D Media is a member of the Advertising Specialty Institute and an authorized promotional products distributor, with access to thousands of promotional products manufacturers nationwide. As such, this week Wednesday through Friday, I will collect ideas and insight into the latest, most unique, cost-effective and industry-relevant specialty advertising products to help your business, your marketing, your event, your cause.

What’s hot for 2013? After this show, I will be in the know!

Products may include:

• giveaways for an upcoming event
• something to help the response rate of your next mailing
• unique products for your next tradeshow
• ways to say “thank you” to clients/referral sources
• a great idea to keep your name/product/company in front of your clients/prospects
• Or if you are in a certain industry . . . . healthcare, education, nonprofit, recycling, business-to-business, veterinary, etc. . . . and want me to look for industry-related ideas, I can do that too.

If you want something specific, please let me know! I will look for promotions that will help YOU. Tweet me, message me, email, fax, or call:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/DMediaWeb
Google+: plus.google.com/s/DMediaWeb
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/SuziBerman
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/DMediaWeb
Twitter: www.twitter.com/DMediaWeb

Feel free to view our promotional products site: http://DMediaWeb.logomall.com

—Suzi Berman, Creative Director

The price for First-Class Mail single-piece letters will increase by a penny when the United States Postal Service (U.S.P.S.) prices change January 27, 2013. The new 46 cent Forever stamps will allow you to mail letters to any location in the United States. Forever stamps are good for mailing a one-ounce letter in the future regardless of price changes.

Highlights of the new single-piece First-Class Mail pricing include:

• Letters (1 oz.) — 1-cent increase to 46 cents
• Letters additional ounces — unchanged at 20 cents
• Letters to all international destinations (1 oz.) — $1.10
• Postcards — 1-cent increase to 33 cents

Prices for most Standard Mail letters and flats, including Nonprofit, will increase by 2.6%.

U.S.P.S. will introduce a First-Class Mail Global Forever Stamp, allowing you to mail letters anywhere in the world for a set price of $1.10.

New Shipping Services
U.S.P.S. will offer free tracking to all competitive packages, including retail Priority Mail and Parcel Post (recently renamed Standard Post).

U.S.P.S. will continue to offer a variety of flat-rate boxes and envelopes for Express Mail and Priority Mail, including the padded and legal-sized flat rate envelopes.

For further details, visit at http://pe.usps.com.

D Media is happy to serve as the preferred print and direct mail vendor for many North Texas clients. You can count on us to stay on top of the latest postal regulations and requirements.

One of the joys of the holiday season is to wish all our client, supplier and vendor friends a healthy, happy, and creative New Year. We hope the very best for you in 2013!

- Helen Keller

Improving SEO is a key to increasing the online visibility of your business. When potential customers search for your product or service, you want your company’s website to rank high in Google’s results. According to Google, approximately 20% of searches are related to location. Based on current usage, that equates to 2.3 billion local searches monthly. Therefore, one of the many SEO activities we do is to create or improve your Google Places listing.

Google Places allows businesses to gain greater recognition through their physical location. To list your company in Google Places, which then links to Google Maps, we create or use a Gmail account and a primary phone number. After verifying your listing with Google either by phone, postcard, or SMS text, we personalize it by adding your company’s physical address, e-mail and website. To enhance the listing further we can also add photos, improve your company’s description and respond to reviews if needed.

Want to read more about Google Places? Visit http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness

While working with All American Recycling, we were quite impressed by their operation. They strive to maintain the most up-to-date equipment for unloading recyclables at their facility. They also take extra steps to get customers the highest profit and best pricing by:

• Taking the time to separate customer materials into very specific sub-categories
• Using a program specifically designed for the recycling business which helps eliminate human calculating errors
• Dealing directly with metal mills which eliminates the middle man

If you’re looking for metal and scrap recycling solutions in Austin, Texas and surrounding cities, contact the Borders brothers, Ryan and Austin, for top-notch, dependable and friendly service. They buy and sell ferrous and non-ferrous metals, auto parts, computer parts, catalytic converters and more.

In addition, having another set of eyes review your art (including spelling, fonts, colors, and graphics) prior to placing a print order and during subsequent proofing stages will avoid last minute changes during the prepress phase and even on press. The most common errors are numbers transposed in a date, phone number, or address.

Remember: It is not a commercial printer’s responsibility to check your copy for spelling and grammatical errors. The printer’s job is to print your art, as close to how it is supplied, as possible.

Insist on a high-resolution prepress proof—in color if your print order is not black ink—after you submit your art but before your order is scheduled for press. If you miss an error during the prepress phase, and instead find it while the piece is already on press, most commercial printers will charge plate change fees and press check rates upwards from $300 per hour to hold the press while errors are corrected.

Do yourself a favor by reviewing the prepress proof carefully to avoid that hassle, or the cost of having to reprint your order, because of errors that went unnoticed.

At D Media, when you hire us to manage your printing we thoroughly review all prepress proofs before moving on to the press schedule, so you don’t have to worry about this process. We alert you to any potential print problems that may arise, to troubleshoot and prevent issues up front as much as possible.

Thanking customers for their business over the phone, in person, by mail or by e-mail helps strengthen relationships.

Want to make a bigger impact? Express your appreciation by periodically sending out a promotional product, such as an imprinted basket of goodies or a beautiful logoed pen with the message, “It’s a pleasure working with you.”

For example, here’s a branded lip balm our client Veterinary Referral Center of East Dallas uses in their annual thank you baskets.

Check out D Media’s promotional product site here for more client appreciation ideas!

The goal is a seamless transfer of files from you to your printing service. File correction adds time and costs to your print job.

At D Media, we create your art files properly upfront, ensuring that they are clean, ready, and set up correctly for print before submitting to prepress.

If you’re interested in professional photos of your pet, check out her booth at the Dallas Holiday Pet Expo. She and her team will be taking pictures of Santa and peoples’ pets there too.

Veterinarian friends: If you would like any of her pet portraits on your walls, Judy would be glad to oblige for our veterinary clients. Just tell her D Media sent you.