entirely in the two minutes or so that we have before the next break, what’s another advantage or to of having these to print and and direct mail in the same in the same place besides having the right quantity of of pieces. Well, i’ll give you a good one. This happens all the time where people come up short on material is because one of the reasons they do come up short is because they’re not quite sure what their final list is going to bay all of a sudden another list can come out of the blue and you know it might just be a few hundred more names, but they’ve already ordered the printing. If you are printer and mailer are the same vendor thie that vendor khun turn around quickly and when he realizes that we’re having more, we have more names here. Then we officially thought we were going to have they could turn on a diamond. Print more pretty quickly, but if you have to, if those two vendors are split up, then you’ve gotta have those two vendors agree on. Okay, why are we short here? Who’s fault is this, and then get the matter taken care of, and sometimes that can caused delays and in just a minute or so we have before the break. It sounds like also time is a factor, because if you’re a printer and letter shop or to different places there’s going to be transportation between the two. Oh, sure, it’s a huge factor time, because often we only have a couple of days. Once things arrive in our shop, people wanted out extremely quickly. So if there’s any kind of an error it’s great to have everything under one roof so it can be taken care of expeditiously within a day or two rather than waiting another week. My guest is tim cannon, president of mcvicar and higginbotham printing and direct mail company. You’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us. Talking alternative radio twenty four hours a day. Hi, i’m new york state senator joe a dabo. I will be hosting a Job fair on friday, november 12 and aqueduct racetrack in queens, contending into three p m, we will have over one hundred companies looking for qualified workers. They’re all to be lectures on jobs, try to jeez and networking. So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack. For a Job fair from 10 a m to three p m. For more information, please call pete in my district office at seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. Are you suffering from aches and pains? Has traditional medicine let you down? Are you tired of taking toxic medications, then come to the double diamond wellness center and learn how our natural methods can help you to hell? Call us now at to one to seven to one eight, one eight three that’s to one to seven to one eight one eight three or find us on the web at www dot double diamond wellness dot com way. Look forward to serving you. Hey, all you crazy listeners looking to boost your business? Why not advertise on talking alternative with very reasonable rates? Interested simply email at info at talking alternative dot com welcome back to tony martignetti non-profit radio my guest is tim kenan, and we’re talking about saving you money and time and getting the most out of your printing and direct mail budgets. Tim let’s, talk a little about the actual stamps just cause you you said if somebody sees one type of stamp, they may treat the piece as they’ve received it differently than another piece. So these stamps all the live stamps now all look different. Well, they dio, you know, that non-profits stamp, of course, there’s only one and it looks different than the first class stamp or the first class pre sort stamp now generally there’s only one of those as well. Remember these pre sort stamps come on large rolls of twenty, five hundred or five thousand, i think, and they’re set up to be fixed as the pieces moving through the addressing equipment or separately. But for the most part, people aren’t going to really examine the stamp unless it’s a commemorative stamps and getting into that that’s more expensive to a fixed because it has to be done by hand. So it’s emmanuel process so very often, folks, when they’re having some sort. Of gala or just some sort of special event. They want to mail that invitation out with a commemorative stamp and that’s going to have to be handup fixed. You do see that, then? Oh, all the time, that’s, what slows us down? We do an awful lot of special event invitations and that can really slow down your scheduling because the stamping process has to be done manually. So we have we’ll have several people working on a job, and all they’re doing is a fixing stamps by hand. And do you see a difference in response rates? Can you say? But when? When it’s a commemorative stamp versus ah, standard non-profit stamp, i don’t have hard proof in reading people. Do you know there have been many articles written about how the stamp on the envelope or the high personalization of the package is going to have a higher impact on your response rate? And i just i do believe in general, that this stamp is going to make a difference because it’s going to be perceived as a little bit more of a personalized piece of mail in your mailbox than just, you know, some come on. By the local car dealership you mentioned personalization, let’s talk a little about how pieces can be personalized and to what degree and and the impact that that has on your on your budget. What are the different sort of degrees of personalization? Well, the simplest form of personalization would be to do a personalized letter and then have the name and address show up through a window envelope and thereby you do not have a match part of the mailing when you get a little more involved with the personalization, with the response device being personalized