With all the news about how the print industry is languishing due to renewed interest in email marketing and other, newer online marketing channels, I decided to take a quick peek at projected print volume.

Readily available research (H-P) tells us that there will be some 53 trillion pages printed in 2010. This is hardly an insignificant number. What’s more, an estimated 90% of these 53 trillion pages come from graphic arts environments, which includes transpromo documents. Newsprint, of which we’ve heard so much of late, is the only sector of paper meant for the purpose of printing that is expected to decrease as more people read their daily newspapers online. The overall health of the industry appears to be in less jeopardy than one might think.

This leads to an inescapable question when one thinks about all that print: isn’t this bad for the environment? At a time when so many organizations are branding themselves “green” aren’t paper products the very antithesis of all that we should stand for? Are we green enough and what else can we do–as individuals, as a company, and as an industry–to  help sustain the environment, especially in areas relating to reducing paper waste? Read on

Albert Einstein conceptualized Unified Field Theory in an effort to rationalize his General Theory of Relativity with electromagnetics (and, later, gravity) and spent the last twenty years of his life trying to explain how “everything” works together.

That should be somewhat familiar to those in the customer communications field.

A Unified Communication Platform would have to encompass all communication from a particular source, i.e., a corporation which would include phone conversations and idle chatter along with sanctioned communications such as billing statements, press releases, blogs, annual reports and advertisements/marketing collateral. It’s more complicated now than it was a few years ago because of social networking and word of mouth. Twittering away the day is fairly commonplace; Big Brother can’t possibly keep up with the myriad of channels or the voices using them. Read on

What kind of relationship do you want with your customers? The nurturing kind.

Think of customers like your children. Give them all the nutrition they need, all the love they crave, all the attention they want and all the happiness in the world. And you will have happy customers. Happy, well-adjusted customers.

When times are tough you are a reassuring hand on their shoulder. When times are really tough, give ‘em a hug.

How do you do this? How do you become the nurturing kind?

When you send out a monthly newsletter, you are nurturing your customers. When you send them an email with information that may be of interest, you are nurturing.

You are nurturing the relationship. You are giving your customers love.

If you can convince them to opt in, you can put them on your email distribution list for press releases and other announcements. They will feel like part of the family. Read on