Tag Archive for: commercial printing companies

Even with all the social media marketing and internet advertising, there is still no substitute for a smart, targeted, and well-designed direct mailing campaign. Direct mail is appropriate for any size business and are a great way to get your message in front of a targeted, motivated audience.  But it takes proper planning, the right target, and a great design to get noticed. Before you start to plan your campaign, here are some tips to help your holiday mailer on the right track.

Make sure you have the right target – How you go about choosing the right target is the most important part of your campaign. The greatest design in the world is meaningless in front of the wrong target. It’s pointless to send a postcard about roofing repair to an apartment complex, right? If you don’t have a working prospect list, you’ll have to find one that uses the right target criteria.

Make sure your mailer looks great – If your mailer looks dated and is poorly designed, it can do more damage than good. In fact, people will connect poor design to poor service. A better way is to design something memorable that shows your company as a vibrant, competent provider of a service or product. The content should be clear and free of typos, poor grammar, or misleading claims. The look should be colorful with pictures and easy-to-understand graphics. Your mailer should stand out, be relevant, and be useful.  This is an important way your piece will avoid being considered “junk mail.”

Use different sizes and colors – Larger and differently shaped mailers helps your piece stand out from the rest and gives you more room to add content which is more useful than standard postcards, or letter sizes. Color is an important factor to making your mailing piece stand out from the rest. Bright, vibrant hues of green and yellows are great ways to do this.

Anticipate a realistic response – If you send out 2,500 mailers you shouldn’t expect to close hundreds of new deals.  In fact, the response rate for a direct mailing campaign is between 6 and 3%. This figure should be used when trying to determine what kind of success you need to have in order for your campaign to be profitable.

Look at the competition – Remember that other companies are sending out mailers too and even if they aren’t direct competitors, you should get an idea about how they approach their mailer pieces. The best place to start is your own mailbox. Take a look at pieces that catch your eye and use those aspects for your next piece. Imitation is the best form of flattery after all.

Use QR codes – these make it very easy for a customer to scan and head to whatever online resource you want to send them to. This could be your homepage, a blog about your product offering for the holiday season, or a specific product listing on your site.

Track the response – Make it easy for you customers to contact you, but also remember to make it easy to track how they got to you. This will help you gauge the profitability of this campaign and give you feedback that will allow you to improve later campaigns.

Plan ahead – The best time to get your marketing materials in front of a customer is the week before Black Friday. Black Fridays are planned ahead of time nowadays as shoppers want to maximize their bargains and with your mailer in hand they can add your store to the list.

Presort can not only print and get your mailer distributed, we can assist you with the marketing research needed to find the most potential customers and make your campaign a success.  Call us today!

 

Intertwined Marketing Campaigns = Increased Audience Engagement

In an era where marketing is more dependent on technology than ever before, it’s hard to fathom that direct mail marketing is something you need to get involved in. Sure, tech-heavy campaigns can offer a lot that traditional printing can’t, but that doesn’t mean that they should be ruled out entirely. There are myriad benefits to diversifying the mediums you advertise on; the more you expand your audience, the more likely you are to attract more customers. Plus, there are exciting, proven ways to cohesively tie in your digital marketing with your direct mail campaign. We’ve highlighted some of the most effective ways you can incorporate technology into your next mail campaign to create engaging content that generates tangible results.

Augmented Reality

With an interactive interface that overlays digital elements on a mailer’s physical service, Augmented Reality (AR) brings further context, movement, and tangible connection to your piece. Able to be activated through a consumer’s smartphone, camera, or tablet, AR brings sights, sounds, and scenery that that’s seemingly far away that much closer.

Video-In-Print

First impressions are important than ever—with so much content available across multiple mediums, you need to make sure that your brand stands out. An in-print video gives your customers a chance to watch your advertisement play out so that they can explore more about your brand while remaining engaged with on-message marketing.

Redesigned QR Codes

Quick Response (QR) codes give your customers an opportunity to explore an online store, product video, or live stream tangible content. They’re an optimal medium to get as much information to the customer as possible without overwhelming them. QR codes can work in tandem to help customers instantly purchase specific products or look up other things you have to offer.

Buy Now Technology

Social media is more than just for browsing when you’re bored (even though there’s still plenty of that); it’s officially transitioned to a more buying-intensive experience, implementing scanning technology for digitally-enabled mail can drive new customers to your social media platforms, and vice-versa.

Near Field Communication (NFC)

NFC allows recipients to instantaneously engage with your digital content without having to download a cumbersome app or open a new tab. A microchip embedded in your mail piece emits short-range radio waves that communicate with mobile phones to activate an engaging digital experience. You can offer your customers unprecedented access like never before, all by just installing a user-friendly piece of technology.