separately. So you have a little slip in there for people to fill out, but there could be another piece in there that is personalized. There could be a response envelope even we have clients who personalized those in the upper left hand corner. They actually put that person’s name on there. So we do anywhere from no match personalization with just the letter in the window. Two, three, four and five way matches. Of course, when you’re addressing the envelope that’s part of the personalization as well. So you’ve got a standard fund-raising mailing teo people that already have given to your organization or already are a member of the organization will very often be eh letter personalized, a response device personalized and an outer envelope close space envelope not a window and that’s personalized as well. So this is what i hear when ah, shop is talking about ah, double match or triple match or two way or three way match. You’re talking about the number of pieces that have personalization and therefore need to be matched so that they go together. That’s, right? And the more personalization you do have in a mailing, the more impact it will have. Of course, you want to get the piece open first that’s, they’re your first goal. But if it’s fully personalized on the letter and of course a close base envelope is going to have a better look less of a junk feel than a window envelope. So three way personalization is very, very common. So wait, let me stop you. So three way would be matching the outer envelope. The letter and what the response piece. A separate response. What we call a response device. It’s just ah buckslip basically, that has your name and information on it and also has different amounts of information that we’re asking you to give as a donor or a different level of membership to come on, we deal with basically hospitals, performing arts centers, museums, schools, colleges and, you know, when you’re doing a mailing like this and your personal things, you’re personalizing it, you’re going to basically look at what the donor or member has done in the past, and you’re gonna play that response device off of that if they’ve given five hundred dollars, in the past, you’re going to ask them to give another gift of maybe five hundred seven fifty one thousand fifteen hundred if they’ve given twenty five dollars, in the past, you’re going to create four options that are going to start basically with twenty five and go up to one hundred, so you’re going to use that response device based on what that person has done in the past e-giving wise or what they were as a member because you always want to get people to do a little bit more on this on this ask and so now we’re getting into the complexity of this, so you’re not only personalizing the replied device with the person’s. Name and address, but also based on their giving level. So we’ve got lots of different reply devices for the same mailing. Sure, and in terms of membership, you don’t want to somebody to go backwards, and really, you don’t want him to just stay where they are. If they came on, is an individual or a dual member three, four, five years ago. Now you want to boost them up. You want to get them into higher levels of membership, with more benefits. And so you’re going to design that piece specifically, the response device, to kind of push them in that direction, not just leave, okay, everybody gets one generic response device, and everybody stays at their current membership because or donor. Progress forward and keep on growing with you and this this applies to for for our audience, for small and midsize non-profit was sure the smaller the mailing generally, the more important it is if you’re if you’re going to be bailing, teo, whatever twenty five, fifty thousand people and we do that a lot, but the bigger concern is the smaller volume mailings that are going to your best members or your highest donors and that’s where you’re really going toe, play up the personalization and try to touch them closely. And you’re talking now about mailings that might be just a few hundred people. A smaller organization might have a list of just three or four or five hundred people. Oh, sure, go back to the gala affair. You know, you you may be sending out an invitation to twenty, five hundred people hoping that they’ll come to your gala and raise a lot of money, but you’re going tohave a much smaller group that very often we put the mailing together and it’ll go back to the organization for more hand written personalization so they can really hook thie spokes in. Oh, that’s. Interesting. Yeah, some say a little more about with some of that what some organizations doing handwriting replies, sure, and you may have seen that in the mail yourself. It really gives it a lift that it came right from their offices right from the organization, and it has a great effect. You know, they might be just something as simple as when we send them back the package with a letter inside in the response device, or if it’s an invitation where they just cross out dear mr cannon and say, dear tim or hi tim hope you can make it this year looking forward to seeing you, and that has a big effect on people and that’s work that that you, as a letter shop can do for the organization very often. What they’ll do is take that portion of the male back. So if this is an invitation to an affair, we might mail a certain portion. The larger portion, you know, ninety percent of it, and then ten percent of it or five percent even might go back to the organization, and then it might be distributed to board members or people that are on the committee for the affair. And those folks will take those and personalize them in handwriting and then