Business Cards - Still the Most Important Marketing Tool

Even with the popularity of social media and online marketing, one of, if not the most important marketing tool is the business card. Business cards are the easiest way to publicize your business and provide potential customers with your information.

Here are some ideas to make sure your business card work for you:

Include complete contact information:

• name
• company name
• phone number including area code
• email address
• website address
• social media addresses

You can also include QR Codes to provide integration with your online media and to automate tasks. For example, you can add QR Codes that will

• add your contact information to a smartphone's directory
• connect the smartphone to your website and/or to a specific page on your site
• add an event to the a smartphone's calendar

Need help? Give us a call! Wilson Printing can help design your business card, and we can show you a variety of papers that will make you look your best.

Wilson Printing is your source for business card printing!

Eye-Catching Invitation Design

Here's a great piece we recently produced for the Santa Barbara Zoo Zoofari Ball. The graphic designer incorporated gold foil into the design that really catches people's attention. 

Gold foil adds a touch of glamor, yet is fairly durable and won't chip off. Gold foil stamping turns an invitation into an eye-catching piece, perfect for invitations that you want to get noticed!

 For a lower cost method, we can also add spot colors to your design using our 6-color Lithrone offset press or our HP Indigo Digital Press. Wilson Printing is the only company in Santa Barbara County offering a 6-color offset and the Indigo!

Emergency Kits - A Thoughtful Way to Promote Your Business

With it being fire season, customized emergency kits with your company's logo are a great way to show that you care about your customers and employees.

We have a number of different emergency kits available that can include:

• water
• bandages
• flashlight
• thermal blanket
• chemical lightsticks
• emergency food packs
• emergency repair tools
• glass breaking hammer

All food and water are U.S. Coast Guard approved with 5 year shelf life.

To see our selection of emergency kits, please visit our promotional products website.

Promo Products for Conferences - Messenger Bags

We just made these cool messenger bags for Youth Philanthropy Connect's upcoming conference!

YPC is a special project of the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation that connects youth involved in grant-making and philanthropy with their peers and colleagues. YPC provides educational programming at an annual conference for youth boards and their adult advisers, and advances philanthropy by offering professional development opportunities for youth who will be tomorrow's trustees.

Messenger bags are a great item to promote your organization. They can be used during the conference or trade show - and best of all - used long after the event is over!

For more promotional product ideas, visit our website www.wilprint.com

Time to Start Planning Your Holiday Promotions!

It may be Summer, but it's the perfect time to start planning your holiday promotions!

Some of the customized items have a long turn-around time, so best to start early!

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Drinkware

Personalized drinkware is one of the most effective promotional items available. We can put your logo and message on wine glasses, pilsner glasses, champagne flutes, shot glasses, and of course coffee cups!
Click here to see more drinkware items.

Customized Snow Globes

How about a customized snow globe with a custom scene! We can create any 3-D object for the snow globe - your product, your building, your message!
Click here to see more custom snow globes.

Ornaments

We can imprint or engrave your logo and message on a number of different ornament designs. Choose from a variety of materials including crystal, glass, "crystal clear" acrylic, ceramic, pewter, gold plated and even seeded paper ornaments!
Click here to see more custom ornaments.

Holiday Food Items

The holidays are the time for food gifts! We can add your logo and message to a beautifully packaged holiday food gift item. Our huge assortment includes cookies, chocolates, brownies, candies, biscotti, nuts and more!
Click here to see more holiday food items.

Kitchen and Garden Items

Speaking of food, you can also give them customized items for the kitchen and garden. For example, this herb kit includes a clay pot with your logo, herb seeds and soil packet.
Click here to see more kitchen and garden items.

Electronics and Office Items

Electronics are great functional gift items. We have a wide variety of electronics and office related gifts that we can customize with your logo - from ear buds to universal solar chargers.
Click here for more electronics and office gifts.

The Most Amazing Paper Ever! Polyester Paper!

Wilson Printing now carries Polyester Paper! Wet weather, chemicals and tearing don’t mean a thing to this tough paper. Polyester Paper is designed to take plenty of abuse and still look great. Bringing new dimensions like “rugged,” “flexible,” and “durable” to the mix, it makes a broad range of unique applications possible. This paper can even be washed making it ideal for hospitals and managed care facilities!

