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RESOURCES

FAQs

What is our turnaround time?

PrintGen’s Retail Online Store:
We pride ourselves on our exceptional quality and service. Your product will ship within three working days from the day you place your order. Working days are business days- Monday through Friday. All orders received on Saturday and Sunday will be processed on Monday. Orders placed Monday through Friday by cutoff time (3:00PM EST) will start day one of the printing process.

Other PrintGen.com services will vary depending on the project. Please contact our customer service department if you are interested in more information on your specific project at info@printgen.com or 888-387-3430.

What happens if my order is delayed?

Due to the high amount of orders we receive, occasionally some orders may experience delays. Simply email us at info@printgen.com or call our customer service department at 888-387-3430 and we will gladly assist you.

Does PrintGen print and ship every day?

We print and ship Monday through Friday, excluding Major Holidays – Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year’s Day.

What are the file specifications?

PrintGen’s Retail Online Store only accepts JPEG Image (.jpg, .jpeg) and TIFF Image (.tif, .tiff). Note: CMYK JPEGs and PDF file formats are currently not supported.

For highest quality output, images at a 300 dpi resolution are required. DPI equals the dots per inch in an image; the higher the DPI (or resolution), the clearer and crisper your photo or image will appear on your printed piece. You cannot increase the resolution/DPI of an image just by increasing the dimensions; the quality of the image will be diminished. However, you can increase the resolution by decreasing the dimensions of the image (example: 5” x 7” image at 150 dpi can be reduced to 2.5” x 3.5” with a resolution of 300 dpi).

Can I use digital camera images?

Yes, when using personal images from your digital camera, please review your user guide closely. Verify the settings are set to ensure a final resolution for your photo at 300 dpi for its final print size. On most general usage digital cameras, this is the highest setting and depends on the megapixels available on your camera.

Can I use scanned images?

Yes, when using personal images you scan on your computer, please reference your user guide to ensure that your scanner is set to the highest resolution, as with your digital camera. Verify the settings are set to ensure a final resolution for your photo at 300 dpi for its final print size. With most general usage scanners, the resolution defaults to 150 dpi, so be sure to check this before scanning your photo/image.

Can I use internet images?

We do not recommend using Internet or web images. The computer monitors require lower resolution to reflect a higher quality picture to the user most images used on the web are set to a 73 dpi. Also, images with a higher resolution require more space/size in a computer’s memory or on their hard drive. As a result, since web images created at a lower resolution are acceptable quality for viewing and smaller in size, most web designers create them at a 73 dpi to allow hardware to run more efficiently.

Are the colors shown on the preview screen accurate?

PrintGen is consistent with industry standards for “pleasing color.” We guarantee finished products with industry standards and will offer recommendations to help correct the customer-submitted artwork files to ensure results with “pleasing color”.

Can I place an order on hold?

If your order has already been printed, you will be unable to place the order on hold. If you order has not been printed and you are having a problem, call 888-387-3430 and we will assist you.

What if I am unsatisfied with the product I received?

You will be in control of your design choices and previews throughout the entire design process when working with PrintGen’s Online Store. Please review your work thoroughly as you complete each step to ensure your information is correct and accurate. Once your design is complete and you place the order, you will be asked to confirm the order. By confirming the order, you will approve the artwork in the PDF Preview, and agree that the spelling, content and layout are correct. PrintGen, LLC guarantees that the document will print exactly as it appears in the PDF Preview. At this time, you understand and agree that you cannot make any changes once the order has been placed.

Can I submit my mailing list?

Yes, when ordering post cards or self-mailers, PrintGen will accept mailing lists in an Excel (.XLS) format or Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. Tab Delimited (.txt) files are also acceptable. At this time, all mailing lists must be emailed to rita@printgen.com with your order number included. Please contact 888-387-3430 if you experience any problems.

Marketing Tips

Appealing Graphics

Eye-stopping visuals that lead readers directly into your text message are important. We supply a number of visuals that create interest to appeal to the largest possible audience

The Message

As a rule, the headline is the offer. If the offer is appealing enough in the headline, the reader will proceed to the first paragraph to learn how he or she can benefit from it. The offer encourages the reader to seek a worthwhile benefit by taking immediate action.

