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Volume 2, Issue 2 Hugh Tolson: No New Kid on the Block
Hugh Tolson: No New Kid on the Block Even though Mail List Preparation Leader Hugh Tolson has been with United Litho for only a few months, he's no stranger to his job. Hired to help United Litho bring their new Mail List Services department on line, Hugh has a long history of implementing such projects. "I've been in the data processing industry since 1972," says Tolson. "I've worked in printing since 1981 and I've been on the mailing end of things since 1985." But after years of traveling the country, setting up mail services for such companies as Judd's Incorporated and Johnson & Harden in Cincinnati, this VA native came home to United Litho. "I was moving back to Winchester and I heard through a friend of mine that United Litho was thinking about bringing mail services in-house," says Tolson. "I came on board as a consultant first, helping them to do an analysis and some feasibility studies. Then I submitted a proposal." United Litho took Tolson's advice, and hired him to make their Mail List Services department dream a reality. Tolson has already taken a real shine to the United Litho approach. "Compared to the companies I was working for before, United Litho is fairly small," he explains. "Here, decision-making is a process that doesn't take committees and months, and the people are genuinely interested in you and each other." He's also enjoying the chance to start up another mail service from scratch. "I've always loved doing that," he says. For more information on United Litho's new Mail Services Department, see page 1. Mail List Services: A New Dimension There are big developments afoot at United Litho. Plans are underway to add a whole new dimension to United Litho's services: mail list preparation. Under the guidance of veteran mail services pro Hugh Tolson, United Litho is purchasing equipment, testing software and hiring staff to bring list service operations entirely in-house. Previously, United Litho customers had to send their mailing lists to third-party vendors, incurring additional time in their schedules and sometimes additional costs. With the advent of the new list services department, all that work will be done directly by United Litho, resulting in a number of time- and cost-saving developments. "For the roughly 190 titles that we print, there are a lot of advantages to having list services located right here," says Mail List Preparation Leader Hugh Tolson. "It will reduce turnaround time for labels to be produced. It will allow us to capitalize internally on opportunities to save time. And the pricing is equal to or even better than going out of house." Tolson says that the new services will also allow United Litho to bring another dimension of customer service to its clients. "We can make suggestions if a client wants to make something stand out on a label or wants to do some kind of personalization," he says. Marketing and Sales Leader Wayne Peterson explains that there are two elements involved in making list services part of United Litho's offerings. The first element is the software that will allow United Litho to take customer-supplied address lists and get them in tip-top shape for mailing. "We'll ensure that the addresses are the cleanest they can be, and that our customers get the best postal discounts," he says. This includes services like list cleanup and ZIP code checking. The second element is United Litho's new high-speed stitching machines with in-line mailing capabilities that will make binding and labeling all part of one fluid process. "Our clients are really looking forward to having United Litho handle their lists," says Peterson. "This way, they've got one relationship, one point of contact." The new services available directly from UL will include:
According to Peterson, purchasing the updated stitching equipment is the third phase of United Litho's major capital investment plan. The first two phases of this plan included United Litho's new physical plant and brand-new press equipment, and the creation of a digital work flow environment allowing direct-to-plate printing. All of the updates have been designed to give United Litho clients access to the latest technology and the fastest turnarounds. Currently, United Litho plans to have the software operational by the first of August and the in-line mailing process up and running by year's end. "Clients will then see a significant shortening of production time," Peterson says. "The average client will gain anywhere from two to three days." If you are interested in finding out more about the new list services department's offerings, please contact your sales representative. An
