Adventures in Direct mail

I think I may have mentioned before, or at least alluded to, the fact that I am employed in the direct mail industry... colloquially referred to as junk mail. And, as the firm I work for is heavily involved in the production of direct mail, if you live in the United States there's a very good chance you've actually touched some of my company's handiwork.

And promptly recycled it.

Well, at least you were responsible enough to recycle it. After all, our plant outputs millions of pieces of mail for our clients.  Every month. And we are typically just one channel of their marketing plans. And our division has several plants.

According to my job title, I'm a programmer (actually, my title sounds way more impressive- in fact, it doesn't really say "programmer"at all). The cold hard fact is I do a lot more quality control work than programming. And as boring as both of those functions may sound, quality control is way more boring than programming.

And, as sad as this may sound, I'm something of an expert at quality control.

So, as I look at a lot of mail,  I have a few pieces of advice for those of you in business who are trying to sell to the general public.

#1. Actually, this is the only piece of advice I have for you. In fact, if you cannot understand this, you are hopeless, your business offers no value to anyone, and you are completely lacking in imagination and have nothing to offer to your prospective clients. I should charge $10,000 for this, but for you- today- its free.

GET A REAL BUSINESS EMAIL ACCOUNT.

Period. Pay me $10K right now, and everyone will be happy.

Seriously, how many of you expect someone to respond to your ad when the reply email is jonniebubbles@hotmail.com or edzachary89557@aol.com?

Bueller? Bueller? Does anyone else hear the echo of the buterflies' wings?

Insurance agents, car salespersons, realtors, ANYONE with a product or service: GET A REAL, BUSINESS EMAIL ADDRESS. Here's a hint: your business email address should not end in aol.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com... some folks even have issues with gmail.com. This list is not all-inclusive, but should be a good starting point.

Spend a few bucks and get a domain: sandy@realty.biz, george@hugeinscompany.com, or fname.lastname@agreatbusiness.com.

To be honest, most of the world that has money is at least a little internet-savvy, and while hotmail, gmail, and yahoo are all valid email addresses, none of them are typically the best choices for the business world. Why? Because they are free, and if you use them in your business, then you may be perceived as being a shoestring business operator.

In other words, you could be a cheap, fly-by-night operator to a prospect.

Now, I'm sure bubbleslovesbucky@hotmail really is a great sales rep, but as soon as I see that email, I immediately assume that her reputation might be for something other than sales. So, do yourself a favor and separate your professional email from your personal email.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to. 

Technology, at home

This is probably only the third post out of almost two hundred that I have scrapped completely and started afresh. While the title is still valid and likewise the topic, what follows will be a world away from the original.

Let's face it: in some of our quiet moments, the only voice we hear is our own. And it is not necessarily the voice of reason. To be perfectly clear, the old post was honest and told of my experience with one well-known manufacturer of computer motherboards. And although their tech support is legendary with well-documented internet tales of fail, I will neither name or accuse them.

Reason?

It's all about the internet, which is as close as we have come to eternity as mortals to date. In simple terms, what one posts online does not go away.

Ever.

So, I try to keep my online musings fact-based, as well as my complaints. One never knows who will be looking at a particular post, blog, tweet or review.

And, what does all of this cryptic musing mean?

Jennifer is once again having some issues with her PC that Mr. T and I built for her a while ago. It was fantastic at first, but then she started experiencing mobo USB bus failures. We RMA'ed the board, and after a few months the same problems cropped up in the replacement board. Lately, she's been having a number of audio problems.

To make a long story a bit less painful, the plan is to scrap my planned gaming rig in favor of a multimedia rig for her, and I get her current headache until we're ready to get me a new PC. It's actually a win all around, because her PC is very new compared to anything I'm currently using- except for my laptop, which is another story. And, my audio and USB requirements are rather light in comparison to hers.

The laptop is currently DOA, waiting for an operating system. I've completed the hardware replacements and upgrades. All that remains is a fresh Win 8.1 install. I was originally going to downgrade the machine to Win7, but ran into a brick wall with the BIOS. So, I will try to reinstall Win8.1 and should have a report on that (complete with some pretty cool pictures [the heatsink on the the primary videocard is a thing of copper beauty]).

There's not much else in the works. Mr. T is getting tired of the state of the Secret Underground Lair so much that he has taken it upon himself to learn the basics of Microsoft Visio. He's made some progress, but to be totally honest, we still need to move some stuff out of the office.

Lastly, I'd like to share a picture of something that Mr. T and I came up with. I got a Lego Friends set for dirt cheap at Sam's Club, and it had some neat parts. However, it also had these two girls (Emma and Natasha, I think) who seemed like great zombie hunter role models, so we humbly present the Zombie Hunter Lego Friends of 2015.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Welcome to #194

And this post will close out 2015 and welcome in 2016.

I'd like to start off by saying this is (was) the Monday before New Year's Eve/Day... so it's the end of the year for those of us who use the Gregorian calendar. I'm going to admit a bit of ignorance here, as it took me a little bit of internet searching to come up with the Gregorian calendar. I'm not sure how it is where you live, but in my neck of the woods, "Gregorian calendar" is not really an everyday household term.

Having said that, it's now the second week of 2016.

For the long-suffering readers of this blog, this means that the author has been fairly busy. So busy, in fact, that even the participation in his favorite MMO, Rail-Nation, has suffered.

Not to worry, though, as my e-life takes second place to my IRL life.

So, what's up IRL in 2016?

Well, for starters, Mr.T. and I had a meeting about the SUL, and came up with a goal: to finish the basic remodel of the SUL by May 30.  I like this goal; however, the problem is this:  every time we make a goal like this, overtime sets in.

Now, don't get me wrong- overtime pays for these upgrades. It's just that when I put in overtime, there's less time to do projects at home.

In the interest of publishing something, I'll close here. I hope the next post will be more interesting!

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

06.04.16 update: the remodel is still nowhere near done!