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February 22, 2019

5 Unique Ways To Recognize Students & Staff

Filed under: Business Marketing Ideas,Employee Recognition Ideas,Event Planning Tips,Helpful Resources,Office Fun,Online Marketing Ideas,Recognition & Motivation Ideas,Seasonal & Special Events Ideas,Student Recognition Ideas — Tags: , , , , , , — Toledo Jhoanny @ 10:14 am

Recognizing students and staff is crucial in building a productive school environment. Create special recognitions at your school that will turn into traditions that your staff and students will love by congratulating them with a variety of tangible awards.

Student of the Month Awards

Creating a ceremony where students, parents, and teachers can come together to celebrate a student’s achievements is wonderful for recognizing students. When you recognize students for their exemplary academics and character, you set the right tone for how you want your students to act. Reward them with customizable certificates that they can display in their room and show off to their friends.

student of the month certificate

Teacher of the Month Awards

Recognizing teachers for their hard work really pays off. Have students vote for their favorite teachers, and recognize those teachers with breakfast and a ceremony. Award each teacher with a trophy they can display proudly on their desk or a plaque they can hang up on the wall. This recognition is great for celebrating a teacher’s hard work and dedication to their students.

Celebrate Staff Birthdays

Birthdays should be celebrated! Celebrate a staff member’s birthday by decorating their workspace with a customized banner. When they walk in and find their workspace decorated, they’ll be proud to work at a school that notices the details. If a staff member doesn’t like their birthday to be a big deal, create a custom message using a stylish border paper to recognize them in a smaller way.

chalkboard banner for schools

Student Attendance Recognition

Not missing a day of school can be tricky for many students. This may be an achievement that goes unnoticed in some schools, but handing a student a certificate that acknowledges their dedication to their academics goes a long way. Complement their attendance certificate with a coordinating certificate jacket that’ll display their award beautifully. 

Recognition Awards with Swag

Everyone loves some swag! Your staff will appreciate all the different ways they’ll be able to show their school pride: apparel, tumblers, and more! Show your appreciation by including some of these items in a gift basket or as a surprise gift in their mailbox.  Your staff will be proud of their school as they walk through the halls with their cool items.

These award and recognitions ideas are great for building a happy school environment. Your students and staff will desire these recognitions and work hard for them. Recognize with style and use PaperDirect for all your recognition needs.

February 21, 2014

5 Useful Google Apps for Small Businesses

Filed under: Online Marketing Ideas — Tags: — PDWriter @ 11:22 am

Create invoices, letterheads, logos, as well as track and categorize your data. These are just a few of the tasks that you can complete with apps from Google. Here are five of the top rated Google Apps for Small Businesses.

capsule google app1. Capsule CRM

By Zestia

First 30 Days free then $12 a month per user

Capsule CRM offers you simple, flexible CRM for your small business. You can easily keep track of all your contacts. This app works with Google Apps and does not require a separate login. You can also keep track of sales and activities.

Capsule works with Google Apps to:

  • Manages your business contacts allowing you to share them with other uses on your Google Apps account
  • You can create custom fields to track, categorize and list your business data
  • Easily access Capsule from Google’s universal navigation with no separate username or password
  • View contact details inside your Gmail when you receive emails

gofiledrop google app2. GoFileDrop

By Slrsoft

Free

Pro version available for purchase in the app

GoFileDrop lets you receive files from users in your Google Docs account. This entire Application is web-based.

GoFileDrop allows you to:

  • Upload files to a specific folder for automated sharing
  • Securely receive files to Google Drive
  • Handle large file transfers
  • Automatically upload files to a specific folder
  • Brand your application with your Company Logo
  • Upload files to share with groups and users automatically
  • Have your employees securely drop files into your Google Docs account

GoFileDrop is essentially a mailbox for your Google Docs account. You can open your dropped files directly from your notification email in your Google Docs account.

eslip google app3. eSlip

By eSlip

Free for up to 3 users and 5 clients

Learn more at http://www.eslip.com

This online invoicing application is perfect for professional service firms or small businesses. You can create and then manage your invoices, timesheets, expenses and estimates with eSlip.