What Works

• Feature major benefit in opening sentence. Start with the prospect, not the product. Use one of the great motivators (i.e. love, fear, greed, guilt, exclusivity, acceptance, survival, anger, health). Work to solve a problem or offer a “last chance” offer.
• Put headlines in quotation marks.
• Put benefits at the beginning of a headline, sentence, or paragraph.
• Use a one sentence, fast reading first paragraph.
• Start headline with active verbs.
• Use copy to sell your offer, not your product.
• Repeat your major benefit several times using bullets, testimonials, photo, captions, etc.
• Spotlight an important deadline or new service.
• Print important inserts on colorful paper.
• Create sidebar copy. Use a dotted-line border like a cutout coupon.
• Use a yellow highlighter to draw attention to a valuable offer.
• Use testimonials whenever possible.

Personalization

Personalization increases response to direct mail. When you use a salutation in non-personalized communications to high-level business professionals, the best salutation is “Dear Reader” or “Dear Colleague.” It directly targets the individual holding the letter and asks the recipient to read it.

As a rule, most people prefer to deal with other people - not with companies. Consequently, your sales piece should aim to be as personal as possible; conversational, intimate and specific.

Other salutations that work:
“Dear Colleague …and Friend.”

Make it friendlier and more personal.
“Dear fellow Pharmacist and Friend”. “Dear Pet Lover and Friend”. “Dear Chevy Owner and Friend”, “Dear Neighbor and Friend”.

The Right Offer Will Capture Their Attention

What's the most important component in a winning direct mail package?" To have any chance of success, a direct mail package must have a great offer. People will be interested and will spend when they believe that they are getting great quality, an exceptional value or a certain need satisfied. Evaluate your offer, from your customer’s point-of-view. What need will it fulfill that the customer has? You must tell the recipient exactly what you want him to do for the best chance of having him do exactly what you want. Remember to make the offer worth the effort!

Some Offers That Work

• Free offer, One year free, two years for the price of one, We’ve cut our prices. Money-saving offers, as a rule, work best with consumers or individuals likely to enjoy a personal benefit. In business offers, saving money is not a strong primary appeal.
• Risk-Free Issue, Free Trial, Send No Money Now, in an effort to get the low starting prices or price-appeal offers do best when they fall below a price break. i.e. $9.95 instead of $10. On prestige-related offers, using rounded figures sometimes has better return.
• Include a premium upon payment to boost response. The downside is as the response rate goes up, the response quality goes down. You pay for the increased response with more work and larger merchandise returns. A mail offer can succeed with a free trial offer as a substitute for a money-back guarantee, since it eliminates the burden of risk. However, if prepayment is an option, a money-back guarantee should be included. A guarantee appears to help generate response as well.
• A premium, discount, or gift to the first 50 who respond increases urgency. A gift or premium will stimulate response to a mail offer. The most popular is one that offers a gift incentive just for examining the product. Keep in mind that products may be returned if they decide not to purchase.
• A consumer offer of an attractive gift will have greater appeal than a discount of the same value.
• Gift Certificate Enclosed. These may be printed on the same sheet as your postcard, catalog, or the order form - for extra savings in printing costs. Gift certificates have a higher perceived value than coupons and can be targeted to certain merchandise or services. They work perfect of overstock or items with high margins. There are no redemption costs and sales are easy to track for results.

Deadlines prompt action!

Setting a deadline on a promotional offer entices prospects to call or act now – rather than later. By placing a time limit on the offer, you can lend urgency to a sales message. Asking for the order by a specific date helps the prospect face the buying decision immediately while the benefit-filled sales presentation is still fresh. As a rule, never mail a dated special offer that has a very short cutoff date. There is always the risk that because of printing or mailing delays - or slow postal delivery due to weather or machinery breakdowns - the dated offer could be delivered with insufficient time for a response, or even after the offer has expired.

Keep it Simple!

Keep in mind you have just moments to capture your reader’s attention. He or she will look at the card, front, and back and decide immediately if your offer is a product or service that is of interest to them.

