Direct mail advertising is the process of sending offers or promotions by mail to current or potential customers. There are many benefits of mailing for both small and large businesses. Successful businesses recognise the benefits of integrating mail print products with their website, email marketing and social media platforms to deliver a complete brand experience. These days mailing is used to direct customers to your website and social platforms giving you the change to boost sales both in-store and online.

Mailing is a step above email. Email’s are often lost in customers overflowing in-boxes, commonly full of junk mail. A direct mail campaign is more personal and gives your company a competitive advantage. A direct mail piece also has the opportunity to be much more impressive than a simple bland email. The digital world is a cluttered world so an unaddressed mail campaign can help you cut through this to reach your potential customers. There is an increased amount of electronic direct marketing being caught up as spam due to the increasingly stricter spam controls and corporate limitations.

The first step in mailing is to have a data base which includes your current customers and potential locally targeted customers. A data base gives business owners a direct connection with customers who want to receive information about the businesses products and services. By continuously communicating through a mailing list, your business is able to establish new relationships with customers, and can strengthen those relationships over time. Maintaining regular mailings to your customers and prospects can also enhance you or your company’s image and allow customers to recognise your brand. The level of sophistication in your communication is only limited by the value of your database. A database can vary from simply a name and address to a highly detailed customer data base segmented via various aspects such as purchases and geography.

Mailing is highly measurable. A small company can easily measure the results of one or multiple direct mail campaigns. The owner can also keep track of responses to each mailing. Research from overseas shows there is a movement back to physical direct marketings.

Direct marketing via mail can be highly individualized as it allows companies to address customers by name in direct mail campaigns. Therefore, the message delivered is personalised and directed at a particular person as if the owner is speaking to them.

Contact the team at Northern Beaches Printing on 8076 4567 if you wish to discuss the benefits of mailing further. We specialise in a wide range of addressed and unaddressed mail marketing collateral including quality brochures, catalogues, flyers and postcards. For a campaign that suits your needs and reaches the right customers at the right time in the right place speak to the experts at NBP today on 8076 4567.

Consultation

Firstly, you could have a consultation with us; we will discuss the specifications of what you’re after. What size it is, where it’s being installed, what sort of signage you will need and how soon you want it.

Design

If you have a design ready then we will sort out the specifications and we can move on to the production phase. If not, no worries our amazing graphic designer Sylvie is ready to help make your brand ideas come to life. Northern Beaches Printing will work closely with you to make sure you’re 100% satisfied with your design. If you have an existing logo, we will happily work with you to find a design that suits your branding.

Production

Once you’re happy with the design, this is when the magic happens. The Northern Beaches Printing team gets right to business in producing your sign.

Instillation

When the Northern Beaches Printing Team has made your sign, either you can choose to install the signage yourself or we will happily install it for you.

Recently we did some window display signage for Nectar Mortgages, they brought in their corporate design and we sorted the rest out for them. Check it out!

We also did branding for new business Kimmy G’s pie store. We used the new branding to make some business cards, a logo and some signage. Take a look at some of the work we did for Kimmy G’s!

Northern Beaches Printing can also help your businesses with branding, marketing and design. Whether you’re re-branding or just a new business starting out, we can help with all your business needs. Northern Beaches Printing can help your business with design, branding, marketing and print. The team print almost anything your business could want such as; books, flyers, brochures, menus, business cards and more. We also have experienced staff who can help your business get off to the right start with design, branding and marketing.

So if you have been thinking about getting some printing or branding done give us a call! Northern Beaches Printing have your printing and branding  needs covered from consultation to completion!

So call us today on 02 8076 4567 or email us at sales@northernbeachesprinting.com.au!!!

We’ve got some simple steps for you to follow when setting up and saving your file for printing. These handy tips will help you get that quality print job you’ve been dreaming of.

We have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Renata Malinauskas, personal trainer and nutritionist from Holistic Movement. Renata is extremely passionate about health and decided to create a place in which people can devote their time and energy to looking after their body and mind and feel at home with themselves and others. Renata has been in the fitness and nutrition industry for over ten years and has a passion for integrating all aspects that she believes are groundwork for happiness – fitness, nutrition, yoga and mindfulness.

She has created a safe, spacious and equipped gym space in Collaroy where we have been training. Northern Beaches Printing organises a corporate weekly gym session at Holistic movement. Here we participate in circuit training catering for all fitness levels. Our sessions include whole body circuits, cardio, strength and resistance.  No session is ever the same as Renata mixes up the exercises every week.

