Are you ready when your Dan does this? Here is Print Buyer Dan’s post today to his 30,000 peers who are on a listserv with me. Pretty scary stuff if you only offer print and mailing services. I did not add or subtract one word from this post. Take it for what it is worth.
May 19, 2011 post:
We’re looking to save about $30,000 annually by drastically cutting back on the number of printed mailings that we do for our 11 chapters. They collectively run 50+ seminars annually, but we believe that we can maintain or increase attendance using electronic communication almost exclusively. One of our chapters voluntarily agreed to suspend print mailings this past year and saw no decrease in attendance.
I’m presenting my proposal to all the chapters in about one month. So, my questions are, has anyone gone down this road before and what were the results and does anyone have a template for this type of proposal?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Darn it Dan! Why can’t you just quietly cut volumes and not educate your peers and push print volumes down faster? Seriously, posts like this are a daily occurrence today. We all better get our heads out of the sand and diversify or aggressively take from competitors.
The writing is on the wall. Print volumes will continue to drop and Dan is not helping with his promotion and suggestions to cut print! Only printers who embrace change will succeed. If you are reading this, you are probably not near retirement and still in the game and want to stay in business.
How is Dan’s printer going to digest a loss of $30,000 in revenue unless it is taking print from its competitors at a faster rate, buying out weaker printers, or diversifying to help this association client with an overall marketing plan to drive attendance as a strategic marketing partner? Pick your strategy and position yourself to ride the wave of change.
I hope this helps those out there wondering why print volumes have dropped so drastically. Volumes will not return to pre-recession revenues. Get motivated to change and act now. Selling more print is not going to get easier.