just mail in those themselves. We’ll put a stamp on it, so they just have to personalize it a little bit, seal it, chop it in the mailbox. Are there letters shops that or maybe yours does this? Where if if they want that personal feel but they don’t want to impose on a boardmember or or they just they wanted more. If i could say a more generic personal field, can you can you do that work for them? Maybe just cross out the name the dear mrs or miss mr and write the first name in eyes that used the way we used to do that years and years ago? Quite a bit, but not as much anymore. Way usedto also hand sign a lot of the letters, and occasionally you still have people asking you to do that. But the technology with laser printing color laser printing has gotten to where the signature can look really terrific. But some people still insist on it being hand signed and that we used to do that a lot in the old days, but we don’t do it as much anymore as you can imagine, it takes a lot of time to sit there and have folks hand signing, even if it’s just a thousand letters and you want it all to look perfect but that’s what they’ll do if they can’t get the boardmember to do it, of course, there’s somebody on staff back at the organization that’s going to take on that role more likely nowadays, or a lot of organizations have volunteers now a day to come in and work and that’s a great job for them to be doing, even if you have one volunteer have them doing something like that, putting a little extra personalization on apiece that’s an ideal suggestion for a smaller organization help ah, great way of having volunteers absolute about absolutely on and of course there are also signing machines there are signing a live pen. Yes, there are. I’ve never we’ve never of course, gotten one, but we didn’t really have a need for it, but they are really big. I think in political male with those types letters, and we don’t get into that, but they can, of course be used for everything. It’s not a big thing around here, but i think it is very big down in the virginia maryland area where they do an awful, awful lot of fund-raising mail like this morpher cause related organizations and for politics, elections, but it’s ah, great alternative to use one of those hand signing machines we do offset prints signatures very often, because that will look even a little bit better than the laser digitize signature, and that can get pretty complicated when you’re talking about any mailing, no matter how large or small is often broken up into all kinds of different segments, according to who these donors are or who these members are, and you’ll have different letters and different people signing them. S o if you have to, if the client wishes to have the signature look as true as possible and they can’t do it by hand signing or a machine, we will do offset, which is traditional princessa we’ll print that pre print the letter had maybe already printed, but we’ll print it with the signature and position and then bring it over to the laser machines and do the personalization at their the signature is printed exactly where it needs to go. Oh, okay, so you’re printing the you’re running the already printed letterhead through your offset printing the traditional printing acid and just putting the signature just putting the signature, and then, you know, this sincerely will go on top of that. And, of course, the name it may be a title underneath that will be done by the laser in the next function. Yeah, that would be done in the laser. And so that could be a really time consuming part of a job, because, you know, first of all you’re setting up the data, you’re setting up the different letters that air going into your mailing, and then you want those offset signatures on there so it’s going back to oppress and, you know, plates have to be made and that’s time consuming, it does look good. We’re trying more and more, and with the advances of color laser technology, these kinds of things are looking better and better every year, and with the next wave of color digital machinery that we’re going to be getting very soon in the next couple of months, we think we’ll have the answer to that as all being done. Through digital printing just for the next few months. Yeah, because of the new machinery that just happens to be coming out right now and because our machines are going off, police release our equipment for three years because the technology changes very quickly. And you’re suggesting to that the signature could be in a different color. Maybe should be in a different use. A blue signature where all the other short, i do mean blue signatures and i wasn’t clear on that. Yes, if you want to just print a black signature, certainly it will be done during the digital laser process. But we are talking about a blue signature and getting it to the exact blue of the pen that’s when this is called for and the technology in your mind is good enough that it looks pretty close to alive signature it looks very, very close to a live signature. I personally think that laser looks very, very close to a live signature, but the difference is if you lick your finger and rub it across the signature, and if it doesn’t bleed, then it was printed either with ink or toner laser. But if it bleeds it was a real pen. And only a few people would really test that. A few of your most particular investigative type sherlock holmes type donors. So if you’re if you’re just diving into the signature because it’s interesting the printing of the signature by itself, if you’re doing that than your letter needs to be perfect, because the location of the signature is critical, once the signatures there you’re the letter really can’t