  • Window-based interface (AJAX)
  • Multiple languages, taxes and currencies
  • You can send invoices by fax, post or email with just one click

cloudlock google app4. CloudLock DLP

By CloudLock, Inc.

Enterprise-Class Google App Security

7-day free trial

$7 a year per user

CloudLock is the perfect app to protect your sensitive data. Data like the PCI and PII stored in Sites, Google Docs, Google Drive and Google+.

CloudLock’s Policy Engine is designed to automatically detect, alert and remedy sensitive data exposure with context and content-aware security policies.

Auditing and Compliance

You can meet the data privacy regulations if you enforce acceptable use policies. Get bidirectional visibility and generate audit reports for both internal and external users.

Secure PII/PCI in Google Drive Docs

The Compliance Scan that CloudLock offers has the ability to identify, classify and secure sensitive information such as social security numbers and credit card account numbers.

Data Management

You can see and control all the data in the domain. Use keywords to find sensitive content, transfer ownership, inspect a document’s contents, change permissions by applying bulk operations and copy documents.

aviary design suite google app5. Aviary Design Suite

By Aviary

Free

Aviary Design Suite offers you free templates and design tools so you can create, share and modify presentations, logos, images, podcasts, audio tracks and more. Employees can collaborate on multimedia projects within Google Docs.

Use Aviary Design Suite to:

  • Retouch Photos
  • Make Web Templates and Banner Ads
  • Remix Audio
  • Develop Podcasts

Create:

  • Logos
  • Business Cards
  • PowerPoint Slides
  • Letterheads
  • Labels

With Aviary Design Suite, you have all the important features used by desktop editors. This app is simple to use and accessible with a web-based application. Simply create your business cards, letterheads and logos using the design tools. Then upload them to an online print company like Paper Direct. This type of online printing company prints your customized products and mails them to your home or business.

November 29, 2013

5 Business Email Holiday Etiquette Rules

Filed under: Online Marketing Ideas — Tags: , — PDWriter @ 2:12 pm

The holidays are almost upon us. To maintain your professional polish and keep inbox stress to a minimum, remember these rules of business email etiquette over the holidays:

One: Reply Promptly and Helpfully

Rules for Business Email Etiquette Over the Holidays

Everyone gets a little harried during the holiday season. But, if input from you holds up important projects, you are slowing colleagues down at this hectic time. Try to set aside a chunk of time every morning to respond to emails and take care of the ones in your box every day. Create special alerts that will notify you of emails from those who need to hear back sooner.

Two: But, Be Patient with Those Who Don’t

Compassion for those who are dealing with holiday strain goes a long way toward building goodwill in the workplace. Send gentle reminders if you need to hear back soon. But, try to keep calm when dealing with delays, as they are often unavoidable this time of year.

Three: Set a Vacation Responder

Are you going to be out of the office? Set up an auto-responder to keep colleagues informed. Keep it professional (no bragging about daiquiris on beaches!) and make sure that you include contact information for the person who will fill in for you or a number where you can be reached in emergencies.

Four: Keep Your Correspondence Professional

Some people are tempted to add colorful holiday graphics to their email signatures during the holidays. Don’t give in. These graphics increase the file size of messages and can be a distracting eyesore on professional messages.

Five: There Are Times When Nothing Replaces Pen and Paper

An e-card just doesn’t convey the appreciation you feel for the people you work with the way that a few well-chosen lines on a charming greeting card do. Give cards to your coworkers to let them know how valuable they are to you. Important vendors will be touched when you express their importance to your firm with a holiday card.

happy holiday poinsettia greeting card

Looking for the perfect holiday card to express your appreciation to the people who make your life easier all year long? Browse our wide selection of holiday cards here at Paper Direct.

