In planning any calendar printing project, the obvious reality to pay attention to is that every calendar is a time-sensitive product with a built-in distribution deadline. For a standard 2014 calendar, in case your calendar just isn’t in the long run user’s fingers before January 1, 2014, they could have already got discovered an alternative. For a non-standard calendar that deadline could also be sooner (eg., a school-year calendar must be within the user’s hands close to the start of school if it’ll be helpful to them). Working backwards from this absolute deadline may give you a great timeline for the complete mission.
How are you getting your calendars into the end person’s palms? Are you giving them away? If so, then it should be comparatively straight-forward to determine the distribution logistics and determine by what date you will want to have calendars in hand. Or maybe you might be mailing them out to your prospects or members; in that case you just must make sure you allow enough time for inserting into envelopes, including a cover letter, addressing and mailing. Or contemplate having the printer or an area mailhouse handle mailing the calendars – it is going to most likely be cheaper and easier for you. Simply make sure you find out from the printer or mailhouse how a lot additional time they may need and issue it in.
If, on the other hand, you intend to print a calendar and sell it, both as a nonprofit fundraiser or as a profit-making venture, then distribution is a bit more complicated. How much time you need for sales will depend on your sales technique. Are you promoting at a neighborhood festival or different event? In that case, then that provides you a deadline, but take into account that you’ll be higher off should you can promote at a number of events, in case attendance or sales at one occasion are usually not what you anticipate. Or maybe you’re having volunteers promote calendars to family and friends or door-to-door. In that case, it’s best to enable not less than two weeks, and ideally up to 4 weeks, since volunteers all have their own totally different schedules, and some will need reminders and encouragement.
If you happen to print a calendar that you plan to promote, you need to be sure you develop and implement a solid advertising plan. Marketing does not have to add to the general period of the calendar challenge – you can and may start advertising and marketing throughout the planning and manufacturing phases of the challenge. However, when you wait to start marketing till you may have the calendars in hand, then you’ll need to permit no less than a couple of further weeks, perhaps extra, in your advertising message to achieve the supposed viewers and encourage them to purchase.
The manufacturing phase of a calendar printing challenge begins if you hand off all the photographs, text, logos, promoting, and many others. to the printer, and the printer turns it into calendar art work so that you can approve after which places it on the press and delivers to you the finished product. Be sure to speak to your printer early on to fins out how lengthy this takes. In our case at Yearbox, it is often about three weeks (typically sooner you probably have a particular deadline). Should you anticipate last-minute adjustments or additions, or if you may be proofing by committee, then it’s best to in all probability permit a bit of extra time – perhaps a month in whole – for production.
