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In this issue:
• Marketing Article: Brand Building 101: Does your business card build your brand?
• Marketing Article: Data Cleansing

Data Quality Critical as Postal Rates Increase May 14th

With the postal rate increase coming in May, businesses who run direct marketing campaigns will need to ensure that their data quality is at the highest delivery level. Data cleansing can prevent companies from wasting thousands of dollars on mail sent to undeliverable addresses. Sending mail to the correct address will:

• streamline direct marketing campaigns
• reduce undeliverable-as-addressed mail
• increase response rates

Maintain and clean your database! Clean your list today for only $2.50 for every 1,000 records, 24-hour turnaround, $75 minimum order.

Brand Building 101: Does your business card build your brand?
by Krishna De

Are you losing credibility and damaging the brand of your business through lack of attention to one of your critical marketing tools in your business, your business card? Discover how your business card can enhance your brand and ensure that you stand out from your competition.

When we are at a networking event or meeting a client, it's almost guaranteed that we will exchange business cards.

Very often, without realising it, we are assessing our colleague by their business card, and asking ourselves:

- Is the business card professionally designed? - Is the business card crumpled at the edges? - How does the weight of the business card feel - substantive or flimsy? - Does it look like the business card has been made on their PC - or worse still does it have a message at the bottom of the card to say where you too can access free cards?

I have collected thousands of business cards over my time in business and every time I am sub-consciously assessing the professional status of them and their business when I receive their business card.

We review someone's card at least 3 times:

1. once on receiving it

2. a second time when we put it in our pocket, folio or bag as we leave the meeting

3. and a third time as we make a decision to keep it, transfer the information into our data bank or bin it!

Our business card is a critical part of our marketing collateral and even if you can not afford to put in place other marketing materials, short changing the investment in developing a professional business card is definitely not something we should do if we are looking to develop a professional brand.

When meeting someone in person, alongside how you present yourself in person, your business card can enhance or devalue the strength of your brand and how you are perceived by others.

Here are four tips to enhance your brand through your business card:

1. Ensure that you work with a professional designer to develop your business card. It's not whether you like the design, it's about whether it will represent your business effectively and professionally to your target audience

2. Ideally have your business card printed on 400g card and by a traditional lithographic printer. Yes it is more expensive than digital printing, but the quality is worth investing in and a litho print gives far greater definition to your corporate identity and the colour of your brand

3. Matt laminate your card on the reverse for extra stability and style. Don't laminate both sides as people will not be able to write on your card - we often note down things to remember about the person we met on their card

4. Use the valuable real estate on the back of your card to provide a call to action, for example, how to access your white paper or special report on your web site.

Take action:

Over the next 30 days, take the opportunity to review the business cards of your contacts and assess their card against yours.

1. What can you learn from other peoples business cards?

2. How could you take those learnings and further enhance your business card?

Your goal is to ensure that your business card is a positive reflection of both you and your company, and it represents a strong brand.

Invest in your business card, distribute it widely and you will be sure of expanding your professional success.

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Krishna De invites you to join her in conversation with experts from around the globe to discover how to build your brand and grow your professional services firm at http://www.bizgrowthlive.com/. You will also receive access to Biz Growth Express a weekly newsletter bringing you strategies, inspiration and tips to grow your professional services practice. Register today at:http://www.krishnade.com/

©Krishna De, Oneocean Ltd 2006. All rights reserved Worldwide. Reprint Rights: You may reprint this article providing the article is printed in its entirety, you leave all of the links active, do not edit the article in anyway and include the copyright statement. Email: publications@oneoceangroup.com

Associations and non-profit groups are a powerful resource for building and expanding networking and business opportunities, finding jobs, evaluating goods and services, and industry publications.

Our database puts you in direct contact with these organizations.

Data Cleansing
by Concept Marketing Group, Inc.

Creating a successful direct marketing program involves clean data records with highly deliverable addresses. Cleaning, enhancing and filling the gaps in your in-house files will mean cost effective postage rates, minimal bounces in mail pieces, and an increase your company profits.

1) Keeping Your List Clean
Are there key pieces of information missing from your database that could increase customer sales? Statistics show that most company's customer and prospect databases are missing key pieces of information:

• Phone numbers but no addresses
• Out-of-date information
• Details that could effect your marketing strategies such as homeowner, presence of children, income level, marital status demographics; business size, employee size, sales volume demographics and more.

Keeping your data files up-to-date and complete with data hygiene services is an important component of a direct marketing campaign. The end result is improved deliverability, savings on print material and postage. Cleaning and data enhancement is a proven method to ensure that you’re maximizing marketing dollars.

Statistics show that up to 20% of records within a typical house data file are undeliverable, seasonal or vacant. In addition, up to 5% of records are identified as small- to mid-sized businesses, which typically require a separate marketing strategy than a consumer campaign.

2) Connect with Customers via Data Enhancement
Take the time to learn about the people behind those records. When you know who you're dealing with, you know how best to approach them. Here's a tip: Enrich your data with appended information. Here's just a few examples of popular appends provided by the most reputable direct marketing data solutions firms:

• Add postal addresses to records that only contain email addresses. Or add phone numbers, names or business titles to your current file
• Add revealing consumer details, so that you can target your messaging for a higher response. You can find out whether your records include homeowners, parents, members of particular ethnic groups, or even customers who are connected to the Internet.
• Add revealing business details, including SIC codes, sales volume, business site type (for example, headquarters or branch office), number of employees, or contact names. 3) How Data Hygiene and Enhancement Boosts Your Bottom Line Sales Results
• Saves you money on printing and mail-house fulfillment
• Allows you to control mailing waste and save on postage
• Gives you the opportunity to target your selling messages to the right audience at the right time
• Opens up new channels to reach your consumer or business customers using the methods they prefer
• Drives higher response through more specific, personalized offers (as opposed to generic, one-size-fits-all promotions)
• Helps build loyalty programs that drive up lifetime value
• Leads to more profitable prospecting, through modeling and forecasting

Data enhancement and hygiene can open doors to new sales opportunities, make your marketing efforts more efficient and cost-effective, and help you get the most return on investment for any campaign. Most of all, it keeps your customers happy and loyal, by making their mailings more relevant and accurate.

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Concept Marketing Group, Inc. is a full-service marketing consulting firm with over 29 years of experience in traditional marketing - including 13 years on the Internet. Concept Marketing Group Inc. assists in developing and implementing effective sales and marketing strategies for businesses through targeted, managed, strategic marketing campaigns. Visit our site, www.marketingsource.com, email us at concept@marketingsource.com or call 800-575-5369, for more information.