It’s Inexpensive to Try Different Approaches

One thing is certain in the business of direct mail promotion, what’s important to one person may not be of interest to the next. Your target customers might only require your product or service at certain times. You may want to target specific distinct advantages of the products and services to different targets. By creating two, three, four or more different design/message combinations that can help you pinpoint what works best for your business success.

Whom Are You Mailing To?

A weak offer to a well-targeted list will produce a better response rate than an excellent offer to a poorly targeted list.

Direct Mail: Why It Works

Postcards and Note Cards are miniature billboards and captivate your attention. Designed with attractive graphics and a targeted text your prospect quickly gets the message. They are budget friendly and the most cost efficient advertising vehicles. They outperform practically every other direct communication medium, including radio, television, and magazine print.

How to Use Direct Mail

• Reward customers
• Promote your Internet presence
• Introduce new products or services
• Increase traffic at trade shows and events
• Creative customer contact

Reap The Benefits

Even on a small budget you can have a direct mail campaign that promotes you to the widest possible audience quickly and effectively for immediate sales results with. Direct mail can help you keep your name in front of your customers and clients on a regular basis.

Glossary

CMYK: CMYK (short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black), and often referred to as process color or four color) is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, also used to describe the printing process itself. Though it varies by print house, press operator, press manufacturer and press run, ink is typically applied in the order of the acronym.

CSV (Comma Separated Value): The comma-separated values (or CSV; also known as a comma-separated list or comma-separated variables) file format is a file type that stores tabular data. CSV is one implementation of a delimited text file, which uses a comma to separate values (where many implementations of CSV import/export tools allow an alternate separator to be used.)

Cover Paper: Category of thick paper used for products such as posters, menus, folders and covers of paperback books.

Die Cut: To cut irregular shapes in paper or paperboard using a die.

Digital printing: the reproduction of digital images on physical surface, such as common or photographic paper, film, cloth, plastic, etc.
It can be differentiated from litho printing in many ways, some of which are;

• Every impression made onto the paper can be different, as opposed to making several hundred or thousand impressions of the same thing from one set of plates, as in traditional methods.
• The Ink or Toner does not absorb into the paper, as does conventional Ink, but forms a layer on the surface.
• It generally requires less waste in terms of chemicals used and paper wasted in set up.
• It is excellent for rapid prototyping, or small print runs which means that it is more accessible to a wider range of designers.

DPI: Dots per inch (DPI) is a measure of printing resolution, in particular the number of individual dots of ink a printer or toner can produce within a linear one-inch (2.54 cm) space.

Finished Size: Size of product after production is completed, as compared to flat size.

Gloss: Consider the light reflecting on various objects in the printing industry (e.g., paper, ink, laminates, UV coating, varnish).*

JPG: JPG (pronounced JAY-peg) is a commonly used method of compression for photographic images. The JPEG standard specifies both the coding and decoding, which defines how an image is compressed into a stream of bytes and decompressed back into an image, and the file format used to contain that stream.

Laminate: A thin transparent plastic sheet (coating) applied to usually a thick stock (covers, post cards, etc.) providing protection against liquid and heavy use, and usually accents existing color, providing a glossy (or lens) effect.*

Layout: A sample of the original providing (showing) position of printed work (direction, instructions) needed and desired.

Logo (Logotype): A company, partnership or corporate creation (design) that denotes a unique entity. A possible combination of letters and art work to create a "sole" entity symbol of that specific unit.

Megapixel: 1 million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but also to express the number of sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera with an array of 2048×1536 sensor elements is commonly said to have "3.1 megapixels" (2048 × 1536 = 3,145,728).

Offset printing: a widely used printing technique where the inked image is transferred (or "offset") from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier on which the image to be printed obtains ink from ink rollers, while the non-printing area attracts a film of water, keeping the non-printing areas ink-free.

Page Proof: Proof of type and graphics as they will look on the finished page complete with elements such as headings, rules and folios.

PDF (Portable Document Format): the file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a device-independent and display resolution-independent fixed-layout document format.

Tabs: A tabbing system is an inexpensive alternative to envelopes, sealing newsletters, brochures, and documents with adhesive or wafer tabs.

Template: Concerning a printing project's basic details in regard to its dimensions; a standard layout.

