Beyond the Letter
In today’s digital age, direct mail remains a powerful tool for marketers to reach their audience in a tangible and personal way. With a variety of formats available beyond the standard letter, choosing the right direct mail format can be overwhelming. We can help!
From Ancient Letters to Modern Marvels
With over 30 years of experience, we’ve seen it all, from the common to the uncommon. Direct mail has evolved from simple letters into innovative formats such as postcards, bifold/trifold self-mailers, and dimensional mail. These options empower marketers to enhance their campaigns, reduce costs (at times), capture recipients’ attention, and drive engagement and conversions.
Let’s dive into these direct mail formats and explore which might be the best bet for your marketing efforts.
Postcards: The Budget-Friendly and Highly Visible Marketing Tool
Let’s start with a fan favorite – the postcard. Postcards are a budget-friendly and efficient direct mail tool, offering lower production and postage costs than more complex formats, making them ideal for reaching any audience size. One of their standout advantages is their immediate visibility, as postcards don’t require opening, ensuring the recipient sees the message right away. This, combined with their concise format, allows recipients to quickly grasp the key points, making postcards the ideal option for delivering clear and direct messages.
However, postcards have limitations: their smaller size restricts information, and exposed content makes them unsuitable for sensitive messages and vulnerable to scuffing. To maximize impact, use eye-catching graphics, keep messages clear, and target your audience carefully. Even in the digital age, postcards offer a memorable touchpoint in the mail.
Bifold & Trifold Self-Mailers: The Compact and Versatile Format for Effective Communication
Building on the visibility of postcards, bifold and trifold self-mailers provide a compact yet spacious format. They offer more space for detailed information and multiple images and present a professional appearance, enhancing your message’s overall perception. These versatile formats are suitable for introductions, special offers, and more.
Despite their advantages, they may incur higher printing and postage costs than postcards and risk being disregarded if not designed carefully. To make the most of these mailers, create a visually appealing design, use the extra space effectively, and include a compelling reason for recipients to open and engage.
Dimensional Mail: The Attention-Grabber
Dimensional mailers take engagement to the next level with their 3D shapes, sizes, and textures. They stand out in the mailbox and often enhance the recipient’s view of your brand due to their perceived value. Features like pop-ups, foldouts, or hidden items create a memorable experience and encourage recipients to spend more time with the mailer.
However, dimensional mailers come with a few drawbacks: they are costly to produce and ship, and their design and production can be complex and time-consuming. To maximize impact, use dimensional mailers for high-value targets or special campaigns, ensure durability, and personalize content to boost engagement.
Uncommon Formats: The Creative and Eye-catching Options
Iron Cross
Iron cross mailers are known for their intricate fold-out design, which offers a large canvas for detailed information and visuals. Their interactive unfolding process engages recipients and enhances recall. However, the complexity of this format can lead to higher production costs and potential damage during transit. Careful design, durable materials, and special handling are crucial to maximize its impact.
Roll-Up Mailers
Roll-up mailers stand out due to their novelty and interactive experience. Like iron cross formats, recipients must unroll the mail piece, which can captivate their attention and increase engagement. Despite their appeal, roll-ups present production challenges and can be costly to produce. Additionally, they may require special handling or packaging, which can increase mailing costs. To ensure effectiveness, design the roll-up for easy handling and readability, use high-quality materials, and consider testing the format with a smaller audience before a full rollout.
Additional Options
For even more creative formats, consider options like pop-ups, sliders, and rotation-type mailers. These can create a dramatic “WOW” factor and leave a lasting impression. While these innovative formats can enhance branding and visibility, they often come with higher costs and production complexity, making them best suited for special campaigns.
What to Consider When Choosing Your Direct Mail Format
Choosing the right direct mail format depends on several factors, including your budget, the complexity of your message, the target audience, and the campaign’s objective. Here are some key considerations:
- Budget: Ensure that the cost of production and mailing fits within your budget. As noted, postcards are more cost-effective, while dimensional mailers are more expensive but offer a higher impact. Additionally, consider the cost of personalization and any special printing techniques you might want to employ. Bulk mail discounts and potential savings on postage should also be factored in.
- Message Complexity: If your message is simple and direct, a postcard might suffice. For more detailed information, consider bifold/trifold self-mailers or even more elaborate formats like the Iron Cross. The format should support the clarity and effectiveness of your message delivery.
- Audience: Tailor the format to your audience’s preferences and behaviors. High-value targets might appreciate the novelty of dimensional mailers, while a broader audience might respond well to postcards.
- Timing: Consider the timing of your campaign. Certain formats may take longer to produce and deliver. Plan ahead to ensure your direct mail reaches recipients at the optimal time for maximum impact. Seasonal factors and industry-specific timings, such as the fiscal year-end for business audiences, should also be considered.