Extraordinary Service Experience: What makes a printer perfect? For Russ Boniface, editor of the National Association of Secondary School Principals' Schools in the Middle magazine, it's all about the relationship. For the more than 20 years, United Litho has been working with NASSP on publications like Leadership and High School Magazine, bringing the association a higher level of service and the peace of mind that every editor dreams of. "When I first started at NASSP, United Litho gave me a tour of their shop," Boniface said. "I was really impressed. They made me feel so comfortable, I've never even felt like I needed to go on a press check." United Litho's dedication to NASSP's publications is evident in the attention to detail that everyone on staff brings to Schools in the Middle. "Once we discovered a misspelling in an ad at the last second," Boniface said. "They were able to fix it. They're very patient when I make mistakes. They always say, 'No problem, we'll take care of it.' They've even caught a few of our 'boo-boos.'" Client Support Specialist Jenny Meckley takes personal pride in each issue of the magazine, and is excited to hear that the publication is expanding to nine times a year in 2000. Her prompt responses to Boniface's phone calls and e-mails let him know that United Litho puts customers first. And, of course, having the latest technology only helps make a good relationship great. Boniface and his colleagues at NASSP are particularly taken with the new color "bluelines." "We love that over here," he said. " It just gives you a much better visual. It blew me away the first few times not having to wait for the final product to see exactly how the magazine would look. That was a big hit with all the editors here." United Litho also handles mailing for Schools in the Middle, an added service that makes Boniface's life that much easier. "They never once called me during the mailing process with a problem," he said. "I don't know how they do it. I really depend on them and they've made it all a very fluid process." Fighting the Merge: Strategic Ad Sales in the Age of Acquisitions Copy: "The biggest challenge in advertising today is mergers and acquisitions," says United Litho Sales Account Executive Dave Lageman. "When two companies that advertise in your publication merge, you lose ads." In order to keep ad revenue up, it's important for magazine advertising reps to keep their skills sharp. Many customers turn to United Litho for information, ideas and experience in strategic ad sales. "We've conducted several breakfast roundtable meetings on increasing advertising sales," says Lageman. The meetings bring together magazine professionals and United Litho facilitators to answer questions and solve problems. Some tips from previous roundtables:
In addition to your sales pitch, you'll need to make the most of your rate card and editorial calendar. These tips can help you make the sale more profitable:
If you're looking to increase ad sales, United Litho can help. We can put you in touch with successful titles to offer tips and suggestions, evaluate your ad-to-editorial ratio to see where you need to grow and help out with special incentives, like business reply cards and inserts. "United Litho can develop an individual plan for you," says Sales Representative Sharon Butler. "Think of our ad sales knowledge as an additional resource, beyond printing." For more information on ad sales or breakfast roundtables, contact your United Litho sales representative at 703.858.1000. From time to time we like to review certain postal regulations and specifications so you can make sure your mailings meet USPS standards. This issue, our focus is on supplements to periodicals. Let’s start with some background information. Recall that on July 1, 1996, the USPS renamed its second-class mail "Periodicals." The same standards and privileges applied, only the name changed. At the same time, the standard for second class supplements changed as well. How do you determine whether or not your supplement meets the specifications? The following information is taken from the USPS Domestic Mail Manual 54. We’ve bolded some things for emphasis and only included the pertinent sections of the rules (for a complete copy of the regulations, contact your local post office and ask for "DMM 54"). DMM 54 C200.1.5 Supplement – A supplement is one or more pages (subject to 1.1) formed by one or more printed sheets that are not bound into a publication. A supplement may be devoted to a single topic and may contain material different from that in the host publication. The external dimensions of a supplement (i.e., its length and height) may not exceed those of the host publication. Supplements are also subject to these conditions as applicable:
DMM 54 C200.2.2 Prohibited Matter—Material that contains any one of the following printed items or that is referred to in a component of the Periodicals mail piece (by the use of one of these items) is ineligible to be mailed at Periodicals Rates:
DMM 54 E211.11.1 Advertising Standards—Advertising is restricted or prohibited by E212 for the categories of Periodicals authorization. For these standards, the term advertising includes:
It is suggested that, to determine if a piece is eligible to go as a "supplement to," that you contact your local Postmaster and, if the piece is ruled as eligible, that it be noted in writing on USPS letterhead and retained in your records. Please note that the piece must contain at least 25% "editorial" content. It is an advantage for the ruling if the piece is not designed to be a self-mailer. If the piece is ruled as not qualifying as a "supplement to," it must be mailed as a Standard A enclosure which requires a Standard A mail permit, a fly sheet with proper endorsements and is a higher mail rate. As possible options, the piece can be produced as a tip-on in a periodical or can be stitched in for removal in the periodical. Supplied pieces that are to be tipped or stitched in must meet ULI specifications for production. If you have any questions regarding these standards or ULI specifications for tip-ons or special stitching, please contact your Client Support Specialist. TechTip: The Early Word on PDFs By now you have undoubtedly heard of Adobe's PDF, which stands for Portable Document Format. My first experience with these files came from browsing the web: a document that I wanted to read was available in PDF, so I downloaded it along with the Acrobat program for reading it. The result was surprising to me, as I'm used to experiencing problems with any new program: I had a complete document with graphics and text, with no apparent reflow, and it even printed perfectly on my laser printer. This is the goal of a digital PDF workflow: being able to send a job in using PDF files and getting completely predictable results. In today's workflow, we require you to send in Quark or PageMaker files, fonts, art, and all other supporting files. We will load your fonts and files and try to configure our computers to match yours. Then we check the pages, place ads and make any edits. Finally, we save every page as an EPS (PostScript) file and send it along to our Rampage system for processing and proofing. Problems will arise if we are missing any files or if there is any discrepancy between the fonts you used and the ones we have loaded. Enter PDF. A PDF file is created (on the Macintosh) via a chooser-level driver called PDFWriter or through a program called Distiller. A PDF file can be set up to contain everything needed to successfully print a document. A digital PDF workflow would involve the same processing by Rampage, but would only require one file. Eventually, you may only have to send one (albeit very large) PDF for your entire job. The same PDF file can also be processed into a low resolution version for viewing on the internet, making web publishing easy and affordable for any publisher. This sounds like a great solution to the problems we encounter today, but the widespread approval of PDF is not here yet. Rampage will have to add support for PDF files. Without this support we would have to convert the PDF back to PostScript, making the whole PDF stage a waste of time. Furnished-film advertisers would have to submit their partial page ads as PDFs, or another step would be added as we would have to scan the film into a copydot file and give FPOs back to you for placing. Other known problems include bleeds, spot color support, color management, and page size limitations-some of which may be fixed with the release of Acrobat 4.0. Many PDF creating and editing programs are being released and PDF support is now seen in many new programs. It may be possible to make small changes and edits-the kinds of things we will need to do to troubleshoot problem pages. Therefore, a PDF workflow may not be far off. Being a progressive-thinking company with an eye on customer service, we are watching PDF very closely. When the software and customer support near completion, I'll be right back here in this column with more information. Dynamic Differences—Scanner Dmax Capabilities Count The price of scanners continues to fall. I recently saw an ad for a 600 DPI flatbed color scanner for $20 after rebate. These scanners are fast and convenient, but their ability to create quality separations might not be as high as you would expect. Resolution and bit depth alone do not "make the scanner"! To illustrate the difference in scanning technologies, I took a color slide and scanned it on our Lino-Hell drum scanner and our UMAX flatbed at 300 DPI with a minimal amount of correction. Here are the printed results. Most small flatbed scanners tend to lose detail in the 3/4 tone through the shadow range, making the photo look dark and lacking in contrast. This is caused in part by the scanners dynamic range (Dmax) capability. Full dynamic range: 0.0
5.0
CCD flatbed scanners typically have a Dmax between 2.5-3.0, while drum scanners may go as high as 4.2. A scanner will not be able to differentiate between shades higher than its Dmax. If a scanner encounters a part of a photo with a density higher than its Dmax, it assigns it the highest value. If the Dmax of the scanner is low, it will compress the density range, making dark areas of photos appear darker. So you may notice that your flatbed does a much better job with lighter colored originals. A lot of technical detail can be said about scanners and their abilities; we'll go into more detail about scanning in a future article.
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