change, right? No, it is critical, and in anyone project i could have as many as twenty, twenty five different segments, different letters signed by different people, even in a ten thousand twenty thousand piece mailing or quite a bit smaller because people are let’s, say it’s a hospital let’s say it’s a college seeking donations, they’re going to have different people signing those letters. They’re goingto have different letters, so the signature is going to fall on the front. It could fall in the back, so the set up for that procedure could be a week to ten days before you even start laser ring the personalized letters there’s a huge amount of set up in these processes, and you have to account for that and scheduling any of this type of work. And this is where there’s great advantage, i think, for the small and midsize shop because they don’t. Have all the levels of coordination. They don’t have to get all the levels of approval, but they can still take advantage of this great technology. Oh, absolutely. On dh small mailings altum biggest concern of most people nowadays with direct mail, you’re not seeing small, special niche type letter shop mail houses going out of business. You’re saying big ones that we’re dealing with banks and insurance companies and credit cards. But what we do is important to all of our clients, whether they be larger, small, whether they have one hundred thousand members or whether they have a thousand members of five hundred members it’s the small mailings that mean too, most of them because the smaller lists are going to be the hyre level donors and the high level membership levels. My guest is tim kenan, and you’re listening to tony martignetti non-profit radio stay with us. They didn’t didn’t dick dick tooting, getting dink, dink, dink dink. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get into thinking. E-giving cubine. Are you stuck in your business or career trying to take your business to the next level, and it keeps hitting a wall? This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Buy-in this is tony martignetti, aptly named host of tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Technology fund-raising compliance, social media, small and medium non-profits have needs in all these areas. My guests are expert in all these areas and mohr. Tony martignetti non-profit radio friday’s one to two eastern on talking alternative broadcast. Is your marriage in trouble? Are you considering divorce? Hello, i’m lawrence bloom, a family law attorney in new york and new jersey. No one is happier than the day their divorce is final. My firm can help you. We take the nasty out of the divorce process and make people happy. Police call a set. Two one, two, nine, six, four, three, five zero two for a free consultation. That’s lawrence h bloom two, one two, nine, six, four, three five zero two. We make people happy. Geever you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Schnoll i’m tony martignetti and we’re talking to tim cannon, president of mcvicar and higginbotham printing and direct mail shop. Tim let’s talk a little about the working relationship. What are some ideas that small and midsize non-profits should should implement? Tio have the best relationship with their with their printer and direct mail shop? Well, the first thing teo, think about everybody is concerned about price, but you have to think about who you’re going to be dealing with this well, especially since you’re doing smaller volume mail and we do, you know, one hundred pieces, two hundred pieces, you need somebody who understands how to effectively execute mailings like that. So it’s really important that you pick a vendor you can work with and it’s very good, very good ideas to go visit them, you need to see them see what they’re doing, see who they’re working for, see what they’re doing for those folks so you can get an idea. Hey, if they can do this, they can do it for me, so a visit should be welcome without it. We encourage all our clients all the time to come out and visit our shop because they get a wealth of information about how to do things better they also see things that we’re doing that we’re not doing for them. They’re just focused on their needs, but there’s a lot of other ideas out there and ah lot of these other organisations, whether they be in the arts, healthcare or performing arts or museums there, they’re doing things that you don’t know about great idea go out to the shop and see what the other clients are doing, and it will give you many ideas, big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. And as you said, a couple of times that that small organization that has just a few hundred donors to mail to those every one of them is precious, sure and very often people think, okay, this is so small, maybe i should do it in house, you know, at the organization a lot of times, though, it’s not a bad idea to send it out to a male house letter shop vendor because they may be able to do it more efficiently. Time and time again will do a large segment of a mailing on dh suddenly a piece comes back in. The mail too. The person who was in charge of the mailing or some seed they had within the organization a seed is a piece that comes back to somebody in your organization so you can make sure that it’s correct, but very often a seed will come back. And it just happens to be that that was the portion that they did in house, and they didn’t pay close enough attention, teo and it’s. Kind of natural. It’s. Easy to give a vendor clear instructions on what you want done. And then you decide. Okay, but we’re going to do this smaller portion in house here and often that’s where the mistakes were made. And