• Tough and tear resistant
• Water resistant
• Color and high-end black-and-white digital printing
• High opacity and whiteness for excellent brightness and shade
• Competitively priced
• Wide range of thicknesses and sizes (standard and custom)
• Eliminate the need to laminate
• Paper-like and pencil erasable
• Suitable for outdoor usage
• Sanitary

A wealth of application opportunities:

• Menus
• Cookbooks
• Plant tags
• Membership cards
• Signs
• Maps
• Guides
• Manuals
• Posters
• Flyers
• And more!

Give us a call - we can show you examples of polyester paper so you can actually feel how amazing this paper really is!

Wilson Printing - Yes! We can print that!

Annual Report Printing Time!

One of the most important things we have learned during our 35 years of printing Annual Reports, is the importance of good binding! Low cost printers often use a low quality binding process that can result in loose pages.

Wilson Printing uses the Bourg BB 3002 Perfect Binding System - a high quality, hot glue binder to create state of the art, perfect bound books. Click here to see a video of the BB3002 in action and see why it is a superior binding machine.

Wilson Printing has been printing Annual Reports for over 35 years. We have a number of printing options to fit any size budget.

Make sure your Annual Reports make your organization look it's best and use Wilson Printing for your Annual Reports.

Wilson Printing is proud to be the printer of choice for the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation 2011 Annual Report.

Newsletter Printing

We recently printed the The Monarch Press, the City of Goleta Newsletter.

Newsletters are one of the best ways to reach an audience. Why? Direct mail is re-surfacing as the way to get through the clutter and get people's attention. Email in-boxes are getting filled with spam. Social networks are being filled with random information. Because there has been an over-all reduction in the amount of direct mail people receive, direct mail is now the way to get people's attention!

Wilson Printing has a number of affordable newsletter printing options. We can print in full color, black and white, or a combination of the two. We also have many paper options including eco-friendly papers!

Wilson Printing is proud to be the printer of choice for the City of Goleta.

Wilson Printing's Book Printing and Binding

Did you know that Wilson Printing has complete book printing and binding services? Many of the books at University of California Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara City College are printed right here in Goleta!

We recently had the pleasure of printing the book Santa Barbara, Land of Dynamic Beauty: A Natural History. Written by Ed Keller, professor in the Department of Earth Science and Environmental Studies Program at UCSB, this is one of the most comprehensive books on Santa Barbara that you will find. The book covers everything from the geologic history to great places to see the natural history of our area.

Two of the more comprehensive chapters are on sustainability and natural hazards. The sustainability chapter has in-depth information about water, energy, waste, and global warming with information on how we can achieve sustainability in Santa Barbara. The natural hazards of Santa Barbara chapter covers earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis with recommendations on how to protect oneself.

You can get Santa Barbara, Land of Dynamic Beauty: A Natural History at the UCSB bookstore and other local bookstores.

Wilson Printing is proud to be the printer of the book Santa Barbara, Land of Dynamic Beauty: A Natural History.

Wilson Printing - Printer of Choice for Fundraisers

We are very aware of the cost control every company has with their printing needs. This is especially true for non-profits - which is why we are very proud to be the printer of choice for these organizations.

The Transition House
Help-a-Kid No-Ball
Instead of using fund-raising dollars to hold a big party, the Transition House decided to put all of the money towards helping children living in Transition House's emergency shelter. Wilson Printing is proud to be the printer for the fund-raising direct mail pieces for the Transition House.



Women to Women International
Ghana High School Project
This project is to help raise funds for the St. Anne's Secondary School for Girls in Ghana. The school is need of many capital improvements including a covered kitchen, dormitory space and fencing. Wilson Printing is proud to be the printer for the fund-raising brochures for Women to Women.
Please support these great organizations.

Design Inspiration - FoldFactory Videos of Interesting Folds

Looking for inspiration for your next folded piece? Look no further than the FoldFactory's YouTube Channel. The FoldFactory has put together a great series on interesting folds and die-cuts.

