Playing chess is back in vogue now, thanks to the Netflix show The Queen's Gambit. If you want to win at marketing, you can take some basic chess principles and apply them to your own plans for 2021:

Corporate franchisor marketing teams put in countless hours and Herculean effort into the overarching marketing strategy that protects the brand and serves the franchisees. The most successful 'zors provide their 'zees with a Marketing Playbook featuring all the approved marketing channels, collateral, assets, examples and how-to's making marketing at the local level easy, affordable, and attainable. They know that when franchisees win, everyone wins.

The USPS has received permission to move ahead with six postage promotions for mailers this year. The 2021 promotions are similar to the past two year's promotions. The promotions for First Class Mail are Earned Value and Personalized and Preprinted Color Transpromo. The Emerging & Technology and the Informed Delivery promotions can use either First Class Mail or Marketing Mail, while the Tactile, Sensory & Interactive Engagement and Mobile Shopping promos are only for Marketing Mail.

For all of the challenges that 2020 has thrown at us, there have been some bright spots as well. Most recently, the Adobe MAX conference was converted to a digital experience, as so many things have been. But more importantly, the registration fee was waived for all. Adobe saw the need to do its part to spark as much creativity as possible, while showcasing its incredible suite of tools for the creatives of the world of all experience levels.

Here are some of the most interesting new design tips and tricks our team took from the conference:

Now that the election is over, the biggest news headlines in mail are the upcoming holiday shipping deadlines and proposed postage pricing changes for 2021. Here's the USPS news you can use now:

Did you know that only 4% of website visitors convert on average?

There's a chill in the air and the leaves are changing colors. You know what that means - winter is coming! If you are looking for ways to associate your brand with warm thoughts during a cold season, here are some ideas:

Quick Response (QR) codes got their humble start in the mid 1990s to track inventory in a warehouse or manufacturing environment. It was promoted from there that QR codes could be used to link printed materials to websites and apps, landing pages, and to enable touchless ordering experiences.

The clamor for consumer attention only gets more complicated and crowded over time. Digital marketing experts now estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements each day! These ads are coming from an ever-increasing list of channels: billboards, radio, TV, phone calls, email, direct mail, social media, website banner ads, Google AdWords, text messages, etc.

The honor of walking the stage for the Certified Franchise Executive (CFE) graduation ceremony at the International Franchise Association (IFA) Annual Convention in February has been a highlight of 2020. At the first franchising conference I attended in 2015, the Franchise Consumer Marketing Conference, I had the good fortune of meeting Steve Schildwachter, the CMO at BrightStar Care at the time. He advised me to immediately join IFA and then said, "If you're going to work in this industry you really need your CFE."