1. Think of the meeting as a marketing opportunity. You’ve booked the hall, assembled the brass and put out the coffee, so make the most of it. Consider how best to get favorable and highly remarketable press coverage from it. Think about holding pre– and post–meeting visits with customers, suppliers, local officials, or other bigwigs and your top management team.
   
   
2. Peddle your products. They ought to be prominently featured in your AR – and on display and available for purchase at your AM site. Warren Buffett, for example, sends you an insurance application with every Bershire Hathaway AR. Companies like 3M and CSX, which holds its AM at the Greenbrier, which it owns – make some serious money at their meetings. More than a few smart companies use the extra space on the proxy card for detachable coupons to give stockholders a special deal.
   
   
3. Remarket your Annual Report. For most companies, the AR is far and away the biggest annual meeting expenditure. What with writers, design consultants, editors, chartmakers, photographers, printing and production, it’s not unusual for a company to spend three or four months and $10–$12 a copy for something that ends up in the trash in a month or less. Why not get your full money’s worth? Think of three or four other ways to use selected highlights from the AR; say for the sales force to mail or leave behind with customers and prospects, for the information of prospective employees, to replace or supplement "fact sheets" aimed at retail brokers and investors and to reuse in your print advertising and on your web site.
   
   
4. Reuse the theme and the artwork all year. Aside from being two of the biggest cost elements, if you have a good theme, and good visual tie–ins – as all annual reports should have – they bear repeating. In fact, the impact grows with each repetition.
   
   
5. Spread the AM expense – and the benefits too – over thousands more people by webcasting your meeting live. Rebroadcast the highlights for another two or three months.
   
   
6. Use the planning sessions that you have to have anyway to review, refresh, and sharpen your crisis management plan. Think about it. During the season you’re dealing with everyone you’d need to have on board in a crisis – whether it’s an IR, PR, or operational event, a proxy contest or a takeover attempt. A well–oiled plan will not only save money, should you need to use it, it can save your corporate life!
   
   
7. Use your proxy card to do some very low cost/high performance market research. Stockholder response to questionnaires that can be returned and tabulated with the proxy has been extraordinarily high and the incremental cost to you is incredibly low.
   
   
8. Re–market your DRP. The required AM mailing presents a totally cost–free way to reach every single stockholder with the message. Use the Chairman’s letter, it’s the AR’s most–read section. Cite statistics (i.e., % participation and the value of a $1,000 investment after five years of reinvesting). Make it easy for shareholders to get more info and to sign up.
   
   
9. Reuse the NOBO file (that’s the file of street–name holders – beneficial owners–who are non–objectors to receiving corporate literature) to send your next interim report. Even though you’ll miss a few new owners and mail to a few recent sellers of your stock, it’s just not worth it to pay for the names a second time four or five months later.
   
   
10. Combine the NOBO file with your file of registered holders and "household" across the entire base. We know companies that can eliminate 50% or more of the mailings by householding their interim reports in this manner.

Readers, if you have questions or want to talk–through any of these suggestions, feel free to call the editor. The OPTIMIZER comes with the promise of some free consulting on any shareholder relations or shareholder servicing matter.