Marketing

How Printchomp automates marketing with a Print API

Posted By Joseph Puopolo on Feb 12, 2015

Marketing Automation is becoming a premium for small and large organizations. Over the past 15 years there has been increased pressure to squeeze the most one can out of their marketing dollars. Typically this falls into two camps, the actual money spent on marketing initiatives and the money spent towards the headcount to administer them. The marketing automation dilemma You essentially have a back and forth issue. You don’t want to strip headcount too badly, because it will be difficult to administer campaigns, but you want to maximize the amount you spend on external campaigns that drive people back to your site and drive interest. The first step to solving this dilemma So now you recognize you have this dilemma and the question of how to make strides to maximizing my headcount and at the same time spend money on initiatives that will drive revenue, retention, sign-ups or whatever your key success metrics are. What are the next steps? Strip away non-value additive activities via automation Busy work is the bane of anyone’s existence, but it should also be the first thing in your organization you look to remedy. Physically handling mailing items, stuffing envelopes, or even spending the time managing 3rd parties to do this isn’t additive. In many cases manual interactions not only increase the time that you spend doing other things, but also increase the chance of errors. The irony of introducing more manual work is that it introduces more errors that may require further work to manage. At the end of the day, outsourcing these operations to a 3rd party is crucial to improve efficiency. It improves efficiency for a number of reasons: You won’t ever be able to do something as effectively as a specialized shop – Typically if you are printing and stuffing envelopes, your cost per impression is much higher than a 3rd party shop. You have to consider the time for anyone babysitting the exercise of printing and mailing Print on demand vs. Inventory – One of the essential problems with all in house marketing activities is that you have to print extra and warehouse those extra pieces. Initiate from your systems rather than a spreadsheet – If you have systems for managing people and operations, then why are you exporting to a spreadsheet and manually hand holding the process to completion. It wastes time, while you could automate the entire process. Enter a Print & Mail API  A print and mail API is the perfect solution to move manual tasks off of the plate of marketers and just making sure things “happen” on their own automatically.  There are many marketing professionals that...

Why I Moved Back to the Waterloo Region

Posted By Joseph Puopolo on Oct 5, 2013

Over the past week, there has been lots of news about the uncertain future of BlackBerry, the impact of it shedding jobs and speculation about the impact to the community and the tech future of Waterloo Region. I couldn’t help but reflect back on why I returned to this area. Nearly two years ago, as I sat in gridlock in Toronto struggling to pick up my daughter from day care on time, I had a revelation. I couldn’t scale a business and a family in Toronto, given that both my wife and I were busy professionals. I loved Toronto for many reasons but ultimately couldn’t reconcile spending 20 hours on the road each week instead of spending that time with family, my business or taking care of myself. Once we made the decision, we knew what we had to do. We loved our urban lifestyle, but it was time to return to our hometown to achieve a better work/life balance. I spent the first 25 years of my life living in Waterloo Region. I went to high school in Waterloo and drove past Research In Motion (now BlackBerry) when it only had one building (not a sprawling campus). Before even starting school, I was able to go to computer camp and learn from some great minds showing off the first iterations of a GUI in the early 80s. I got my first computer when I was five years old and didn’t look back. I progressed through school, and ultimately attended both University of Waterloo andWilfrid Laurier University. Upon reflection, I don’t think I realized how much this area had to offer to others and myself. The plain reality is that there is a significant talent pool and two internationally recognized universities creating high-quality engineers, programs and business grads. Historically, it has been a hotbed for technology in Canada, and that has only increased as more startups flock to the community. It has reached a point of critical mass in the past 5 years. In June of 2012, I founded my company Printchomp. One of the first decisions I made was to base my company in Waterloo Region. I did so because I saw huge opportunity in the area. When people hear the word “startup,” they automatically seem to think of Silicon Valley in California, but as much as I love the Valley, I realized the benefits of being in Waterloo Region. There is an amazing wealth of talent coming out of University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and Conestoga College. This is a huge boon to companies looking to grow. The University of Waterloo co-op program is one of the most aggressive for placing quality...