We have benefited from working with Renata, and as colleagues it has not only improved our personal fitness levels but also communication and co-operation skills as exercise is a great way to encourage team work. Our staff have noticed a major difference in their fitness and energy levels, one member losing weight and feeling toned.

Renata has also gained from working with us. She said, “It’s been an amazing experience to be a part of the team as a fitness instructor. Being able to teach and grow together as a team is really rewarding.”

Be sure to check Holistic movement’s website and Renata’s fitness studio in Collaroy on Pittwater Road where you will see a number of corflute signs we designed and printed.

The council election is nearly upon us. The NSW Local Council Elections are on Saturday the 9^th of September, head down to your local polling booth from 8am to 6pm. Voting is compulsory in all areas where elections are being held so check to see if you need to vote.

The Australian Electoral commission’s website has all the information you need to prepare yourself for Election Day including how to vote, where to pre-poll vote, is your council having an election, who are your local candidates and applying for a postal vote.

Gordon Lang and his team at Northern Beaches Printing have been working hard over the past few months on various electoral material for candidates.

Three councillors will be elected for each of the following Northern Beaches wards:

• Curl Curl Ward
• Frenchs Forest Ward
• Manly Ward
• Narrabeen Ward
• Pittwater Ward

Fines apply for not voting. There is no absent voting at this election so you must vote at a polling place in your council area or pre-poll in Manly, Brookvale or Mona Vale closing Friday the 8th of September. There are over 55 polling locations across the Northern Beaches.

Even if you’re not participating in the Northern Beaches Council Election the same rules apply for other areas and all information is on the AEC website.

Make sure you don’t forget to vote and good luck to all candidates.

In the eighties there was the ZX81. This came with a whopping 1kb of memory!

In the early nineties it took a speedy one minute to transfer files of about 1 mb via ISDN.

In the noughties hard drives had hundreds of megabytes of space with the gigabyte hard drive arriving soon after.

Now we think nothing of backing up to a terabyte hard drive and internet speeds are getting faster every day…

…unless you live in Australia and are awaiting the NBN roll out in your area sometime in the next decade.

File size can mean a number of things in print.

1. If you have prepared a file to print and the file size is small then it may mean the resolution is too low.
   Downloading an image from the internet to use in print is often fraught with danger.
2. If the size is huge and you are printing on an A4 sheet then images used may have big physical sizes and could be reduced before designing a page in Photoshop.
3. A large file size may mean you cannot email it as emails have limits to file size that can be attached.
   However you can use a program like Drop Box or WeTransfer to send file sizes of almost unlimited size.
   We will discuss this further in a later blog.

In general file size is not as much an issue as it used to be as technology advances.

However if you are unsure give us a call to discuss your best options. We are more than happy to help.

Contact us at Northern Beaches Printing on 8076 4576

By now you should have your team/ticket selected and you need to promote yourselves.

Have you developed your exposure plan?

Have you prepared your budget?

Have you designed your logo?

Have you developed a consistent look for your exposure avenues?

Have you started designing your items?

• Printed items
• Social media
• Website
• Clothing

Have you booked the production of your items?

• Flyers
• Posters
• Signs
• How to vote flyers
• T-shirts

Have you booked your addressed or unaddressed mailings?

Remember, to maximise impact, all promotional pieces must be:

• Consistent
• Clean
• Simple
• Informative
• Well-planned

It is recommended that all your promotional items include your team’s /ticket’s name, photos of the team and contact details. You may need to include an authorisation and the printers name.

Remember, there will be a lot of “noise” about the election and you will need to stand out to get your message around. Ensure that you get maximum return for your investment – you do not need to spend the most, you just need to work your funds the hardest.

Gordon Lang and his team at Northern Beaches Printing have worked on campaigns at all levels of government elections. We are happy to discuss your plans and assist with your promotional needs.

1. Brand recognition – your brand needs to start with a great logo and carry on into all elements of your business. It needs to reflect the outstanding service that you offer, targeting your audience through its professionalism, attractiveness and functionality. Your brand should become instantly recognisable in its consistency as you build your business.

2. Professionalism – We all know first impressions matter. A cheap, poorly designed logo is not going to promote confidence in your ability to provide quality service to your clients. They will assume the quality of your service matches the quality of your brand.

