High Speed ROI from a Tabletop SelfMailer

Typical offices send out invoices, payroll/checks, and your W-2s during those dreaded tax times. Unfortunately, you're either outsourcing these small production runs or hand-stuffing envelopes. Instead of wasting your valuable time or outsourcing relatively small jobs, solutions are available that will save you time, space, and money.

Save Money with the Kern Office Desktop Self Mailer

Bring these small, one-page mailers back in-house. The Kern Office is a compact, simple, and secure solution that provides cost-savings in postage, paper, and operations, all while creating an effective one-piece mailer for a large variety of application types. This unique solution does everything for you, including feeding, gluing, folding, perforating, cutting, and output stacking.

So how exactly will bringing small runs back in-house save you money? Get rid of envelopes and special pressure-seal paper, and reduce the size of your mailpiece from a standard envelope to post-card size. If you are able to convert your document to a 6x9” document, as well as leave the sides open for inspection, there are significant discounts available, especially when using double-postcard applications.

Compare the Kern Office to Other Solutions

Pressure sealers are perhaps the most comparable solutions when it comes to table-top devices. But look at it this way: with pressure-sealers, you need to buy specially perforated and glued paper that can get expensive. Almost any office has regular 8.5 x 11” paper that they use in their copy room, as well as a printer. With the Kern Office, you can print from your local printer onto plain paper, put it in the Office, and end up with a completely secured mailpiece. When compared to a regular mailing, you can easily save $4,000 per 100,000 mailpieces (based on envelope and paper costs), which is already a 1/3 of the cost of the Kern Office.

Besides invoices, payroll/checks, and W-2s, the Kern Office is also perfect for utility bills, direct mail PIN mailers, promotional coupons, and a variety of other applications.

Graph Expo Commercials

Who has 30 seconds to watch a commercial these days? For Graph Expo, Kern ran four 15 second commercials on the Shuttle Buses to and from McCormick Place and on the video screens outside the entrance to the hall. Check out these commercials!

Graph Expo 2010: A Big Announcement From Kern

Graph Expo 2010 has came and went. Now that we have had some time to catch up after the show, we have a video to share with you. If you read our last post, you already know all about the new Ai-Class. Demonstrating the new Ai-33Direct made this year's Graph Expo a big attraction as the only new inserter demonstration at the show. Check out the video we made to share with you and those at Kern that were unable to attend.

Did you see our Press Release about the new Ai-Class?

At Graph Expo, Kern announced our newest inserting technology, the Kern Ai-Class of high speed inserting systems. Now we will post a link and a video in the next blog post, but before Graph Expo we issued a Press Release to announce the technology demonstration.

Inserting at 33,000 envelopes was a sight to see. Email Ryan McManus @ rmcmanus@kerninc.com or contact your account manager for a video test drive of the new Ai-Class.

Read our press release here: KERN ANNOUNCES NEW INSERTING TECHNOLOGY WITH DEMONSTRATION OF THE AI-CLASS

High-Impact Direct Mail Applications with the Kern 515 EasyMailer

In an age when email has become the dominant form of communication, marketers need high impact applications that will attract the recipient from the outside of the envelope, generating enough interest to increase the likelihood that the mailpiece will be opened.

Now you can connect more personally with your prospects and customers, while revolutionizing your direct mail production. The Kern 515 EasyMailer allows any printer to go the extra mile and, in a single pass, create a completely personalized envelope and letter. You can print both a letter and its envelope in full color, with variable graphics and text on the front and back of an 11” x 17” sheet that is then converted into the unique and high impact mailpiece. Applications with the EasyMailer are ideal for any printer, large or small, that wants to offer original direct mail services to their customers.

How will this affect your response rates? It has been proven that the personalization of envelopes and letters with highly visual graphics and text yield higher than average response rates. Up until now, it has been difficult and often very expensive to personalize envelopes with text and graphics. Not anymore. ADMA has stated the average response rate for direct mail is 2% - 5%. In some cases the full color direct mail applications with the Kern 515 EasyMailer have shown response rates over 20%.

Because of the potential increase in response rates, mailers can save money on postage with more targeted campaigns. The EasyMailer creates a unique envelope with double-sided, full color, changes the design of the envelope on demand, saving significantly versus pre-printed envelopes. Unlike inkjet technologies where quality and area to add full-color is limited, EasyMailer applications can easily be created with today's most popular graphic design programs and continuous, full-color graphics can wrap around the whole envelope.

Take your EasyMailer application to the next level and incorporate PURLs and QR Codes to connect your direct mail with your digital marketing strategy. Standout with unique, personalized, and full color high impact direct mail applications made exclusively with the Kern 515 EasyMailer.

** THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN THE MAY/JUNE ISSUE OF MAILING SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE.

-EMail Ryan McManus rmcmanus@kerninc.com for a sample produced by the Kern 515 EasyMailer.

Watch, Listen, Look, Like: Kern on Social Networking

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube...all places to waste your afternoon when your boss isn't looking, right? Wrong!

With the announcement that Facebook has reached over 500 million worldwide users and Twitter is on the verge of reaching 50 million tweets per day, it's obvious to see that social media sites have moved beyond being classified as a means of friendly communications and boredom solvers, and have developed into an important means of running businesses worldwide.

Most people have heard of the idea: Six Degrees of Separation. It refers to the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on earth, so that a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. With this idea in mind, focus on this statistic: Nearly 60% of adults worldwide maintain a profile on a social networking site. Imagine not only the number of people you have the opportunity to connect with, but the number of quality contacts you can make through a friend of a friend of a friend. The possibilities are endless. One simple way to see these connections is through LinkedIn. This social media site shows your level of “connectedness” with other people in rank of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd degree, with 1st being a direct link, 2nd being a friend of your direct link, and 3rd being a friend of a friend of your direct link.

So how can this be beneficial to you?
Say, for instance, you are searching for a new mail shop to fulfill your monthly mailings, but don't have any direct contacts. If you know the names of a few companies, you can search those businesses on LinkedIn and see if you have any contacts. Many times, if you aren't already directly connected to someone at the company, someone you know is, and you've found your in. Social networking sites can also help you stay connected after trade shows or other industry events. We meet so many people and see new companies when attending events and we want to be able to keep in touch with everyone. Maybe you meet someone who offers a way to save your company money, but you lose his business card. Chances are, if you can remember what company or industry he/she worked for, you can find them on a social networking site. Not only can you use the social networking sites to re-connect with people, but reading and participating in discussions on both Facebook and LinkedIn can provide a learning opportunity for many different topics within the mailing industry. There are several groups you can join, both on Facebook and LinkedIn, that involve the mailing industry, including your local PCC’s, MSMA, Direct Mail Group, and Postal Forum to name a few. Currently, Kern has set up pages on a variety of social media sites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Vimeo, and Flickr. By joining these online communities created by Kern, users have the opportunity to openly communicate, share experiences and best practices with other Kern users, as well as learn about new products so that you can make informed decisions. If you are not already members, we encourage you to join these social networks and to become fans of Kern USA. We encourage you to contribute to the page, start discussions, or answer questions.

For links to all of Kern's social media and social networking sites, visit www.kerncan.com/connect. We look forward to connecting with you!