- Campaign Objective: Align the format with your campaign’s goal. If brand recall is crucial, an interactive format like a roll-up might be ideal. For special offers, self-mailers could be more appropriate. Your format should facilitate the desired action, whether it’s visiting a website, redeeming a coupon, or attending an event.
Final Thoughts
The evolution of direct mail from simple letters to innovative formats like postcards, dimensional mail, and bifold/trifold self-mailers has transformed how marketers engage with audiences. Each format offers unique benefits, from the cost-effective visibility of postcards to the high-impact, tactile experience of dimensional mailers and the versatile design options of self-mailers. Choosing the right format can significantly enhance your campaign’s effectiveness, capture attention, and drive higher engagement and conversions. By leveraging these creative options, your brand can stand out in a crowded market and achieve better results.
Ready to take your marketing campaigns to the next level? Let us help you design and execute a campaign that captures attention and drives results. Contact the experts at Strata to get started today.
From Long Sales Cycles to Fostering Loyalty, Dimensional Mail Often Works Best
There is a large number of incredible digital opportunities— automated emails, direct correspondence, pop-up ads, video ads. Yet, there’s a challenge in the overabundance of digital competition.
What do you do when the hottest marketing platform the world has ever known — the internet — presents such a substantial challenge?
A smart and savvy solution is to invest more heavily in physical direct marketing and pair it with your digital efforts. Despite the decades-long digital obsession of the marketing world, tactile and experience-rich direct marketing is continuing to succeed where its purely digital counterpart falters.
There’s a reason most industries — from global technology companies and Ivy League Universities to retail stores and your local pizza shop — run direct mail campaigns as crucial parts of their marketing initiatives.
Here are four reasons why:
Digital Overload
Some people refer to it as e-fatigue. Some people have labeled it digital burnout.
While the Internet is an ultra-valuable asset to every flourishing business, it can also be a significant challenge, like when we see too many digital ads. This competition can tire us, resulting in us paying less attention.
In fact, our attention span had dropped from to an average of 8 seconds.
The challenge with digital isn’t just digital; it’s digital distraction — there are simply too many options immediately available to your audience to compete with.
We can use the idea of a teacher and tutor as an analogy for digital vs physical marketing.
Mass-scale digital marketing is like a teacher trying to educate a large, loud, distracted classroom — he or she may get a few words to especially attentive ears, but most of the students are so distracted by their environment, they’ll likely walk away with nothing.
Physical direct marketing, on the other hand, is more like a tutor that comes to your home, spends one-on-one time with you in an environment with far fewer distractions, and gets you acquainted with the material on a deep and lasting level.
The analogy extends: you don’t only use a tutor, you use a tutor to supplement the teacher — use both digital and physical for best results.
Long Sales Cycles
A place where high-impact physical direct marketing thrives, particularly when digital marketing is used as supplementary technique, is within long sales cycles.
Where digital may be a great way to begin creating brand awareness and invaluable in the consumer learning experience, it can be difficult to close the deal via digital platforms alone.
There are a few contributing factors here. For one, even personalized digital campaigns can lack the personal touch required to build trust and consumer confidence. Rarely does digital alone suffice to propel your audience into the final stages of the sales cycle. Another shortcoming of a purely digital strategy lies in the aforementioned competition for attention online, particularly in the case of social media.
Powerful tactile experiences, especially those delivered in the form of high-value direct mail such as dimensional mailers, can get you over these hurdles by conveying personal interest in your audience. They also keep your product at the forefront of consumer consciousness by entering avenues that competing products may sometimes neglect, i.e. entering their physical realm via the mailbox.
In a long sales cycle, these traits specific to physical direct marketing are invaluable.
Brand Loyalty
Brand loyalty is one of the most challenging aspects of modern-day business. With so much competition, it’s important not only to build a connection with your consumer, but to foster the development of that relationship in unique and thoughtful ways.
One of the best ways to build brand loyalty is through physical direct marketing efforts. This is particularly true when it comes to promotional items delivered via dimensional direct mail. We’ve touched on this before: a dimensional mailer consists of direct marketing materials that come in a box or another, 3-dimensional vehicle.
Not only do these tactile direct marketing experiences – through their dimensional presence – have the power to cut through the static, but they also have the ability to offer unique gifts or other promotional items. For instance, a “thank you” campaign sent out to valued customers can include everything from key chains and water bottles all the way to tablets and other high-end electronic accessories.
This kind of thoughtfulness and unique mailer does something that digital struggles to — it builds a real connection between brand and consumer. It speaks to a brand who truly values a customer and their business.
Influencing Silent Decision Makers
With virtually limitless information so readily available on the internet, more and more buyers have become silent decision makers. This means that most buyers aren’t reaching out to businesses to learn more about their products, instead relying on user reviews and independent research to form their opinions.