A marketing campaign’s success is contingent on how effectively grounded it is across several mediums. If you have multiple unique options that all interact with each other, you increase the chances of reaching your target market. Don’t limit yourself to solely print marketing or adhering closely to an email list; a combination between digital and print direct mail is the best way to have your voice be heard at the level you want it to be.

 

Make your mark with postcard printing.

You might normally associate a postcard with a faraway place that your parents went to once, but they can be a whole lot more than that with the right marketing strategy. Postcard printing and mailing services can be a huge boon for your company if done effectively—their high readability, cost-effective price, and high-quality, full-color design combine to make them a potent marketing tool in the right hands.

You might be hearing more and more noise recently about going digital. Pouring all of your resources into digital marketing isn’t necessarily a bad move, given how effective that’s proven to be for so many businesses. But if you do have room in your budget to diversify your options, it’s a no-brainer—more advertising platforms are better than less and spreading the word about what you have to offer across multiple mediums ensures that you gain traction in areas that otherwise might go untapped. We’ve highlighted some of the most pertinent benefits of printing custom postcards for your business so that you can effectively reach more potential customers than ever before.

  • They’re cost-effective: When it comes to deciding what marketing strategy you want to roll out for your business, the cost is an enormous factor. You must analyze which marketing strategy is going to yield the best results for the lowest price; as we mentioned above, diversifying your options is always a healthy decision if you’re looking to veer away from putting all of your eggs in one basket.
  • They’re measurable: Unlike convoluted, sprawling marketing campaigns, postcards offer a direct reflection on how effective your product is at reaching customers. You know how many you sent out, and you know how many inquiries or sales it generated. They’re perfect for test marketing—you can send out a small sample size and see what kind of response you get.
  • They’re versatile: Postcard printing services can be fine-tuned to meet your specific needs. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution—whatever you envision for your brand, whether it’s a specific font, color scheme, or image, printing postcards is one of the best ways to get that message across in a unique way.
  • They’re efficient: As soon as your audience receives your postcard, they receive the message—no opening tricky envelopes, no strings attached. Delivered right to your door, direct mail postcard campaigns are an effective way to get your information in the right hands without coming across convoluted.
  • They’re easy to produce: No more languishing around, waiting for your marketing campaign to finally roll out. Postcard printing gives you the opportunity to hit the ground running and get your message out quickly and effectively.
  • They’re ideal for targeted marketing: Not seeing the results that you anticipated with your advertising? It might be an issue with who your mail is being sent to. Targeted marketing is easier than ever with postcard printing. Make sure that your information falls in the right hands.

 

Marketing has come a long way in the last 30 years. The internet has invented all kinds of new ways to put your product or service in front of consumers. But even with these flashy new marketing tools there has always been one way to get your product noticed, direct mail.

What is direct mail?

Advertising through the mail is as old as the postal service itself. It involves creating physical promotional material and sending it to prospective customers to drive business and increase awareness for your product or service. This form of marketing can be in the form of postcards, brochures, letters, flyers, newsletters, catalogs, coupon envelopes, and packages, is indirectly unsolicited through the use of mailing lists which leads to it sometimes being referred to as “junk mail.” But its versatility and its ability to sell has remained strong.

What is so great about direct mail services?

It is the perfect substitute for an actual sales person – In fact it may be even better. A good seller will go to a prospect, educate the prospect about your product, show them the benefits answer questions, and actively close the sale. But the physical presence of a salesperson, goading the prospect for the sale, presenting a sometimes heavy and sometimes misguided pitch, may turn a prospect off. Some consumers want the information, but they could do without the pressure. This is where direct mail can work as a salesperson. It presents the information, even gives the customer something they can show to friends and relatives and puts the decision to buy in their hands. Let them come to you because one they have decided they have interest, it is easy to close.

The look of your materials will say a lot about your product – Consumers will equate a slick, well designed direct mail piece to your company as a competent business, and your product as the best at what it does. Your marketing piece represents who and what your business is about so if you are offering a high-quality, professional service, your mailing needs to reflect that.

People love getting mail – And by sending them a direct marketing piece, you can be reasonably sure that the piece will reach its audience as opposed to an email that is either ignored, automatically sorted to junk mail, or immediately deleted.

With direct mail, you are bringing your message to its exact audience – Think of it as using a pencil to draw a picture instead of a can of spray paint. Your mailing lists can be one that you have cultivated yourself from former customers or one that you buy from a source that has tailored it to the exact audience you want.

It isn’t as expensive as you might think – Here is where Presort can help. If you are interested in a direct mailing campaign, we will help you make it a reality. Call us today and speak to our marketing experts about how you want your product presented, what other marketing your business uses, and your goals for your direct mailing campaign. We can design a campaign that will help you accomplish them.