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Time to Speak Up and Embrace Diversity

June 23, 2020

Written by Michael Wolaver, Captain of Magellan Promotions The issue of race and equality has been an evolving topic for me. When I grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, a well-off suburb of Chicago, there were very few African-Americans in the city. So I really had very little interaction with anyone of color in my life. When I went to Marquette University, all of my close friends were white and did not have much of a multicultural experience. I was on the sailing team and one of my teammates once

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Promotional Products Influence the College Search

June 4, 2020

Now is a crucial time for colleges to evaluate their marketing strategies as they continue to recruit and enroll students amid extreme competition. We know that using imprinted promotional products to connect with prospective college students is highly successful. In order to continue providing the best recommendations, we conducted first-of-its-kind research to measure how promotional products are valued by students. By partnering with Advantage Research, we were able to analyze insights from 400 currently-enrolled first-year and sophomore students, who represent 298 public and private schools in 45 states. Our research

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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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Keep Your Brand Present in Work-from-Home Products

April 21, 2020

Organizations have been focused on learning to serve customers and manage employees in new ways with the shift to temporary remote work and ongoing social distancing recommendations.  Yet this moment presents a new opportunity to keep brands present. We are ready to help with product solutions that will help overcome challenges, such as: Keeping your brand present with clients  Discovering new ways to create engaging moments  Keeping up team morale  Acknowledging top connections in your network Providing a unique and connected experience for your remote teams Our Account Managers are

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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”