what about the right employee to assign to be the liaison with the printer in the mail shop? Well, it’s, very important to have great communication in all of business. But anything can go wrong in a mill project. Starting with the list. The number of lists, how clean it is. How clean. Meaning what? Well, you know, we can very often people are bartering are exchanging lists from different organization on a small organization. I need more names to mail to whether i’m doing fund-raising or to build up attendance of my gala affair, you’ve got to make sure those lists our male oppcoll ago, we sent everything through the, which is the natural national change of address process or the post office to do an update on them to see if they moved, you know, there’s ah, high percentage over fifteen percent of our population moves every year, so you’ve got a lot of different address changes, so you want to make sure your lists are very clean? And i think a lot of times, these, uh, the liaison work falls to, ah, newer employees or a lower level employees. Well, the good thing about small organizations is that you’re very often dealing with a high up decision maker. It could be the executive director, and that helps right helps enough a lot because they know what they want to do and even more so they’re very willing to listen to you. They want to hear your ideas, the larger the organization, the more likely we’re going to be dealing with, you know, somebody who’s kind of new to that organization, and maybe a lot of the others don’t wanna handle the letter shop work and that’ll fall on their shoulders often they are confused at the whole big picture, and they don’t want to hear about all the little tips. They just want you to get this in the mail, get it done right? So a tte that point, they’re just saying, i just need to do what my boss it wants me to do and the way they described that that i should do it. Yeah, they’re kind of coming from an angle where they’re scared of making a mistake and talking to them and trying to reassure them and trying to get all the information straight between you and them is very important. So it’s a little bit it’s a little bit easier actually dealing with small organizations because you have somebody that’s very invested in that organization and who has a lot of experience that understands things you’re telling them it sounds like it the very least you should start the relationship with the printer male house with with us more senior person and then maybe delegate to someone to actually get the work done. Absolutely something that i see a lot with our clients is someone is thinking that while they’re on vacation, the printing can get done. Sure, and what happens then, i find is there isn’t anybody around to answer questions that the printer needs to have answered in order to do the work? It happens all the time, especially coming up to the end of summer and going into the holiday season. People have been thinking and planning a job, but they come to us a lot of times on the friday before they’re going on vacation. Here it is, and they’re going to a lot of questions you need to have answered, and they could be coming back from vacation a week later without us able to do a thing, and that can really hurt their schedule that that hamstrings you. My guest has been tim kenan, president of mcvicar and higginbotham, the printing and direct mail company located in brooklyn, new york. Tim, if people wouldn’t like to reach you, how could they do that? Well, we’re actually in long island city now. We were in brooklyn for fifty years in the last two, we’ve moved over to long island city, and you can find us on the web at www emcee the h dot com, or call seven one eight nine three seven two nine four. Xero. I’m very glad that tim’s work brought him to the studio today, andi, i would like to thank him very much for coming. Thank you so much to thank you so much. Tony was my pleasure, my pleasure as well, and other people to thank our creative producer, claire meyerhoff, line producer sam liebowitz and our social media is by regina walton. Speaking of social media, we have a facebook page. When you go to facebook, look for tony martignetti non-profit radio, just search for it, it’ll pop up, head over to the fan page and please like us. This is tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. We’re coming to you on talking alternative broadcasting at www dot talking alternative dot com every friday, one p, m eastern. Join us next week, thanks very much. Durney hyre good ending things. You’re listening to the talking alternate network, waiting to get a drink. Thank you. You could. I really need to take better care of myself if only i had someone to help me with my lifestyle. I feel like giving up dahna is this you mind over matter, health and fitness can help. 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So come and bring plenty of resumes and join me on friday, november twelve at aqueduct racetrack for a Job fair from 10 a m to three p m for more information, please call pete in my district offices seven one eight seven three eight one one one one. Hm? Are you stuck in your business or career? Trying to take your business to the next level and it keeps hitting a wall. This is sam liebowitz, the conscious consultant. I will help you get to the root. Cause of your abundance issues and help move you forward in your life. Call me now and let’s. Create the future you dream of. Two, one, two, seven, two, one, eight, one, eight, three, that’s to one to seven to one, eight one eight three. The conscious consultant helping conscious people. Be better business people. Dahna you’re listening to the talking alternative network. Napor