PaperDirect Blog PaperDirect Blog

September 30, 2015

Unique Ways to Interact with Customers this Christmas

Filed under: Business Marketing Ideas — PDWriter @ 8:59 am

The marketing mayhem of the holiday season is about to begin in a frenzy of emails, social media posts, direct mail flyers, and so on. However, the success of your business during the Christmas season relies heavily on how your business engages clients. These six unique ways to interact with customers this Christmas will not only let you share the warmest of season’s greetings but also help market your company.

Festive Photo Booth

Photo booth sign

For businesses with physical locations that clients and customers visit regularly, set up an area where you can take festive holiday photo booth pictures. Assign someone the task of being the photographer, gather holiday-themed props (Santa hats, elves’ ears, ugly Christmas sweaters, etc.), and set up a winter backdrop to use for the pictures.

Tell those who take photos in your makeshift booth to visit your website or Facebook page to see and share their pictures.

Add a branded watermark to every photo booth picture you post online to let people know how much your value to frivolity and spirit of the season.

Holiday Greetings

Whether you’re planning on sending an end-of-year newsletter, Christmas greeting cards, or some type of holiday communication, take the time to write something personal and heartfelt to your customers. Your patrons will be bombarded with tons of Christmas messaging during the holiday season so make yours stand out with a thoughtful message to those who keep you in business.

Down the road, your clients will remember your kind holiday gesture when thinking of where to take their business.

Online Snowball Fight (No Mittens Required!)

Create a branded snowball image and post it on your company’s social media channels, asking your clients and customers to hit their loved ones with a snowball. As users tag their friends and family as a means of “throwing” snowballs at them, your brand will attain a wider reach and serve as a reminder to people to patron your business during the holiday season.

Don’t forget to remind people to share and retweet the snowball as well!

Hot Cocoa Bar

hot cocoa

Set up a gourmet hot cocoa bar in your place of business for visiting clients, and post some of the amazing libations people mix up for themselves on your company’s social media channels. Include different hot cocoa types (regular, dark chocolate, sugar-free) with a selection of garnishes (sprinkles, candy canes, whipped cream, etc.) that customers can add to their customized drinks.

Dancing Elves E-Card

Dancing Elves ecard

Grab a few photos of your staff members and place them in a fun-filled e-card, such as this one. This method of interacting with customers during the holidays helps your business communicate Christmas greetings without selling a product or service. While the message might not be a sales one, it will remind recipients that you’re always open for business and available to fill their needs.

Increase Customer Service Efforts

During the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, more customers are making more purchases than during any other time of the year. Be sure your customer service staff is prepared for the onslaught of questions and comments. If your business isn’t making use of Twitter as a customer service channel, now is the time to start this initiative and help even more customers than you were previously.  

September 25, 2015

5 Ideas for Recognizing Reps During Customer Service Week

Filed under: Employee Recognition Ideas — PDWriter @ 4:00 pm

“The single most important thing is to make people happy,” founder of CD Baby, Derek Sivers, once said. “If you are making people happy, as a side effect, they will be happy to open up their wallets and pay you.” If the customer is the most important aspect of your business, the second-most important is your company’s customer service staff. Therefore, there’s no time like Customer Service Week to recognize your company’s customer service reps.

Customer Service Week has been a nationally-recognized event since 1992. With five business days dedicated to recognizing customer service reps, you’ll probably need some inspiration for how to celebrate these employees’ hard work. These five ideas will not only make your staff feel appreciated, but improve business relations with your customers.

Decorate the Office

Christmas Cubicle Decorating Contest

Decide on a festive theme for Customer Service Week and decorate the office to the max in that theme. For example, themes such as “Hawaiian Paradise” to “A Night at the Oscars” will get people excited and engaged in celebrating Customer Service Week. Really let your imagination run wild as you think of interesting ways to keep your office professional while still having fun recognizing the hard work of your customer service reps.

MVPs

While your business might not engage in any sporting events, your customer service team is full of Most Valuable Players (or Professionals). Depending on the size of your customer service department, either select your top-performing employees or choose to recognize the whole team as MVPs with speciality certificates and awards. Allow MVPs to take an extra-long lunch during Customer Service Week or surprise them with a special pancake breakfast in the office, but whatever you do, make sure you let your MVPs shine.

Chair Parade

Let your customer service team take a break from work by asking them decorate their desk chairs as miniature parade floats. Then, host an office-wide chair parade where your customer service reps get to show off their creative skills. Give other departments fun prizes to share with their favorite floats, such as candy, funny desk knickknacks, gift certificates for coffee, company swag, and whatever else you can think of to celebrate your customer service employees.

Best Of

Intricate Scroll Standard Certificates by PaperDirect

In the days leading up to Customer Service Week, have your employees vote on the best customer service moments from the past year. Some of the Best Of categories can include:

  • Best Handling of an Irate Customer
  • Best Funny Response to a Silly Question
  • Best Customer Service Rep for the Quarter

Have everyone vote and then host a small award ceremony where you award certificates and prizes to your Best Of winners.

