Are you considering creating your marketing materials in-house, or have you already done so but would like to improve the efficiency, impact and cost effectiveness of your processes? If either of these scenarios describes you, you’ll probably find it well worth your while to learn Publisher by Microsoft. A desktop publishing system produced by Microsoft, Publisher has the best reputation for creating high-impact marketing campaigns efficiently and effectively. This reputation is not only a result of Publisher’s countless customizable design tools but is also due to the ease with which users are able to distribute and track the results of their marketing materials.

Should you decide to learn Publisher, here are just ten of the many ways you can use the desktop publishing program to streamline your in-house marketing:

1. Create Sleeker, More Intuitive Marketing Materials: Microsoft Publisher features pre-designed templates to get you started. You can manipulate these templates or create your own from scratch. Either way, Microsoft Publisher will aid you in creating polished-looking marketing materials using the program's intuitive task-oriented environment. Microsoft Publisher guides you through the process from the initial inception to the final distribution of e-mail, Web and print materials alike. You will learn that Publisher’s design tools let you adjust details from kerning to grids and guides, and nearly everything in between.

2. Produce Materials with Greater Ease and Efficiency: Once you learn Publisher, you can easily adapt pre-existing templates and even change from one type of publication to another simply by clicking Change Template. Publisher memorizes your business information and logo design, so you can apply them repeatedly as often as you like. Tasks not only simplify the process of designing your materials, but they also allow you to prepare custom mailing lists in a database program such as Excel® then import the data into Publisher.

3. Establish and Reflect Your Brand Identity: The ability to consistently reflect your company’s mission and culture with highly customized design, color and fonts that you can save and reuse is reason alone to learn Publisher. Publisher 2007 features dynamic preview so you can be sure to incorporate all of your brand elements using the Programs template.

4. Design Custom Publications: Publisher enables you to customize templates so you can send personalized publications containing links of interest to specific customers. Using Mail Merge, E-mail Merge and Catalog Merge you can choose a customer from a list and add text, images and links to that customer’s mailings. You can even merge customized pictures and text from another data source.

5. Track Results: One of the benefits of taking the time to learn Publisher is the ability to track the results of your marketing campaign. By integrating Publisher with Outlook® and Business Contact Manager, you can see how many responses you receive and compare them to your marketing expenses to determine overall effectiveness.

6. Learn Pointers: It’s easy to learn Publisher since it actually offers you pointers on how to design effective marketing materials and prepare them for mailing lists. These pointers are presented in the form of step-by-step, task-based articles.

7. Reuse Content: What better way to save time and money on marketing than by reusing relevant content? With Publisher you can create content such as contact info, logos and even templates, and adjust, insert or reuse them over and over.

8. Save Money on Printing: Once you start using it, Publisher lets you cut down on costly errors by previewing your materials in Professional Print mode. The program also alerts you of possible design errors and suggests how you may fix or improve them.

9. Reduce File Size: Publisher’s new Pack and Go Wizard feature, accessible in the Task pane, lets you send just one compressed file in a single format—instead of four—to your commercial printer.

10. Reach a Broader Customer Audience: Your materials will reach a wide audience thanks to Publisher’s ability to combine client lists from multiple programs and automatically distribute to those clients via e-mail. In addition to reaching the masses, you can adjust mailing to give them a personal touch.

Taking the time to learn Publisher lets you create marketing materials that are specially targeted to select customers in your database. The materials themselves present a sleeker, more professional look that requires less effort and can be produced in less time.