Lessons learned from Startup Life and Crossfit

Posted By Joseph Puopolo on Sep 22, 2013

So I have been horrible at keeping up my blog lately. This is my vain attempt to get back into the swing of things now that my life is getting close to a new normal. I moved back to Waterloo 2 months ago to help achieve some work/life/health balance.  My workout life has been a roller coaster, one minute I can run 41k another seemingly I am wheezing to run 5k. I wanted to take things back under control, so I joined Crossfit. For those that are not familiar it is a pretty intense series of workouts designed to push you and essentially make you Stronger, Fitter and  Faster. So after tonight of completing an epic workout and can’t sleep because my muscles ache I was reflecting on what Printchomp and Crossfit have in common. 1.     Push your limits – Whether it is building a new business or getting in shape it is all about pushing your limits. Seeing how far you can push yourself. You don’t know how far you can go or achieve if you don’t push yourself hard. Whenever you stop pushing yourself, you deprive yourself from getting to a goal faster or sooner. So don’t take your foot off the gas pedal, you only have limited time on this earth so make the most of it. 2.     Surround yourself with people that push you – You are only as good as the people you surround yourself with. If you only hang out with uninspired, lazy individuals soon you will become one. Both in Printchomp or Crossfit both are highly motivated to achieve their goals. At a critical point of my workout I was behind (it was a timed workout). I might not have completed it in the allotted time if a colleague hadn’t pushed me to work harder to complete the workout. You also need good people to help you constantly raise your game and constantly improve. 3.     It is ok to be uncomfortable  – The old adage of getting out of your comfort zone.  It has become so clichéd. Pushing yourself to do new and tough things is the only way you improve. If you don’t fail or had a chance of failing you have no way to get better. When I first ventured out to create my own business, it was a scary experience. However if I didn’t take that first step to start something, I would have never went beyond what I knew. For me never trying is far scarier than trying something with a chance of failure. 4.     Form is everything – Form is everything when working out, so to does...

Printchomp: Year 1 – Reflections on the first year

Posted By Joseph Puopolo on Jun 23, 2013

So a year has passed since Printchomp came into the world. Suffice it to say it hasn’t been an uneventful year.  Calling it an emotional roller coaster ride wouldn’t even properly characterize it. In order to make this startup journey possible, I had to change all facets of my life. Over a year ago, I sold my house, I began commuting an hour back to Waterloo (as I prepared to move back), and I changed everything and turned things on their head.  One would think that changing their entire life in their early 30’s was a natural progression. The backdrop was quite unusual in this case. My wife was in the process of finishing an epic journey of realizing her own dream in become an anesthesiologist. This is no small feat, and took over 13 years of post-secondary education to complete.  Between that and watching my daughter  grow from a baby to a little girl, this year has been nothing short of busy. In many ways I had to put aside the trappings of having steady income in order to go after a dream. It was the belief that I had something more in me than just being a cog in a wheel at one organization after another. I knew the journey wouldn’t be easy. Nothing is handed to you. A year later, I have a company with 10 colleagues. I wouldn’t call them employees; they are more like companions in this epic adventure. Rather like the Lord of the Rings it has been a trek through sometimes-treacherous terrain. Although, I often catch myself admiring the beautiful scenery I know I must keep pushing forward to my goal. We now have thousands of clients on the system. When I tell people I run my own company they always say must be nice to be your own boss. The thing that many do not realize is that when you have customers you have thousands of bosses. Each one of them must be properly taken care of and addressed. The connection with the customers has been invaluable to shaping the product. Since we launched only 3 months in, there were many things that weren’t fully built out. Features were sparse, but the vision was there and that is what people kept responding to. Little by little, we began addressing each crucial piece of functionality and made it easier and easier to do seemingly simple tasks. The way that our development team has evolved the site with the number of constraints they have faced over the year is nothing short of amazing – evolving a simple flow into something far more elegant...