Team Building Activities

Your customer service department is a crucial team to your business. Let them have fun while building relationships with their teammates using creative activities such as cake decorating, a scavenger hunt, a relay race, or whatever else you can think up. The stronger your customer service team is, the more satisfied your customers will be with your brand.

September 18, 2015

7 Office Appropriate Halloween Costume Themes

Filed under: Office Fun — Tags: , , — PDWriter @ 8:24 am

When it comes to Halloween, everyone loves to dress up and snack on bite-size candy bars. This year, make your office festive by celebrating with a costume party, complete with desk-to-desk treat-or-treating! Not sure what Halloween costume themes are hot this season and appropriate for the workplace? We’ve got you covered!

Dress Like a Nerd Costumes

Geeks

Finally, it’s cool to mismatch your outfit and forget to brush your hair for work. Ask your staff to dress like “nerds,” complete with taped glasses and pocket protectors. Don’t forget to have a contest to honor the dorkiest nerd of the bunch. Reward the winner with office supplies, like a calculator!

Way Cool 80s Pop Star Costumes

I Love the 80s

Cut loose and slip into some MC Hammer pants and break out the oversize Cyndi Lauper hair bows. It’s time to transform into your favorite musician who rocked the 1980s. This costume party requires massive amounts of hairspray, rolled jeans, and colorful bangle bracelets. To really amplify the celebration, create a Pandora station filled with 80s tunes to play during the party.

Dress as an Animal

Seal

Does everyone at work have photos of their pets on their desks? Let them become their favorite animal for a day. From cats and dogs, to birds and lizards, you never know who will come slithering or scampering into the office on Halloween. Don’t forget to slip on pet collars complete with bells and name tags!

Celebrate Your Work Niche

Halloween for Digital Marketers

Challenge your staff to create costumes that celebrate your workplace focus. For example, if you’re a social media marketing company, someone could dress as a giant hashtag. Another person could wear a shirt labeled “Keywords” and handwrite several synonyms on the fabric. Just don’t argue over who gets to be the Facebook thumbs up symbol!

Favorite Food Costumes

Monkey Banana

If there’s ever been a more appropriate place to wear a giant banana costume, it’s at work. Ask everyone to dress as a favorite food, and don’t forget to take a group photo of your goofy employee buffet! (You can only hope someone will cover himself in large purple balloons to become a bunch of grapes.)

Channel Your Inner Child

Princess Castle

Everyone loves movies, so why not choose a children’s movie character theme? Who can resist a boardroom full of minions or a secretary dressed as Elsa from Frozen? If you have a small staff, consider picking one movie and having each person sign up to be a specific character.

Come Back to Life

Zombies

Celebrate the popular The Walking Dead TV show by having a zombie party! Despite walking with slow limps and dangling appendages, your staff can still get a day’s work done dressed as the living dead. Why not pair the costume day with a catered lunch? Spaghetti and meatballs makes for some great photo opps and a filling meal.

Are you ready to get the word out about your party? Print some cool posters to hang in the break room and bathrooms. Paper Direct has festive Halloween bordered paper to get you started! Shop online today!

September 10, 2015

8 Free Halloween Fonts Perfect for Invitations & Flyers

Filed under: Designing Your Invitation — Tags: , — PDWriter @ 8:23 am

Halloween fonts come in all shapes and sizes, and while most have one thing in common: spooky style, not all have another really important thing: readability.

There’s nothing worse than designing a flyer, invitation, or banner to find out that your recipients can barely read it. That’s why we’ve browsed and selected a few fonts that pass the Halloween test. Below are some of our favorites!

Free Halloween Fonts

Halloween Fonts

Here’s a showcase of each font and the downloaded .zip file that goes along with it. Simply open your .zip file find the text file and press “install.” It will be automatically added to Microsoft Word.

Ghoulish Fright Font

ghoulish-fright-font

Download

Green Fuz Font

Green fuz Font

Download

Kishore Sharp Font

Kishore Font

Download

NightMare Font

Nightmare font

Download 

October Crew Font

October Crew Font

Download 

Scary Monsters

Scary monsters Font

Download

Scream Again

Scream again font

Download

Words Are but Wind

Words are but wind font

Download

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays since you can take your creativity to a new level. Download these fonts, play with your invitation wording, then shop around for Halloween invitations or border paper. Your spooky party awaits!

All fonts courtesy of Dafont.com 

September 8, 2015

13 Ways to Promote your Halloween Store This Year

Filed under: Marketing & Sales Promotion Techniques — PDWriter @ 8:22 am

October 31st is Halloween, and in the weeks leading up to this date, stores dedicated to this ghoulish celebration have the opportunity to generate quite a bit of income. However, retailers specializing in Halloween have a small window of time to turn a profit. Using creative promotions, entertaining events, and unique marketing assets, these 13 ways to promote your Halloween store will make it a banner year for your business.

Social Media

Social media promotion is an excellent method for sharing all kinds of information your audience will find interesting, helpful, and useful. Post about sales and discounts your Halloween store is offering, and invite customers to in-store events. You can reach an even wider audience using paid social media promotion. To get some ideas, visit our Facebook page!

