Matreks Printing - Best in Business Awards by the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce

The Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce has a long tradition of recognizing members of the business community that support and accelerate the region. The Best in Business Awards luncheon honored four companies who have excelled, grown and supported the community in unique and meaningful ways.

2012 Honorees

•Best in Business Award Goodwill/Easter Seals Minnesota
•Emerging Business of the Year Matreks Printing
•Small Business Award iDream.tv
•Quality of Life Award Print 4 Change

Upgrade Your Black-and-White Marketing Materials to Color

Does your direct mail campaign look like it is coming through a 1950s television? Maybe your black-and-white brochures and proposals put potential clients to sleep. Digital color printing at Matreks is an economical way to increase the effectiveness of any company’s marketing campaign.

Until about five years ago, black-and-white printing was cheaper than color printing for large marketing campaigns. However, research and development of less costly toner and inks has drastically reduced the cost of color printing.

While the cost of color has gone down, the variety of colors has increased. At Matreks, companies can choose from a rainbow of colors, not just the standard red, yellow, blue, and green. This variety can help companies connect better with potential clients.

The Power of Color Printing

Not only does color printing make marketing materials more attractive, it can make a stronger connection with future customers. Studies have shown that people retain information presented in color better than the same information printed in black and white.

Printing in color can improve the impact of a variety of marketing materials, including direct mail postcards and other mailings, proposals and bids presented to potential client meetings and even training materials for new employees.

Color Digital Printing: An Economical Choice

Pairing color printing with digital printing can help companies make the most of their marketing dollars. Digital printing gives companies the freedom to print as many or as few copies of a marketing campaign as needed, vary the content of a campaign to customize the content to the recipient, and even change the lay-out of marketing materials mid-print.

To learn more about how the power of digital color printing can improve your business, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.

Choose Digital Printing for all your Marketing Projects

Digital printing is a great solution for short-run marketing projects like newsletters, brochures and even longer marketing tools like white papers. Digital printing allows each short-run project to be fully customizable, maximizing marketing dollars.

Before digital printing came onto the scene, businesses were limited to offset printing to fulfill their marketing needs. Offset printing required one master plate to be made for an entire run of a marketing campaign, limiting the ability of companies to tailor their marketing materials to recipients and increasing the amount of time it took to run a project. Since making this plate took time and money, to be cost-effective, companies often ordered more materials than needed.

Short-Run Projects with Big Results

Now, companies can order short-run projects of 1,000 copies or fewer with a digital printer with a fast turnaround and the ability to edit or change data while the project is being run. Since every print is an original, not a copy of a previously-made plate, companies can order exactly what they need, rather than ordering too many or too few copies.

Additionally, since every copy of a digitally printed project is a first-generation print, companies are able to incorporate variable data into their projects, creating a project that is fully personalized for recipients. A short run of newsletters that is digitally printed allows companies to add a recipient’s name and information specifically tailored to their demographics.

For example, a skin care company may be able to use demographic information like age, gender and ethnicity to personalize its newsletter content for each recipient. This fosters a better relationship with clients that may increase customer conversion.

Matreks Printing Can Fulfill All Your Short-Run Printing Needs

Twin Cities companies can count on Matreks Printing to deliver quality, fully-customizable short-run marketing projects. All companies need to do to get their project underway is email Matreks with the final, proofed copy of their marketing materials and a spreadsheet that contains the variable data for recipients. The digital printing process requires little set-up time and Matreks can get a company’s project started almost immediately.

To learn more about how digital printing can make your short-run printing project more affordable, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.

Maximize Your Marketing Dollars with a Wide Selection of Digital Paper

As time goes on, more and more companies are discovering how digital printing can help them build relationships with customers while improving their bottom lines. Now, an expanding selection of digital paper choices allows companies to maximize their marketing dollars even further. Minneapolis digital printing company Matreks Printing offers its clients a large array of digital paper to meet any type of print marketing need.

What Is Digital Paper?

Many companies may not realize that all printing papers are not created equally, and what is a good choice for offset printing is not the best fit for digital printing. Fortunately, paper companies have developed a variety of different paper types that are digitally optimized to meet the demands of any print marketing campaign.

Most digital papers are freesheet papers, meaning that chemicals are used to reduce the wood pulp to fibers. The chemical process creates a stronger and whiter paper than a mechanical grinding process, which leaves impurities in the paper that makes it brittle and gives it a tendency to yellow.

The Importance of Paper Grain in Digital Printing

All paper can be classified as long grain or short grain. In long grain paper, the grain runs along the long side of the paper, while the grain in short grain paper runs along the short side. Since toner may flake off if the paper is folded against the grain, and digital printing uses toner to transfer a digital image to the paper, it is important that printers pay special attention to the grain of the paper they use. Most papers used with printers that use toner are long-grain papers.

Digital Paper Stock, Grade, Weight and Finish

Digital paper may also be classified by stock, grade, weight and finish. Digital paper may be coated stock or uncoated stock. Coated stock has been treated to block the paper’s absorbency and increase its smoothness, while uncoated paper has not. Antique-looking papers or woven-look papers are often uncoated, while coated papers can be matte or glossy.

Digital papers are also classified by their grade, or quality. Digital papers are usually labeled laser, ink-jet or multipurpose. Digital paper weight is also an important consideration. Papers are weighed in pounds per 500 sheets of paper. The thicker the paper is, the higher its weight will be.

Lastly, digital papers may be categorized by their finish. Finish is an aesthetic choice for companies. For example, does the company want its direct mail campaign to be printed on smooth, glossy paper or rough, matte paper? Often, the theme and style of the marketing campaign will determine a company’s finish choice.

