Cary Sherburne: Hi, Cary Sherburne and Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com and I'm here with Bill Barta who is President of Writer Dickerson, good to be here with you.
Bill Barta: Thank you, same here.
Cary Sherburne: You guys are from Chicago land?
Bill Barta: Correct.
Cary Sherburne: And maybe you could tell us a little bit about your company?
Bill Barta: Sure Writer Dickerson actually goes back to for 1903. We're a commercial printing company, we offer digital solutions, obviously offer the Mindfire solution. We offer traditional sheetfed of 40 inch. We also have large formate, up to 77 inch sheet fed equipment and we offer web - hit set web capabilities.
Cary Sherburne: And then on the digital side?
Bill Barta: We're Indigo Shop, HP Indigo, we have a seven color Indigo.
Cary Sherburne: And you've been into digital a couple of years, I understand?
Bill Barta: Correct.
Cary Sherburne: So maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, you're out there selling these applications, you know, integrated marketing campaigns and all that, how do you walk the talk? How do you promote your own business using those applications?
Bill Barta: Good question. We've done several different self promotions. When we first got into the technology we did a self promotion with a postcard in the pearl technology to our client base. We also had a seminar with Joe Manos who came out - flew out and gave a it to our clients. Most recently we're doing a seminar, actually next week in Chicago, our highest attendance ever. It's all on digital applications and we use the technology to send out Save The Date cards, invitations, followup with customers with customers when they responded to the pearl. And we're having over 200 people attend next week so it's the biggest attendance ever, so we're really excited.
The technology works internally. It's generated business. It's stable. We're able to track and manage those campaigns. And it's important that we use this technology, not just sell it to our customers but show them that we use it too.
Cary Sherburne: So are you - when you're communicating with them are you blending email with print and all that?
Bill Barta: Correct and all the campaigns that we've done this most recent one. We had a Save The Date card, then an invitation, followed up with an email and then a second email for all non-responders. So they got touched a maximum of four different times.
Cary Sherburne: And do you find that when they get that card it attracts their attention? I mean, do they go, "Oh, how'd they do that?"
Bill Barta: I don't know. That's a great question.
Cary Sherburne: You need to ask that question.
Bill Barta: Yeah, we do know that the response rates have been good and the feedback has been great, you know, the topic of the seminar is very exciting for them so I'm sure that's part of it. But all the feedback has been very positive from our customers.
Cary Sherburne: And your target is the marketers?
Bill Barta: Our target is really all our customers. We think the key players are the marketing people but we have people at different levels in organizations. We've invited people at lower levels to introduce other people at higher levels in the organization and that's worked to a certain degree. So we're trying to get the message in front as many people as we can.
Cary Sherburne: Well good luck with that 200 seminar, that's great.
Bill Barta: Thank you very much, take care.