August 6, 2012

Improve Your Open Rate for Emails with These Tips

Filed under: Online Marketing Ideas — Tags: — PDWriter @ 8:00 am

If you’re sending emails as part of a marketing strategy, do you know what your open rate is? If not, and if you have never even heard of “open rate” for emails, let’s take a look at what open rate is and how you can improve your open rate to boost business. Open rate for emails indicates the percentage of delivered emails that are opened by recipients. You get credit for an “open” email when images are enabled or a link in the email is clicked.  A small one pixel by one pixel graphic is inserted into the email that you send. Then, each time the pixel is loaded, the email registers as having been opened.

Since recipients may open the email but not enable images or click on a link, this measurement can be inaccurate; however, for the most part, open rate for emails does give a business owner a fairly good picture of an email campaign’s performance.  The open rate is calculated by dividing the number of emails opened by the total number of emails delivered and is expressed as a percentage.

Open Rate Facts and Figures

Generally speaking, open rates for small email lists do better than larger lists. According to MailerMailer’s “Email Marketing Metrics Report,” the average open rate for the past nine halves for 25-499 members was 28%; 500-999 members was 22.3%; and for 1000+ members was 12.2%. Which industries did the best regarding open rate? In the lists with 25-499 members, Transportation 51.6%, Religious 37.3%, and Retail 33.3% had the highest email open rates.

In the email lists going to 500-999 members, Retail did the best at 36.2%, Religious was at 31.2% and Real Estate was at 30.7%. For the largest email lists of a thousand or more recipients, Banking fared best with 16.4%, Transportation close second with 16%, Non-Profit coming in at 15.8% and Small Business tying third with 15.8% open rates.

Open rates for email will typically peak the first hour after delivery. The peak is followed by a decline over the next 47 hours, and open rates fall to zero. An email marketer can expect about half of their opens to happen in the first six hours and 77% within the first 24 hours.

We mentioned above that the open rate metric can be inaccurate. One contributing factor is the use of smart phones (and other devices) to open emails. Users who open emails on their phone will only see the text version of your email, so with no images being loaded, it appears as though the email is unread, which is not correct. At the current time, an email open rate can be off from 11-35%, so careful! Even though it can be inaccurate, the email open rate percentage is a good tool to use to gauge whether or not your email campaign is working. Most small business owners are looking for an email open rate of 20% or higher.

Questions? Read some PaperDirect blogs about email marketing and learn more!

Would you like to try a free email marketing campaign? Partners PaperDirect and ConstantContact can get you started with a free email marketing campaign and coach today if you like.

September 27, 2011

How to Market a Home-based Business

Filed under: Marketing & Sales Promotion Techniques,Online Marketing Ideas — Tags: , — PDWriter @ 8:00 am

Tools Business CardsWorking from home means marketing is the most important aspect of getting your company up and running. Since location may not play a role in marketing your home-based business, you must create amazing marketing campaigns to increase your customer base. Reaching prospective customers only in your immediate area will not do much to help your business succeed. Online, home-based businesses must reach prospective customers from all over the country not just your local market.

Home-based business marketing may be challenging, but it’s not impossible by any means. Here are some suggestions that will help you market your home-based business to help ensure success.Music Staff Notes Business Cards

Print business cards and keep them with you at all times. Make sure they are the standard size professional business card so they fit into all business card holders that people carry in their wallets. Make the business card appealing and easy to read. Do not include too little or too much information. Also make sure your contact information is easy to find and easy to read. Avoid difficult-to-read fonts and anything else that might turn off the recipient of your business card.

Network by word of mouth, social media, and attending small business meetings. The more people who know about your home-based business, the more money your company will take in.Signature Golf 3 Panel Brochures

Even small home-based businesses should have a website. Fancy websites do not impress prospective customers. Make sure your website is simple but gives all the necessary information about your home-based business. Again, including your contact information is absolutely imperative; make sure it’s easy to find and error free.

Create brochures and hand them out everywhere you go. Brochures are inexpensive to make and can reach a large number of people in a short amount of time. Professionally printed brochures should include some information about your company, graphics that show products you offer and, as always, your contact information.

PaperDirect has a full line of business products that will help you set up your home-based business. Please visit our online source for all your business needs today.

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