GLS Puts a New Spin on a Holiday Tradition for Piper Jaffray

Every year, as most people are busily preparing for the upcoming holiday season, the marketing folks at Piper Jaffray are preparing themselves for a busy holiday card-ordering period. For many years, Piper Jaffray has offered a program that allows employees to send cards to clients, vendors and business partners around the globe.

As the company continues to grow, so does the amount of time that it takes to coordinate this holiday-greeting tradition. In the past, this process would normally involve several marketing, printing and distribution employees who would take orders, enter them into an Excel spreadsheet, determine the final quantity, print the internally designed cards and then deliver them to employees for mailing.

To make the process more efficient, Julie Swanson, vice president of capital markets marketing, turned to trusted partner GLS and Account Executive Leif Taubenberger. For years, GLS and Piper Jaffray have collaborated on projects ranging from research reports to high-end marketing collateral pieces.

“It’s a great system that simplified the process for everyone—from those who administered the project, to the employees who ordered the cards and also for our team in the Distribution Center who was responsible for delivering the cards.” – Julie Swanson, – Vice President of Capital Markets – Marketing, Piper Jaffray

“Piper Jaffray has worked with GLS for more than two decades,” Julie said. “They are one of our most frequently used vendors.”

To best leverage GLS’ wide range of services, including Web development, Julie and her team met with Leif and challenged GLS to come up with an online solution to their holiday card ordering process. The objective of the project was to make ordering the holiday cards simple enough that everyone would use it, and to provide back-end reporting to the program administrators. GLS’ IT team pulled together and developed a system that put everyone in the holiday spirit.

For this program, GLS developed a website consisting of an online ordering vehicle that linked to the Piper Jaffray intranet. Piper Jaffray employees simply clicked on a link and were immediately transported to the custom-built holiday card-ordering page where the ordering process was easier than ever! Soon after ordering, the employee received an e-mail confirmation with an order number and estimated delivery date. In addition, the site allowed program administrators at Piper Jaffray to see the orders as they were placed.

Using the design provided by Piper Jaffray, GLS printed more than 25,000 blank shells and placed them in their warehouse. Although the card had one unifying “look,” Piper Jaffray employees were able to choose from three different holiday greetings for the inside. Upon receiving card orders, GLS would pull the exact quantity of shells from its warehouse and imprint the selected verse(s). From there, the cards were packaged in heavy-gauge shrink-wrap, labeled with the employee’s name and mail station, and sent to the Piper Jaffray Distribution Center for delivery.

The system that GLS developed was a welcome change for the employees who administered the project, as well as those who ordered cards.

Julie remarked, “It’s a great system that simplified the process for everyone—from those who administered the project, to the employees who ordered the cards and also for our team in the Distribution Center who was responsible for delivering the cards.” Given the success of this program, Piper Jaffray is likely to develop more online solutions in the future.

“Leif delivered on our requirements and met our objectives,” Julie summarized, adding that GLS’ service is focused on her company’s needs.

After all, during the busy holiday season, great teamwork has a good ring to it.

www.piperjaffray.com