8 Tips: Choosing the Right Printer for Your Alumni Magazine

In Walsworth’s latest webinar, Choosing a Printer for Your Alumni Magazine, we invited Walsworth sales reps Pete Gersonde, Jason Marsh and David Vella to speak with us and share some of their experiences working with alumni magazines. During our conversation, the three experts highlighted eight factors that should go into the decision-making process when choosing a printing partner for your alumni magazine.

Design Support for Lean Teams

Schools may not have a large enough design staff to design their own publications or may prefer to outsource design work. Walsworth can help by working directly with these staffs to create and proof designs. In several cases, Walsworth’s graphic designers have taken the school’s design files and set up regular meetings to refine, discuss and approve designs before sending them to print.

An onboarding meeting can be set up to show how to use Walsworth’s program to process PDF files and to explain preflight settings to set customers up for success.

Paper Quality and Availability

COVID-era paper shortages highlighted the importance of paper cost and availability. Pete Gersonde feels this caused a shift in perspective for many universities and other associations that create print publications – the availability of quality paper shouldn’t be taken for granted. This, he feels, resulted in an overall increase in not only the quality of paper used to print these publications but also the quality of the content within.

An established printer like Walsworth will have years of working relationships with paper suppliers, which means you won’t need to worry about the quality or availability of the paper used to create your alumni magazine.

Promoting Alumni Giving

Alumni magazines can help with alumni giving by keeping alumni connected to the university and helping them realize the impact of their gifts, particularly when considering young alumni. Some schools may not realize the impact of publications on alumni giving until it’s gone. According to Pete Gersonde, one university stopped publishing their magazine due to cost-cutting measures but quickly brought it back after realizing the benefits of the printed magazine.

An established printer with experience in alumni printing, like Walsworth, can help make decisions regarding the most effective ways to encourage alumni giving.

Mailing and Distribution

Mailing and distribution often account for about half the cost of an alumni magazine. Luckily, there are ways to save. Walsworth can analyze a client’s distribution list to determine the most economical way to mail their publications. Examples include drop shipping (shipping directly from the manufacturer to the customer) or co-mailing (combining mail pieces for multiple recipients going to the same area).

Walsworth’s mailing and distribution expertise means we’re not limited to working with schools solely in the Midwest – we’ve successfully taken on alumni publications across the country.

Digital Editions

Walsworth offers subject matter experts to help with digital editions. Combining digital editions with print alumni magazines is a powerful way to increase your school’s presence and boost alumni engagement. “If you have a printer that can give you options on how to customize a digital edition, that allows you to put more content into that digital edition,” said Jason Marsh. Walsworth’s subject matter experts are well-versed in creating and customizing digital editions to meet the needs of our university and alumni customers.

Expertise When and Where It Counts

Walsworth has subject matter experts on staff ready to jump in and assist our customers. These experts can help with onboarding new accounts and ensure a smooth transition. When switching to Walsworth, our subject matter experts can help breathe new life into your alumni publication or improve processes that have been in place for decades. Jason Marsh cites mailing and distribution as an example – our subject matter experts have found significant savings for our customers by finding the right postage class and mailing model.

Ease of Doing Business

Walsworth prides itself on being a family-owned company that believes in relationships and the human aspect. “The approach we all take here at Walsworth is more of a personal touch – a hands-on approach,” said Pete Gersonde. “We believe in relationships, we believe in human interaction, we believe in talking and picking up the phone.” Walsworth’s team will all jump in and work together to ensure a customer’s success, ensuring a streamlined and stress-free printing process.

Choosing a Stable, Established Printer

There’s a clear benefit to choosing a stable printing company you can rely on. “Walsworth is an 87-year-old printing company that has been around and is not intending to leave. It’s a family-owned business,” said David Vella. “That’s one of our strengths – unlike some other situations where we see plants being bought, projects being transferred or plants being closed, at the end of the day the customer’s not really sure who the printer is going to be next time.”

Our stability makes it much easier to establish a consistent working relationship between us and the customer, which leads to improved efficiency and less day-to-day stress.

Watch our Latest Webinar To Learn More

If you’d like to hear this information and more from the experts themselves, tune into 8 Tips: Choosing a Printer for Your Alumni Magazine. Or to learn more about the benefits of switching to Walsworth, contact us today to get in touch with one of our subject matter experts.