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When it comes to Thanksgiving, the bigger the better, and the more the merrier. Twenty pound turkeys, cups brimming with spiced cider, tables overflowing with rich, seasonal food—indulgence is very much the theme. But why stop at food? Deck out your table this holiday and shower your guests with all the festivity they can handle with these festiveThanksgiving printables.

Set your table with personalized name cards

Adding personalized name cards to your Thanksgiving table is not only a great way to spruce up your decor, but it also relieves guests from having to awkwardly navigate who to sit next to when the time comes to take a seat. As a bonus, your guests will feel well taken care of when they see their name at their designated seat.

 There are countless Thanksgiving place card ideas. You can go for something classic and formal, like calligraphy on printed cardstock, or something a bit more fun, like a die-cut place card in the shape of a leaf, or a name tag fitted onto a tiny pumpkin. 

For extra Thanksgiving flair, top off each place card or place setting with seasonal greenery, like rosemary, pinecones, or cranberries for an added pop of color and smell. At the end of the night, you can even invite your guests to take their place card home as a souvenir.

What’s better than leftovers? A recipe!

It’s great to send guests home with leftovers, but why not give them something that will last, like a custom recipe booklet featuring your mouth-watering stuffing secret, your sweet and savory yams, or your grandmother’s renowned pumpkin pie? It’s a special Thanksgiving printable that will remind your guests of your party for years to come and allow them to recreate and share your trademark Thanksgiving dishes. 

We offer booklet printing services that are perfect for bringing your personalized recipe book to life. In addition to the usual options—like booklet size, type of paper, and binding—we have several special printing effects that can take your Thanksgiving printable to the next level, such as spot UV. With this coating, you can add selective glossiness to your prints, creating a dynamic contrast on the page.

“Spot UV is really easy to work with! It’s something that catches people’s eye,” explains Brooke Seidel, Quad Lead at Printing for Less. “For example, if you already have something designed, it’s really simple to put fall leaves as a spot gloss in the back of the design.”

Look ahead to the new year with custom calendars

When Thanksgiving rolls around at the end of November, it’s a good reminder that a new year is right around the corner. In anticipation of new and exciting things on the horizon, printing a series of custom calendars can make the perfect gift for your dinner guests. 

If you’ve got a knack for photography, pick your favorite photos from each month of the past year and use them for calendar pages. Think budding flowers for May, pumpkin patches for October, etc. Alternatively, fill the calendar with funny or sentimental photos of you and your Thanksgiving guests from over the years. It’s a great way for everyone to keep their loved ones in mind all year long.

Calendars come in many shapes and sizes. For instance, you can choose a compact desktop calendar or a wall-hanging calendar with larger images. You can also pick from a variety of print finishes, including high-gloss UV or soft touch coatings, as well as embossed pages, foil stamping, or metallic inks.

Bottle up fall flavors with custom hang tags

Surprise your Thanksgiving guests at the end of the evening with a little something sweet to take home. Make a batch of autumn-inspired cranberry cordial, fragrant rosemary syrup, or everyone’s favorite pumpkin spice mix. From there, all you have to do is bottle it up, and attach a custom hang tag to the bottle, in the style of Alice in Wonderland’s “Drink Me” potion.

Hang tags are a great way to not only indicate what’s inside the bottle, but also to share kind words of thanks, a recipe, or an anecdote. Did you make the rosemary syrup from home-grown rosemary? Say so! Does it go well mixed into a particular cocktail? Share the recipe!

For a small gathering, you can opt to make your own tags, but for a bigger crowd why not print a batch of hang tags or bottle neckers? The tags will elevate your take-home gift and allow you to show off your personal brand and creativity.

Give thanks with a custom greeting card

In the spirit of giving thanks, send each of your guests a greeting card in the weeks following Thanksgiving to thank them for celebrating with you. You can always go buy a box of pre-printed thank you cards, but a custom card will show your family and friends how grateful you are to spend time with them and take your host rating from A to A+.

As with our other printing services, our greeting cards and postcards can be personalized in many ways, using die cuts, special inks, and coatings. “You could die cut fall leaves on a postcard, or you could use UV coating, or incorporate an interesting folding,” says Ambre Zachmann, eCommerce Marketing Specialist. “I’ve also seen soft touch included in fall campaigns. It’s adding a soft, almost velvety touch to a piece. Imagine soft fall leaves on a card.”

“Greeting cards are a great option around Thanksgiving,” adds Printing for Less Account Executive Kristi Eby. “We can even handle all the shipping of the cards or gifts.” Indeed, at Printing for Less we not only can print your custom thank you cards, we can also take care of mailing them. 

Happy Thanksgiving from the Printing for Less team!

Printable products—like place cards, booklets, calendars, bottle tags, and greeting cards—can up your hosting game and elevate any holiday. Give these ideas a try this Thanksgiving and see firsthand how impressed your guests are. If you need any help with Thanksgiving printable designs, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team of experts, we’re here to help!

Your logo is a little slice of your business, but an important one. It deserves to be front and center in your marketing campaigns. A logo is your badge, sure, but where you position it should depend on the content, the messaging, and the action you’re trying to persuade customers into taking.

Think of your logo like your business card. Sometimes it makes sense to leave it in the middle of the table during a conference, other times it’s better to hand it over after chatting with someone for a while. Context matters.

With that in mind, our print professionals have put together this short guide to logo placement success.

Logo Placement: Best Practices

So, while logo placement needs to be tailored to the medium you’re using and the impact you want to have on audiences, there are a few best practices you should follow. For instance, did you know that people are 89% more likely to remember a logo that is positioned in the top left rather than on the right?

