Insights

In Response to COVID-19

May 15, 2020

We are actively monitoring the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on our industry to remain agile as we continue to serve our clients. We are continuing to fulfill projects that come our way. More product suppliers have restarted production and we are monitoring the performance of the others. Magellan Promotions has long-standing relationships with production partners across the United States which allows us to continue sourcing products from a vast network. Clients continue to seek product solutions in response to COVID-19. We are providing an active list of face masks, face

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Be True to Your Mission and Core Values

April 24, 2020

Written by Michael Wolaver, Captain of Magellan Promotions These past several weeks have been trying for businesses and organizations in varying ways.  At my promotional product company, Magellan Promotions, we moved all employees to being remote, dealt with disruptions in our supply chain, and had orders cancelled. We continue to adapt our practices despite a significant slowdown in business, and are monitoring the tremendous financial impact COVID-19 is having on our core customer base.  While other businesses have it way worse off than ours, we have a number of challenges

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Promotional Products Sales Still Heating Up

September 13, 2019

The popularity of promotional products continues to rise! The latest data by Promotional Products Association International (PPAI), of which Magellan Promotions is a member, reveals that annual sales growth for the industry in 2018 was 6.3% over 2017 to a record $24.7 billion. Overall industry sales growth since 2009 has been 55%. “We have continued to see a strong interest in marketing through promotional products in the industries we serve as well. Our growth over the past few years has outpaced the industry, growing at more than 25% in 2018,”

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Variable Data Best Practices

  • At the quoting stage of your project, please let us know how many fields of variable data your piece will have as this can affect pricing.
  • Data should be provided to us as an Excel spreadsheet with only the applicable data included.
  • Verbiage for variable data fields on artwork file should match up exactly with data fields on spreadsheet.
  • Spacing on artwork must allow for longest data entries. We recommend that your designer tests this in advance to confirm that the fields in the design can fit your longest pieces of data.

Postage Permits

We are happy to mail using a client’s USPS non-profit number. Here are a few best practices for this to go smoothly. Let our team know up front on the project so we can make sure to get the information we need right away. 

While our mail house does prefer to use their permit number for the mailing, we can use the client’s permit, If using their permit number, ensure there is enough postage to cover the mailing.

The information we need to in order to use a client’s nonprofit number includes the following:

  • CRID (customer registration ID)
  • Non-Profit Authorization Number (with USPS, not their nonprofit number for the university)
  • Non-profit indicia
  • Return address that is on file with USPS for the non-profit authorization number
  • Permit number

Formatting the Mailing List

Our account team will advise on specific requirements for your project’s mailing list.  We generally recommend these best practices to format the mailing list:
  • Send your data in a spreadsheet, saving it in the comma-separated values (CSV) format
  • International addresses must be separated from domestic addresses
  • Domestic addresses should at least contain data fields for “first name”, “last name”, “address 1”, “address 2”, “city”, “state” and “ZIP code”