MU, OU Share Promotional Excellence Award

Promoting your services is one of the keys to any in-plant’s success. Recently two in-plants were honored for their self-promotion efforts.

During the IPMA conference in June, University of Missouri-Columbia Printing Services and University of Oklahoma Printing Services shared the stage to receive the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association’s Promotional Excellence award.

The University of Missouri used its invitation to participate in a procurement department vendor fair as a way to draw attention to its many services, from wide-format printing and mounting to variable data printing on its Xerox iGen3. Attendees were given brochures, magnets, pads, pens and other promotional items, and encouraged to visit the Web site for a free gift. Names were collected for a raffle and the contact information was used to produce personalized postcards and URLs.

The University of Oklahoma—which also won IPMA’s Mail Center of the Year award—not only distributed note pads, cards, pens, stickers and other promotional materials, the shop had duplicate plaques made of its In-Print awards and presented them to the customers that ordered the winning jobs. The in-plant runs a class called Printing 101 to give customers pointers on file design, print scheduling, binding methods and more. Printing Services also ran a “holiday campaign” that included a Thanksgiving card for customers, a calendar with the in-plant’s contact information and a delivery of cookie baskets to high-volume customers.