3. Cost Effectiveness – Poorly designed graphics can cost your business a lot of money. Forking out for excellent design in the initial phases of setting up your business will save you the pain of having to try and fix up and re-brand as your business builds its client base. Poorly designed promotional materials may also mean losing out on clients who are put off by their first impressions. In other instances, a poor design, means having to spend more money when you discover that your design was not properly executed for print.

4. Productivity – Poorly designed graphics can slow down the workforce or impede your clients. For example, a website that is difficult to navigate, with garish colours and confusing fonts, will be a nightmare for both employees and clients. Efficiency is essential to running a successful business.

5. Communication – Graphic design also acts as an important visual aid to help you communicate your ideas to your employees and your clients. Infographics, posters and flyers can help with communication through engaging text and images. Design is a way of conveying your information in ways that are interesting and easy to understand.

You can contact Sylvie directly on (02) 8999 2805 if you would like to learn more about how we can help you improve your business’s branding.

What mix of twisting coils of DNA made me who I am? What meld of events and environment put me in the place where I was born? Not everyone has the drive to find those answers about themselves. Not everyone wonders where the colour of their eyes came from, why they have the names they have, where that seemingly innate talent or love of something comes from.
The Garth Trilogy was born of a desire to find those answers.
We can’t start at the beginning, although it is said in studies of human genetics that every living human today descended in an unbroken line on their mother’s side from “Mitochondrial Eve” who lived over 100,000 years ago … so perhaps you and I are related…??

Finding out answers to who we are does not directly take one down the path of writing an historical fiction and when I first started undertaking research on my family history, writing a novel about the lives of my ancestors was not in my mind. I had intended to simply make a record for myself of our family tree. It was only when I discovered who some of my ancestors were that I realised what amazing stories they had, stories that demanded to be written.

 About 10 years ago my aunt was on an excursion to an historical town called Berrima in New South Wales, Australia. My aunt’s middle name is Garth, she knew her great grandfather’s name had been Edward Garth but otherwise she had no knowledge of the family from whom she was descended.
Whilst at Berrima she came across a register of people who had travelled on the First Fleet to Australia from Great Britain in 1788 and on that register was a person by the name of Edward Garth. This immediately drew her attention and sparked her curiosity, maybe … just maybe, she was related to this Edward Garth, a convict!

 
When my aunt told this to me we began digging, looking back over the generations of our ancestors and eventually came to discover that indeed the Edward Garth who was on the First Fleet was our ancestor, my great, great, great, great grandfather.

 
We had no idea we were descended from a convict, no wonder my grandmother had been so tight-lipped about revealing the family’s past. Then we discovered that not only were we related to this one convict but to three others!
These four souls, Edward Garth the farm-boy, Susannah Gough the prostitute, Jacob Bellett the silk weaver and Ann Harper the urchin, were all cast into a setting in London in the early years of the industrial revolution where poverty was rife and merely existing a challenge. Circumstance conspired to bring them together, to an improbable location, as distant from their imaginations as the likelihood of inhabiting the moon.

 
How did they end up on the First Fleet to cross the Indian Ocean to the Great South Land?
With a common interest to answer this question, my aunt and I both set out on a journey which turned into an amazing adventure. In the process we undertook a huge amount of research; births, deaths, marriage and baptism registers, Court records of the Old Bailey, bankruptcy searches, court cases in Australia, coronial inquests, land and titles offices, newspaper archives, libraries, museums and historical societies.

 
We travelled thousands of kilometres retracing their footsteps from Great Britain to Norfolk Island to Tasmania, all over Victoria and New South Wales and ultimately to Sydney.
I did not even know a hand-picked group of 14 convicts from the First Fleet had been chosen to settle Norfolk Island as an outpost for the main colony at Port Jackson, so this in itself was new knowledge but many other things were learned and many things happened on our expeditions that were almost inexplicable, and at times we wondered what ‘supernatural’ forces were leading us.

 
I’m a skeptic and the notion of ‘supernatural’ forces does not come easily, however, there were many examples and here is just one. We knew the convict Edward Garth had been buried at a place called Brown’s River, Kingston, Tasmania but we had no idea where. So we just got in the car and drove to Kingston. We thought the logical place to go would be the cemetery, so I stopped at a convenience store and asked for directions. We were advised it was down the street a few blocks away but as I came out of the store I looked across the road and there was this gorgeous old church and I said to my aunt since we are here let’s have a look.