Direct Mail Flyers

Halloween Flyers

Reengage last year’s customers and reach new shoppers with direct mail flyers. Include sales, promotions, and in-store events on these materials to entice people to shop your Halloween store.

Banners 

Halloween Banner

Since your store probably doesn’t operate year round, you need to get customer’s attention as they drive by. There is no better way to do this then to hang multiple banners outside your store. We recommend at least one, massive sign on your storefront and another closer to the road. 

Discounts and Sales

Reduced prices are a surefire way to attract business. Schedule a variety of sales and promotions throughout the Halloween season. Also, consider printing coupons or developing a special landing page with printable coupons on your store’s website for shoppers to collect before visiting your Halloween store.

Costume Contests

People take a lot of pride in the costumes they construct for Halloween. Let them show off their work with costume contests. Include categories for different age groups and themes, such as Scariest Costume, Best Laugh Out Loud Ensemble, or Kookiest Kid Under 10 Years Old.

Pumpkin-Themed Events

How to Promote your Halloween Store

From jack-o-lantern carving to pie baking to throwing, there’s tons of fun events your store can host that use pumpkins. Your store could host a pumpkin carving class. Or one evening invite people to a pumpkin potluck where everyone brings a pumpkin dish they’ve made.

Indoor Trick or Treating

Get kids even more excited about Halloween than they already are with an early trick or treating even hosted in your store. They’ll be plenty of houses to visit on the night of October 31st, so in the days prior to Halloween, have a special indoor trick or treating evening for kids.

Haunted House

Haunted House

Transform your Halloween store into a haunted house for a few days. This is a great way to display some of your available merchandise while also engaging the community.

Giveaways

Add more value to your customers’ purchases by handing out raffle tickets and giving away prizes. For instance, for every $50 a customer spends in your store earns them a raffle ticket for a drawing to win one adult costume and one child costume. Or for every purchase over $13, customers are entered into a giveaway for a gift certificate to a local candy store.

Charity Efforts

Help the local community by partnering with a non profit. Your store can be a drop-off site for donated goods such as food, clothing, toys, or other items. Also, your Halloween store can host a special event for the charity of your choosing to help fundraise. Offer staff members and volunteers of the nonprofit organization exclusive discounts on merchandise.

Cute Halloween Invitations Opening Day

Celebrate your opening day with early bird specials and free pumpkins to orders over $50. How to get people to this event? A strong combination of social media, email blasting, and crafted invitations is the perfect strategy.

DIY Days

Halloween is the perfect time of year to get crafty. Schedule some crafting classes to take place in your store. Attendees can make their own masks or Halloween candy. Maybe you could teach a class about creating outdoor Halloween decorations for people’s homes. Tie the class projects into products available in your store.

Special Appearances

Local musicians, actors, and live performance artists can really increase the Halloween spirit in your store with exclusive in-store appearances. Not only will your store promote these events, but so will the performers, which means engaging people outside of your regular audience. You never know how many people will come through the door to watch the show and leave after buying a few Halloween treats.

September 1, 2015

Business Card Checklist: What to Include

Filed under: Designing Your Business Communication — PDWriter @ 10:34 am

“Many people overlook the value of having a professional business card that accurately reflects your brand image, yet this small piece of paper can be an important part of your collateral package,” writes Entrepreneur contributor John Williams. “It’s often the first item prospects receive from you, so it’s your first opportunity to make a strong, positive impression on them.”

business cards

Whether you’re a small business owner, the CEO of a national corporation, or a dedicated employee of a company, business cards are an essential piece of marketing collateral. In a digital age, you might wonder if paper business cards are worth the investment, and in fact, they are, as business cards help potential leads, clients, and employees develop a personal connection with a person at your organization. Use the following business card checklist to design effective on-the-go promotional material.

Business Name and Logo

A business card helps spread the word about business. Be sure to include your company’s name and its logo on your business cards. This helps to forge a connection between your business and the people you give your cards.

Individual Name

Business cards should be printed for everyone in your business. That means creating cards that are personalized for every employee. You never know when a lower-level worker might meet someone who can bring new revenue streams to your business.

Job Title

Each employee’s job title should be included on their business cards. While you don’t want your business card completely covered in information, including a person’s role on their customized cards provides a level of detail that others consider relevant and important. Ultimately, including a job title establishes credibility while giving people outside of your company a small glimpse into its inner workings.

Social Media

Highlight the social media channel your company uses to tell its story, whether it’s Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, or Twitter. People are more likely to engage with your brand on a social media network to learn more about how your business can serve them.

checklist

Pertinent Contact Information

For many companies, their brick-and-mortar address isn’t as important as their website address. Shrewdly consider the contact information you’ve considered printing on your business cards. In most cases, a phone number, web address, email address are enough.

High Quality Design and Print

Business cards is not an area to cut corners. Cheap paper, generic clip art, and bargain bin printing will set your business cards apart from the pack in a very bad way. You’ll immediately see the value of high quality business cards when you hand one to a potential client and they are visibly impressed. Investing in high quality business cards is an investment in marketing your company.

Powered by WordPress