Check it out on the FoldFactory YouTube Channel.

Speaking of interesting folds - Wilson Printing is proud to be the winner of the Printing Industries of America Premier Print Award for printing of The Granada Season Brochure which included a very intricate fold and die-cut. The winning piece was featured in our August 2010 blog post.

Marketing Tips: Cross Channel Marketing

What Is Cross Channel Marketing?
Every successful business uses multichannel marketing, utilizing more than one channel in their marketing mix, for example direct mail, email, text messages, and online social networks. Cross channel marketing uses one or more marketing channels to promote a marketing initiative that uses another channel.


Increase Direct Mail Response and ROI Through Online Channels
A perfect example of using a cross channel marketing approach is pre-publicizing a direct mailing though online channels. Use your Facebook, Twitter, email and text messaging to tell people to look in the mail for the soon to be arriving piece. This method can be used to promote the mailing of a product catalog, season brochure, or donation request.

Timing is critical with integrated cross channel marketing; make sure that the online publicity is distributed before the direct mail piece is expected to arrive.


Increase Traffic to Your Online Content With Direct Mail
Conversely, one of the best ways to publicize your online content is using your printed marketing collateral. You may have people in your direct mail database that have not visited your web site, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter pages. Let them know about your online presence by giving them a link!

One way to accomplish this is by including a QR Code on your direct mail piece that links to your online content. QR Codes can link to not just your web site, but to any URL including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter pages.

You can track the number of times people go to the web page via the QR Code by using a service like bit.ly. Bit.ly shortens long URLs and tracks the number times people visit a link via the shortened URL. Using a shortened URL has the additional advantage of having less data so the QR Code image is easier to read by smartphones. Here is an example QR Code using a bit.ly shortened URL to Wilson Printing's Twitter page.

QR Code to Wilson Printing's Twitter page using a bit.ly shortened URL http://bit.ly/ijWaoZ

A great example of using print marketing collateral to increase online traffic is in the Forms+Surfaces Architectural Surfaces catalog we profiled in our last newsletter. They included a QR Code on their Additional Resources page that links to a web page to sign up for their eNews.

Forms+Surfaces catalog with QR Code to web site.

Important! Make sure that the web page you are directing the customer's smartphone to is compatible with smartphones! When creating and testing QR Codes, smartphones have difficulty scanning a CRT monitor, so print the QR Code to test. Also, not everyone has access to a smartphone with a QR Code scanner application, so make sure you include the actual URL address wherever you use a QR Code in a printed piece and link the graphic if it is online.

For more marketing tips follow Wilson Printing on Facebook and Twitter.

Make Sure Your Documents Are Bound Perfectly!

Are you responsible for your company's annual reports? Product brochures? Catalogs? Are you sure that they aren't losing pages?

Since opening 36 years ago, Wilson Printing has printed and bound thousands of annual reports, books, brochures, and catalogs. We recently purchased a new, hot glue, perfect binder - the Bourg BB3002. There is a great reason why we decided to purchase the Bourg BB 3002 - it provides superior binding.

What makes the Bourg BB3002 a superior binding machine and why should you use it?

• 3 cylinder gluing process provides superior binding. Binders with fewer gluing processes can result in loose pages.
• Automated side glue rollers that adjust to every book, providing a cleaner and stronger bind.
• Channel scoring which is far superior to older processes that rely on rotary scoring disks which have a tendency to skew, crack, or delaminate covers and can mis-align spine printing.
• Low bundle follower insures that book block is perfectly gathered resulting in more consistent page lineup.
• Cover nipping station with 4 quality assurance controls to achieve highest quality possible.
• Soft reception conveyor design prevents damage to spine of finished books.

So next time you're looking for the best printing and binding service, give Wilson Printing a call!

For more marketing tips, follow Wilson Printing on Facebook and Twitter.

Get Your FREE 2011 Desktop Calendar

The famous Wilson Printing desktop calendar is now available! This is our large 17" x 22" format desk calendar with the fish images everyone seems to love. If you don't have a 2011 desk calendar yet, Wilson Printing still has a quantity on hand. Come by and pick up a free one, or call your Wilson Printing rep to bring you one.