 
We went into the church grounds and behind the building was an old cemetery, a cemetery that could not be seen from the road. We looked at each other. There were
dozens of headstones. I went to one end of the graveyard and my aunt to the other, literally within a couple of minutes my aunt called out, “I’ve found him”. We could not believe it, there lying on the ground in the corner of the church yard was Edward Garth’s headstone. My aunt had literally walked on it, the first place she stepped … so much for logic!
That is only one example of the uncanny ‘co-incidences’ that happened along the way.

 
Not only did we find ourselves being propelled in certain directions on our journey but, as I began to write the narrative, it was as if I was being spoken to… this is our story, bring it to life. The narrative therefore evolved into an historical fiction which is now the Garth Trilogy based upon the lives of five generations of the Garth family, spanning over 130 years from 1788 to 1921.
Book 1, Of Angels and Eagles has just been released and deals with the four convicts’ crimes and transportation to Australia, then Norfolk Island where they struggled and succeeded over a period of 20 years. Susannah the main protagonist, spirited and optimistic, inspires the others as they make their home on Norfolk Island, the place of Angels and Eagles.
Book 2, Perseverance is also now available. If follows the family to Tasmania after they are forced to move and start again. Tasmania is more primitive and unlike Norfolk Island where there were no indigenous people, Van Diemen’s Land (as it was then known), is inhabited by aboriginals and this creates a new dimension to their lives. James, the son of Edward and Susannah, is an adventurer and explorer. He travels to the far reaches of the island and sails the waterways of Van Diemen’s Land, eventually marrying the love of his life. Their 14th and youngest child Edward, peculiar and gifted is restless to make his own way to the mainland.
Book 3, available next year, deals with young Edward’s decision to leave Tasmania on his ketch ‘Ann’, sailing across the treacherous waters of Bass Strait with his new wife Sarah, to Victoria and New South Wales. His eldest daughter Lil has inherited the optimism of her great grandmother Susannah, however the extremes of her circumstances push her to her limit as she struggles with the hand fate deals her.

 
The tale of the Garths provides an insight into the lives of pioneers in early post 1788 Australia and the growth of a nation.

 
Their stories are those of ordinary people, sometimes in extra-ordinary situations experiencing fear, anticipation, joy and sadness as they discover what they are made of and what makes them who they are.

Writing Garth has been a compulsion, a pleasure and a challenge. It has indeed been a labour of love. And it is true, whilst we speak of them… they live on.

Congratulations on nominating for election to your local council. Now you need to give yourself, and/or your team the best chance of election.

You need to expose your face and promote your team; explain your policies and why you are standing; and show people how they can vote for you and your team.

There are many ways to support your nomination. Here are some optionsand suggested timings.

Early days

Design: We recommend using the same designer for all of your campaign material. This will ensure consistency in both your message and imagery.

Mailings: you can send a letter to all registered voters or all residences within your ward. This will give you the ability to promote your policies and you and your team’s names. You can do either an addressed letter or a generic (unaddressed) flyer.  This is an effective and proven method but is expensive and requires planning and leadtime.

Flyers: usually an A4 or a 4 pp A4 message to be either dropped into letterboxes by candidates or their team or for handing out at meetings or where people gather.

A Frames: these can be placed at gatherings.

Leading into the election

Mailings: more detailed letters or flyers which should include “How to Vote” instructions.

Flyers: similar to the mailings, these should be more detailed and include “How to Vote” instructions.

Signs: usually corflute, these can be placed around the ward to promote you.

At the voting sites

A Frames: these can be placed at the entrances to introduce you.

How to Vote Flyers: usually DL in size, these show your voting instructions.

To maximise impact, all your promotional pieces must be:

• Consistent
• Clean
• Simple
• Informative
• Well planned

It is recommended that all promotional items include your name, your team’s / ticket’s name, photos of the candidates and contact details.  You may need to include an authorisation and the printer’s name.

Sit down early to plan your promotions and prepare your budget.  Be aware ofleadtimes – there will be a lot of other people / teams doing similar to your plans so designers, printers and deliverers will get busy.  Mailings especially will have a long leadtime.

Ensure that you get your maximum return for your investment – you do not have to spend the most, you just need to work your funds the hardest.

Gordon Lang and his team at Northern Beaches printing have worked on campaigns for all levels of government elections. We are happy to discuss your plans and assist with all your promotional needs.