20th December 2023

Welcome to the Marketing Update

As always, we use this to communicate any national activity we want you to be aware of, any new or exciting news, reminders of important dates etc., examples of best practice and knowledge sharing.

This will be the last newsletter of 2023 so we wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all for your support during this year and to say how much we are looking forward to 2024 and working with you all. We hope you all have a fantastic, fun-filled but also relaxing Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love from Ruth, Oliver, Lauren and Steph x

Key Dates

Quarterly Marketing Webinar – Wednesday 17th January – 11am (Teams details to follow). The focus of this session will be a run through a basic local marketing plan and a reminder of all the assets that are available to you to deliver this. It is open to anyone in your team who you would like to attend. 

Quarterly Customer Service Drop In Session – Monday 29th January – 11am (Teams details to follow). The focus of this session is sharing of best practice and Q&A. It is open to anyone in your team who you would like to attend. 

Canva

To start 2024 in a nice, clean and organised fashion, we'd like you all to have a look at purging your Canva folders. We know there are lots of things in there that will never see the light of day again and were from the pre-approvals days so would be great housekeeping to just delete this content. This also reduces the risk of someone seeing it and using it because they assume it is OK because it is in Canva.

Little Starts

We have published the instructions for processing and redeeming Little Starts Gift Cards if any of your customers, new or existing, come to you with these. For those of you who aren't aware, Little Starts is a gift card concept created by a Puddle Ducks customer and she has done a fabulous job of selling this into major retailers including Sainsbury's, Argos and Currys and is in talks with John Lewis! It is also in lots of online gift card directories and has been taken up by employee reward portals too. Our logo features on her backing card and is therefore in front of millions of shoppers looking for the perfect gift for a friend or family member who has just had a baby or has little ones.

The instructions cover both how to apply the value to a customer's account but also how to then redeem the value of the card from Little Starts and get paid! It is all in 03 Local Office Manual/12 Little Starts where you will also find the templates you need for uploading your class updates to their website once a 'Shark Term' or however often you decide to do it. 

Print Portal

Many of you are using this well - we know it always takes time to get used to a new system. Please don't forget the following points:

1. Timing - if an order is placed before 12pm, it will be processed that day. After 12pm, it will be processed the following day
2. When to fill in the order form - ideally, you will fill this in on the morning that we are uploading your artwork. This is because the portal is checked every day for new orders and if you have filled in the form prematurely it prompts the printer to contact us to see where the artwork is, when there might not be any yet
3. When the item you are ordering is not on the drop down list - just let us know - we can add it easily and then your order form will be accurate. As time goes on, the more items will get added to your order form until pretty much anything you might want to order will be there with associated costs

Top Tip - bookmark www.puddleducks.com/marketing-resources in your browser and always go into the Print Portal via the link on this page. This is because, when you bookmark the actual Portal and you revisit the page, it tries to make you sign into Microsoft (this is because it is a Sharepoint portal). This won't work as we are only guests who access it through the link and the password, so please always go in fresh via the link.

New Video Campaign

You may remember we started work with an external agency in November to produce content every month for TikTok and Instagram. From Boxing Day, this will be live on a paid-for schedule. Here is a sneak peak of one of the videos - we are still getting some final tweaks done so please don't share yet but as soon as we have the final links, we will pop them on the Marketing Forum.

Responding to emails

When an email comes in with for instance, a creative brief, or some amends to Google Ads or just an idea you wanted to run past any of us, we can be guilty of looking at whether it requires immediate action and if it doesn't, not responding to acknowledge receipt. We commit to making sure we reply to let you know we have received it and that any deadlines are acknowledged.

Please can we ask the same from you? For instance, we have lots of jobs that we can't 'close' as we haven't had a response to say, 'Yes, that is signed off thank you' or (as we commonly suspect is the case), 'Thanks but we are putting this job on hold for now'. This just keeps our inbox and to do lists accurate and tidy. Thanks in advance.

In the New Year, we will provide you with a new Briefing Form for briefing jobs into Marketing as we recognise the existing one is quite lengthy and also we will define, for instance, the difference between when you need to see a first draft of a job back vs when you need it printed and delivered.

Marketing Resources

Don’t forget you will find lots of resources on the Marketing Resources page on the website. It is a one stop shop for your essentials. If you want links to anything adding to this page, please email marketing@puddleducks.com

www.puddleducks.com/marketing-resources