TIFF: Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) is a container format for storing images, including photographs and line art. TIFF is a popular format for color and black and white images. The TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page layout applications, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications.

RGG: The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue.

Uncoated Paper: Paper that has not been coated with clay. Also called offset paper.

UV Coating: Liquid applied to a printed sheet, then bonded and cured with ultraviolet light.*

*available with custom projects through PrintGen, LLC. only.

Artwork Guidelines

Please review this online resource when choosing and customizing your designs at PrintGen, LLC. You will find tips and recommendations to guide you through creating, locating and determining the images that will allow us to deliver you the highest quality product you expect.

Document Sizes

Business Card	3.5” x 2”
Note Card*	8” x 9” (4” x 9” folded)
Large Card*	8.5” x 11 (8.5” x 5.5” folded)
Small Card*	8.5” x 6 (4.25” x 6” folded))
Postcard Note Card	4” x 9”
Large Postcard	8.5” x 5.5”
Small Postcard	4.25” x 6”
Large Folder Postcard	5.5” x 8.5” folded
Flyer	8.5” x 11”
Flyer Folded	8.5” x 11” (folded)

*envelopes included

Acceptable File Formats

PDF (.pdf)
- All, except complex transparency may RIP incorrectly

EPS (.eps)
- Photoshop-based with ASCII or Jpeg encoding (All functions supported)
- Illustrator-based All versions (Some problems with CS2 and certain complex transparency). These must be at least 1"x1" in size.

TIFF (.tif, .tiff)
- 8 Bit Only
- Interleaved Pixel Order
- Mac or PC format
- with or without ICC Profile
- LZW On or OFF
- RGB or CMYK
(Not supported: Save Image Pyramid, Transparency, Alpha Channels, Layer Compression, Zip Compression, JPG Compression)

JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg)
- Standard Baseline Formatting ONLY
- RGB or CMYK

Production Time

We pride ourselves on our exceptional quality and service. Your product will ship within 3 working days from the day you place your order. Working days are business days: Monday through Friday, no holidays or weekends.

Color Match

Images are created in RGB (red, green, blue) or CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black). These color standards are used within the printing process. CMYK images are an exact match to the colors used on the printing presses, and RGB images are a closer match to the colors seen on a computer monitor and may vary slightly during the printing process. Please note that JPG images are almost always created in RGB. Creating TIF images in CMYK and JPG images in RGB is recommended for highest quality output.

Uploaded Image Quality

Resolution/DPI

For highest quality output, images at a 300 dpi resolution are required. DPI equals the dots per inch in an image; the higher the DPI (or resolution), the clearer and crisper your photo or image will appear on your printed piece. You cannot increase the resolution/DPI of an image just by increasing the dimensions; the quality of the image will be diminished. However, you can increase the resolution by decreasing the dimensions of the image (example: 5” x 7” image at 150 dpi can be reduced to 2.5” x 3.5” with a resolution of 300 dpi).

Digital Camera Images

If you intend to use personal images from your digital camera, please review your user guide closely. Verify that the settings are set to ensure a final resolution for your photo at 300 dpi for its final print size. On most general usage digital cameras, this is the highest setting and depends on the megapixels available on your camera.

Scanned Images

If you intend to use personal images you scan into your computer, please reference your user guide to ensure that your scanner is set to the highest resolution, like with your digital camera. Verify that the settings are set to ensure a final resolution for your photo at 300 dpi for its final print size. With most general usage scanners, the resolution defaults to 150 dpi, so be sure to check this before scanning your photo/image.

Internet Images

If you intend to use images from the Internet or web, please be careful. Because computer monitors require lower resolution to reflect a higher quality picture to the user, most images used on the web are set to a 72 dpi. Also, images with a higher resolution require more space/size in a computer’s memory or on their hard drive. As a result, since web images created at a lower resolution are acceptable quality for viewing and smaller in size, most web designers create them at a 72 dpi to allow hardware to run more efficiently.

Additionally, most images found on the Internet are owned and copyrighted by the owner of the website. Unless you own your image or obtain written permission to use an image, it is not recommended that you use an image you find on the Internet/web. If you would like logo or image designed, please contact our Creative Services Team for assistance.

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