Tag Archive for: Tips for Custom Postcard Printing

Tips To Help You Design Engaging Direct Mail

Direct mail is a great marketing tactic to build rapport with your customers. A great mail piece is something that will make a lasting impression on your target audience. It speaks directly to the consumer and relays a message that resonates to their needs. Today, one of the most important components of a mail marketing campaign is the element of graphic design.

 

As experts in direct mail graphic design, we’ve learned the best approaches needed to pull off a successful direct outreach campaign. If you want to put together more creative direct mail designs, then make sure you practice these strategies:

Keep It Simple:

By now, you’ve probably heard the phrase, “less is more.” This is extremely vital when your company is putting together a mail campaign. When it comes to direct mail marketing, simplicity is the best approach to take. Don’t overfill your mail piece with pictures and long content. Use simple pictures and relevant information that is easy for readers to remember.

Be Brief And Quick To The Point:

Active images and a distinctive design are the most important parts of any tangible mail piece. A high-quality piece of mail always has one clear call to action boldly labeled. Aside from that, you want to use as little content as possible in order to get your message across. Be direct and use brief details.

Add Color:

When you are designing and printing mail advertisements, color is one of the essential elements that will enhance your piece. Use an eye-popping color that grabs the reader’s attention. An appropriate color scheme will trigger an emotional connection with the reader.

Utilize Imagery:

Adding graphics to your design is a great way to convey your message. A powerful image will stimulate the brain much faster than reading text. Be creative and avoid using  stock images as much as possible. Don’t over clutter the design with a bunch of different images. This can be overwhelming for your audience to look at. As a rule of thumb, it’s best to use two to three images per piece.

Use Sense-Appealing Elements:

Colors and graphics are usually the most exciting parts of your design, but it’s important to use the right ones. Additionally, it’s also important to design a piece that appeals to the rest of your senses. Don’t just create a design that looks great. Make sure the body of the document is a smooth, yet enticing texture. If you really want to make the right impression on your audience, then choose a comfortable texture like a glossy finish.

Size Appropriately:

When it comes to direct mail, the size of the finished product can be a major difference maker. There’s nothing wrong with standard postcards, but sometimes it’s best to go against the grain. Sending out prints that are noticeably larger or smaller will stand out to prospects and customers. This is a subtle way to differentiate you from your competitors.

Create Personal Messages That Resonate:

Personalization and authenticity are key to sending mail that will persuade your audience. Personalize your designs towards individuals on your mailing list. This shows customers that you genuinely care about solving their problems. Offering a personal service in your mail piece will show people that you have a trustworthy solution that serves their needs.

 

Factors for Analyzing a Successful Direct Mail Campaign

Is your direct mail printing strategy effective enough?

Starting up a direct mail campaign without having specific metrics in place is a recipe for disaster. If you’re not diligent about adhering to a set of predetermined factors to measure yourself by, then you’re already putting yourself at a disadvantage; how can you ever hope to understand whether or not it’s successful if you don’t even have a method to measure that success?

An effective campaign relies on heavily backed data to emphasize what went well or highlight where it fell short. Without that in-depth analysis, it’s impossible to make the proper adjustments for your next direct mail advertising campaign. So, what factors do you need to be looking at? We’ve outlined a helpful guide below so that you know exactly what you need to do to make sure your mail ends up in the right hands.

  • Results: Sure, this one might seem like it should go without saying. But you’d be surprised at how frequently there’s a disconnect between what you’re offering and whether or not potential customers take the bait. If your mailing list isn’t generating results, then it’s time to think critically about why: Was there interest with no purchase? Where specifically did your numbers fall short? See what about your process turned customers off, and what about that specific part made them wary of moving forward.
  • The Offer: Is this the second, third, or maybe even fourth time that you’ve tested this offer? If so, think about what offer you’re putting out there, and how its message might be compromised by myriad factors. Make sure what you’re trying to say is coming across loud and clear; if clarity isn’t the issue, make sure that the message aligns more closely with what your audience is looking for.
  • Audience: Direct mail services live and die based on the people they reach. Make sure that the audience that you’ve identified is one that you’re trying to bring in, and that they’ve been identified because they’re the best candidates for what you have to offer.
  • Size: Direct mail postcards might vary in size, but that doesn’t mean you have to go gonzo and pick a size and look that’s obnoxiously large. You want your message to stand out, but you don’t want to be intrusive. If you’ve used a similarly-sized piece of mail before and it’s been successful, stick to playing the hits; if not, it’s time to make a change.
  • Design: Design is more than the simple placement of colors or images; you need to select specific color-schemes and on-brand images that get your message across effectively. Make sure that the layout is in keeping with what you’re trying to say to your audience.
  • Copy: Now that you’ve got their attention with an eye-catching design, make sure your copy backs up the message in a conducive way. Make sure that your font is eye-catching—highlight or bold the most important words and stay away from confusing language.
  • Timing: When it comes to engaging customers, timing is everything. Mailboxes are more cluttered than ever around election time, so try and avoid that season for revving up your direct mail campaign.

For small businesses and large corporations alike, high-quality marketing campaigns are a critical component. They require less resources than a costly digital campaign; delivered right to your door, direct mail business cards, free samples, and engaging written content are a great way to drum up interest in what you have to offer. As long as you’re committed to quality printing for your postcard design and strategically map out when you need to kick things into high gear, you should be in good shape.

Tips for a Successful Holiday Direct Mail Campaign

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!

 

Direct Mail Digital Technologies

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.