The ever-increasing variety of digital paper available to companies can help them maximize their marketing dollars. To learn more about your digital paper choices, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.

How Variable Data Printing Can Help Minnesota Companies Increase Clients

Most companies understand the value of direct mail marketing, but many may not realize that there is a way to improve the performance of direct mail and other print marketing campaigns. Variable data printing is reshaping the way companies connect with their businesses. Contact Matreks, your Twin Cities printer, today to see how this type of printing can help you land more customers.

What Is Variable Data Printing?

Variable data printing, or VDP, is a printing technique that allows projects to be highly customizable. With VDP, companies can customize their direct mail messages to each individual recipient rather than create one boilerplate message that is mass-produced and sent to thousands. VDP creates a stronger relationship between company and recipient, increasing the chance that recipients will convert to customers.

There are many ways to design a VDP project. Some jobs may only involve changing text, while graphics remain the same for all recipients. Others may change the text and graphics for each recipient depending on their age, gender and other demographic data. It is also possible to create a template for a direct mail project, like a newsletter, and change the content for each recipient so it is relevant for each individual.

What Types of Projects Can Be Printed Using VDP?

Variable data printing can be used for a variety of projects, including direct mail marketing and general business correspondence. VDP projects can include:

· Brochures
· Newsletters
· Promotional materials
· Catalogs
· Proposals
· Company policies
· Bills and invoices
· Purchase orders

How Does VDP Improve My Bottom Line?

There are several financial benefits gained from using VDP in marketing and other business correspondence. Companies often see a good return-on-investment on VDP marketing projects since personalized marketing can increase sales while reducing the cost of the printing compared to traditional printing techniques. In fact, some experts believe that personalized marketing campaigns like those created with VDP increase revenues and profits 31 percent more than general marketing campaigns.

Variable data printing can be a cost-effective way to increase customer conversion and connect more deeply with existing clients. To find out how variable data printing may benefit your business, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.

A Brief History of Digital Printing

Digital printing may sound like an up-and-coming commercial printing technique, but it has actually been around for almost 20 years. Since its inception in the early 1990s, digital printing has become an economical and efficient way to print all sorts of projects, especially short-run jobs or those that require a lot of customization.

The Birth of Digital Printing

Digital printing was developed after personal computers became a fixture in many American homes. In the early 1990s, computer and photocopying companies developed a new way of printing that allowed projects to be printed directly from a file on a computer.

Due to its versatility, the market for digital printing took off in the late 1990s. Digital printing is now expected to compete for nearly 20 percent of the commercial printing market by 2016.

How Digital Printing Works

Unlike traditional printing presses, which use plates to create a master copy of a printing project and use that to recreate many, identical copies, digital printing recreates an image of the file every time it prints. Digital printers take a computer file and translate the data from that file directly to the press and onto the page using electricity. Digital printers often use toner or dyes rather than ink.

The Benefits of Digital Printing

Digital printing is a versatile and economical choice for many printing projects, including print marketing campaigns that are tailored to recipients. Since digital printing does not require plates, it is easy to run projects with variable data and economical to run shorter jobs up to 10,000 copies.

Digital printers can be connected to a computer network, which allows Twin Cities printers to run a printing project at the touch of a button. This makes it easy for clients to email a file to their favorite printer with instructions, have the printer run the project and pick up the end result.

Digital printing is a cost-effective printing option for Twin Cities businesses. If you’d like see how digital printing could make your short-run printing projects more economical, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.

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Matreks Printing
Adam Johnston
8317 Pillsbury Ave So
Bloomington, MN 55420

Go Green with Commercial Digital Printing

Many Twin Cities businesses are turning to environmentally-conscious options to fulfill their business needs. While print marketing remains an important way to stay in touch with clients, there are ways to reduce the impact printing has on the environment. One way to do this is to go green with digital printing at Matreks.

What Is Commercial Digital Printing?

Digital printing uses positive and negative charges in the printer’s drum and toner cartridge to transfer a digital image onto the paper. In the digital printing process, the printer does not need to create a master copy from which all other copies are made. Instead, each copy is a “first-run” copy of the original, digital file. For this reason, digital printing is a great choice for businesses with project that involve changing information on each individual copy, like a batch of monthly invoices. Digital printing is an economical choice for short-run projects up to 1,000 copies.

How Is Commercial Digital Printing Green?

Digital printing not only saves money, it also helps save the environment. Since digital printing does not require a minimum amount of copies to make the project cost-effective, businesses are able to print only what they need, reducing waste.

Another major benefit of digital printing is that it uses toner, not ink. Toner is a dry powder used to copy an image, while ink is liquid. The process for making the materials for toner is incredibly efficient. The resin that accounts for 80 percent of the toner powder is made in a lab with 97 percent of materials contributing to the final product, reducing waste.

Other toner materials can be reused in other industries or are the by-products of other industries. For example, magnetite, the iron oxide that carries the electric charges in a toner cartridge, creates a by-product, sodium hydroxide, which can be used by other industries instead of being thrown away. Paraffin, a by-product of the coal and oil-refining industry, is also used in the toner manufacturing process and helps reduce waste.

Since some chemicals used in the toner production process can be harmful, all digital printers are encouraged to recycle their cartridges so they do not sit in America’s landfills.

Digital printing is a cost-effective printing option for Twin Cities businesses that saves paper, time and the environment. If your business would like to go green with its printing needs, call Matreks Printing today at 952-746-4010.