Physical direct marketing once again shines here, giving your brand the opportunity to stand apart and reach silent decision makers via a less competitive channel. If you can separate yourselves via physical direct marketing and convert that into an additional opportunity to make your case, you stand a good chance of making a lasting impression.
When it’s time for the silent buyer to pull the trigger, that impression you made with physical direct marketing may make all the difference.
An Invaluable Tool
With physical, experience-rich direct marketing’s ability to bypass digital channel overload, it’s no wonder why marketers consider it an invaluable tool. It possesses a unique ability to retain consumer focus through long sales cycles, building brand loyalty and influencing silent decision makers.
Are you working on a new product launch, looking to close a stalled deal, or simply want to strengthen existing customer relationships? Contact us to learn about our innovative approach to capturing mindshare, enhancing loyalty, and driving more high-qualified leads to the pipeline.
Helpful Tips to Generate Response from Your Next Postcard Mailer
An effectively designed, well-thought out direct mail postcard can net response beyond expectations. Create a postcard that’s going to stand out – rather than get tossed out – with these suggestions. (Note: incorporating some of these tips will depend on your goals and budget).
- Consider Going Big
There are a few reasons to consider an oversize postcard format:- A larger size naturally attracts more attention.
- Oversize postcards have been shown to perform better in terms of response rate, according to recent Association of National Advertiser reports.
- They are less likely to get lost in the shuffle.
- Extra space means more room for impactful design and messaging.
However, you’ll want to consult USPS mailing guidelines for postcards. Postcards that exceed 4.25-inches by 6-inches in size are classified as a letter mailing, and will cost more to mail.
- Design to Draw the Eye
To have any chance of competing for attention in the mailbox, postcards need eye-catching design that also works to support a campaign’s messaging and goals.- Avoid an overly busy design. Rather, design around a focal point using visual design hierarchy principles.
- If your postcard needs to feature several products (e.g., weekly sale items), use a grid layout to achieve an organized rather than chaotic appearance.
- Choose the Right Paper
Paper weight and texture can communicate volumes about the value of your mailing – something to think about investing a little extra in, depending on goals and audience:- A thicker weight feels sturdier and more dependable and will stand up to the mailing process.
- A too-thin paper risks coming across as flimsy and getting damaged in the mailing process.
- Textured paper adds a tactile element, another way to draw attention.
(Again, USPS guidelines are a factor: a thickness greater than 0.016-inch will cost more to mail.)
- Try Unusual Formats and Print Techniques
As with paper choices, these attention-grabbing features can increase project costs, so ROI will come into play when making these decisions.- Try a die-cut format for an unusual, eye-catching shape. Tie the shape into your company’s product or service offerings for added resonance.
- Perforated tear-off coupons can add sizzle to your offer.
- Including a simple giveaway (e.g., a magnet) will add noticeability and value.
- Printing techniques like foil-stamping and embossing can instantly draw the eye. They may be best used for higher-end mailings – think invitations to a new location’s open house, introducing a premium product or service, and other similar promotions.
- Make Copy Work Hard
The space constraints of a postcard mean you need to choose words wisely. Write to focus attention on the action message – what you want recipients to do.- Craft an attention-commanding headline that builds curiosity.
- Include very minimal supporting information – just enough to tempt recipients to follow through on the call to action, or take advantage of your offer.
- Use copywriting “power words” – words that spark interest and action. Check out a list here.
- Be clear, don’t confuse your readers, and be action-oriented: Tell recipients how to take the next step.
- Make It Personal
Relevant mail is far more likely to be saved and acted on. With the depth and breadth of data available today, the sky’s the limit regarding personalization. Here are a few pointers:- Personalize with an offer on products you know a recipient likes based on purchasing history, or include an image of a product recently viewed online.
- Include region-specific maps for your businesses closest retail location of office site.
- Use personal URLs (PURLs), a form of personalization that incorporates a prospect’s name into the landing page web address, to instantly capture attention.
Investing in marketing automation software greatly boosts efficiency and accuracy in executing a personalized campaign. Also, make sure to choose a printer with variable data print capabilities.
- Partner with a Direct Mail Expert That Can Tie It all Together.
Developing an effective direct mail postcard campaign becomes much simpler when you work with a vendor that provides professional design, printing and mailing services. With expert guidance on the creative points discussed above, plus someone else to handle the print and mailing details, you get more time to focus on big-picture goals and strategy. Plymouth Meeting, PA-based Strata Company specializes in data-driven direct marketing and technologies that help companies create more relevant, personalized marketing. A leader in direct mail marketing for nearly two decades, Strata has experience helping businesses create highly targeted multichannel marketing campaigns. Contact us to learn more.