For our friends in Northern California: On Thursday Feb. 21st, our CEO Vitaly M. Golomb, will participate in a panel discussion on Social Media effect on print companies and business in general.  Other members of the panel include design and marketing experts, as well as representatives from major print industry suppliers.

Social Media plays a valuable role in today’s marketing mix both as a strategy for print companies and a competitor to the printed page.  Come meet the movers and shakers in the Northern California printing industry for drinks and a valuable conversation.

Keen has one of the widest Social Media footprints in the print industry with:

• www.twitter.com/keenprint
• www.facebook.com/keenprint

• www.printisbig.com
• www.twitter.com/printisbig 
• www.facebook.com/printisbig

The event at the South Beach Yacht Club in San Francisco, is a Sales Club Meeting brought to you by the Visual Media Alliance (formerly known as the Printing Industries of Northern California). Event details and registration.

Happy Friday! It’s that cheery time of year when I prepare to send out my annual holiday cards to friends and family. If you’re sending cards to your customers, this is a great opportunity to introduce them to a new way of interacting with you. Invite your customers to see your promotions or offerings online, on Facebook, or through your Twitter feed. Instead of the standard ‘Follow me’, ‘Like us’, or ‘go here’ language, try giving it some context. ‘Follow me for holiday tips’ or ‘Like us for special promotions’ are examples on how to give your customers a reason to take action.

What do you do differently for the holidays? Send me an email: eurjean at keenprint dot com or message me on Twitter @keenprint.

I watched a great video from Jennifer Matt on WhatTheyThink about the “getting real stage” of web-to-print (watch it here: http://bit.ly/UyL06g) where she talked about the two questions to ask before you choose the right web-to-print solution for your business:

• Who are you targeting on the web?
• What are you trying to sell?

As I thought about it more, I realized that these two questions are also great starting points for deciding where to go with your website or online marketing. The target customer and product offering should drive your strategy and decisions.

These are a few ideas to get the ball rolling: 

• Which products should I offer on my website? You might even need more than one website to tailor the product offerings to the needs of different types of customers.
• Which marketing channels should I use (if any)? Would your target customer be more likely to use LinkedIn or Yelp or Facebook for their printing needs?
• When is the best time for marketing? Does your customer have seasonal needs or life event related needs? 

By becoming customer-focused and really thinking about who you’re trying to reach and what they need, you can build stronger relationships with your existing customers and reach new ones.

What strategies do you use for marketing your online store? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Please send me an email: eurjean at keenprint dot com.

Spam. Everybody hates it and it gives email a bad rap, but the value of email as a business tool shouldn’t be overlooked. Even if you don’t use email for marketing, you can use it give your customer service an edge.

Image source: http://howmanyarethere.net

Follow-up. We are not elephants, so at times we forget things. Use email to recap or confirm a verbal conversation with a customer. It’s great to have a written record to go back to and it’s saved me from many misunderstandings. It also makes me sound amazingly smart if they call me back in a few months and I can pull up their emails to recall every detail of our past conversation. Some people have an amazing memory (lucky ducks!), but now I have a way to “fake it”.

Answering machine. You can set up a customer service email address with an auto-responder message that answers the most common new customer questions and provides initial forms. You can reply with  follow-up later from your individual email address. If this isn’t your style, you can take a more manual approach, save drafts of your most common answers in your email and then paste from them to answer the same customer questions over and over again. I’ve used this technique to help new team members get familiar with our process and maintain consistent standards in email communications.

Order updates. Whether you have an automated system or not, sending emails to your customers when the status of their order changes is a great way to keep them informed. It gives customers visibility into their order and confidence in your process and now many customers expect it.

Signature. Don’t forget to use your email signature as another way to communicate with your customer. Its the perfect place to give them more information about your shop:

• Business hours
• Phone number
• Website
• Social Media Links
• Special Deals/Sales/Promotions

We’d love to hear how you’ve used email as a customer service tool! Please send me an email: eurjean at keenprint dot com.

all of your current and future customers are online…y u no have ecommerce?

We’ll be in the Roland booth #2659 at the 2012 SGIA Expo giving demos, answering questions, and having a great time. Stop by to see us in Las Vegas! 

We promise that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas…

A picture is worth a thousand words, so we’ll let the pictures do the talking.

Setting up a booth requires real muscle…

…and finesse.

The Keen look and feel.

We love Chicago!

We held a press reception to announce our three new online services: Keen Files, Keen Boost Marketplace, and Keen Design Studio.

We shared strategies and tactics for better online marketing in seminars every hour…

…and advanced business management tips directly from Vitaly, our CEO.

We were honored to attend the 2012 Premier Print Award Gala to receive our InterTech Technology Award for Innovative Excellence.

PRINT IS BIG!

Our table of goodies.

Last day at Graph Expo after a great trip. Guess which of us drank the most coffee?

From left: Vitaly M. Golomb (Founder & CEO), Mark Mavroudis (Head of Sales), EurJean Chung (Online Marketing Manager)

We had a wonderful time at Graph Expo in Chicago meeting the best in the industry and talking to customers candidly about their challenges and insights. 

We’d love to hear from you too!  Learn more about Keen and contact us for a live demo now at www.keenprint.com.

Today at the Graph Expo 2012 kick-off, we are pleased to announce the release of three new online services. We’re excited to share with you what these three new offerings can do to save you time and money.

Keen Files

• Specifically made for graphics files, large and small
• Quickly integrate a secure file upload form into your website
• Secure customer accounts with simple sign up
• Convenient customer account management
• Learn more about Keen Files at www.keenfiles.com

Keen Design Studio

• Convert your existing PDF files into HTML-based web-to-print design templates
• Enable your design templates in private and public product catalogs
• Completely editable in any web browser, including tablets
• Your customers experience real-time, lag-free editing
• Contact us for a live demo at www.keenprint.com 

Keen Boost Marketplace

• A place for wholesale/trade vendors to offer products and services for you to resell
• As simple as installing an app
• Choose products to showcase and set your price markup
• Sell products and services you don’t produce in-house
• Maintain a consistent order experience and relationship with your customers
• Contact us for a live demo at www.keenprint.com 

Since the overwhelming response to our launch at Graph Expo 2011, we’ve been busy working with customers and partners all over the world.  We’ve learned a lot and can’t wait to tell you all about two major new additions to our award-winning print ecommerce suite and a whole new stand-alone service.  These are areas that promise to save time and money, while providing a new world of opportunities. We’d love to see you at Graph Expo booth #4038!

We’re also pleased to have our in-house online marketing experts speak in a series of mini seminars with strategies and tactics on improving profits and closing more business - topics that we hope can help you make the transition to doing more business online. These seminars will take place at the top of the hour, multiple times a day, every day at our booth.

• Improve profits with better communication
• Getting and keeping big customers
• Quote quicker and close more business
• Become a one-stop shop with partners

Come visit us at booth #4028 at Graph Expo 2012 and arrange for a private demo at www.keenprint.com/graphexpo2012.