Sticking to the practices below will help maximize the visibility of your logo, engage customers more strongly, and boost your number of conversions (according to whatever your goal may be). 

Think About The Product

Just as they say in real estate: location, location, location. Ambre Zachmann, Printing for Less’s eCommerce Marketing Specialist, says that “your logo needs to be seen by customers. When a package or mailer arrives, your logo should be the first thing that catches their eye.”

James Casey, our Account Executive, goes further to say that your logo should be on more than one side of the package. “Sometimes logos get covered by shipping labels, or when the package is delivered it might not be face up, so having your logo in multiple places will ensure that it’s still immediately visible.”

Elsewhere, fellow Account Executive, Tyler Diebold dives into the types of products that you should be targeting to showcase your logo. He explains that “promotional products are ideal for your logo. Imagine a product that is going to sit on your desk for a long time or a magnet on your fridge. These items can display your logo and subconsciously put your business in front of your customers.”

Keep It Proportional

You want your logo to be the star of the show. Whatever people are using or reading that has your logo on it, you want them to walk away with a feeling of being entertained or informed, and associating that sensation with your brand.

Katie Younge, Director of Sales, suggests that your logo should be on every item that you send in a package. “The sweet spot for people to remember your company is to display your logo, phone number, slogan, and other contact details at least three times.”

Account Executive, Kristi Eby, says that it’s worth adding a larger logo on the box too, as it’s the first thing that customers will see. “However, if you have a smaller box,” she says, “think about proportions. A smaller logo in the corner of the mailer can be just as powerful.”

Some Customer Logo Examples That We Love 

Brooke Seidel, Printing for Less’s Sales Manager, recalls a project she recently worked on where a customer die-cut their logo to put on top of a mailer. “The result was a logo that really stood out and made the aesthetic of the package much more interesting.”

Kristi adds that she worked on a project where the customer opted for a smaller logo but then used spot UV to highlight the first letter of the company name in the background of the piece. Simple, subtle, and very striking.

Ambre also notes that Printing for Less uses matte black boxes with the company logo printed with shine or clear gloss to produce a really sharp effect. Brooke recommends that businesses do the same, or take advantage of finishing attributes with spot UV or foil.

As an overall tip, James Casey says to have a very clear contrast of colors; for example, a darker blue postcard with a white version of your logo.

Brands Doing It Right

Apple

Apple are geniuses (pun intended) at logo placement. How often do you see the iconic bitten apple logo throughout the day? You probably don’t know the exact number, but we can bet that it’s a lot, and it will have popped up in places beyond phones and laptops. The tech company’s dedication to sleek, minimal branding has meant that only the apple appears at the center of campaigns and deliveries, and that’s more than sufficient for customers to recognize the brand.

Trader Joe’s

Trader Joe’s markets itself as a national chain of local grocery stores, and so keeps its logo looking rustic and wholesome. Their classic brown bags have a large logo printed on them, carrying the theme of a neighborhood store in the greater aesthetic. And, by having a logo that is simple, block red letters, Trader Joe’s maintains its no-frills, good-quality characteristic.

Dollar Shave Club

Dollar Shave Club’s logo stands out because of its straightforwardness: the two razors combined with the business name’s three-letter acronym seems more like a stamp than a logo. Compared to other shave brands that prefer a more aggressive logo, Dollar Shave Club keeps things clean and makes the logo the central point to reinforce its offering of low-cost, high-value razors.

What Not to do 

While we encourage all companies to lean into their creativity when it comes to logo placement, there is one big “no-no”. A dull logo is the equivalent of a spelling mistake at the printing press – it’s expensive and it could haunt you for years.

Your logo should be your pride and joy, and you need to take care to include it in your marketing efforts as much as possible and as obviously as possible. That doesn’t mean all your packaging needs to be a tiled pattern of your logo, but it does mean that people should be drawn to your logo in some capacity.

And, if you need a hand getting your logo into the limelight, chat with one of our advertising and design experts today.

Cohesive and eye-catching print designs are an important part of building a successful brand. They allow you to connect with your audience and make a lasting impression through tangible—even interactive—print media. But where to start when creating printed designs for your business? Finding the right approach will help you make the most of your printed design campaigns and ensure that your message is well communicated. Here are some printing design ideas and strategies to help put your brand or business on the right track.

Will Printing Designs Work for My Brand?

There is no denying we live in an increasingly digital world. But to overlook the value of printed designs is to deny that we also live in and engage with the physical world every day. Integrating printed media into your brand’s marketing can therefore be hugely beneficial, both for driving brand awareness and building lasting customer relationships. 

For starters, printed designs enable you to reach potential customers offline in a localized way. They can also help you to establish your brand as more authentic and real. This is because physical prints offer people a tangible object they can engage with. The best print designs will also grab people’s attention for longer than an online ad that can be scrolled past in an instant. 

Jonathan Millman, Lead Graphic Designer here at Printing for Less, explains it well: “Despite the digital age we live in, print can provide a unique physical engagement that cannot be achieved digitally. In our fast-paced day-to-day lives, our attention span can shift from moment to moment. So when presented with a print piece that speaks to your specific interests, you are more likely to become intrigued and explore further.”

In other words, printed media can be very advantageous for promoting your brand and engaging with customers. Like most things, however, it will have the greatest impact when used in combination with an effective strategy. 

Coming Up with a Printing Strategy

Perhaps the important element when coming up with printing design ideas is to think about where and how your customer will be engaging with your prints. Will they be opening up a leaflet that’s been delivered through their mail slot or slipping a business card in their wallet? These factors have a huge influence on how you design your assets. As Jonathan says: “Envision yourself in the eyes of the target audience member and form a clear idea of the most effective and attention harnessing impact.” 

For example, if you are designing a Rack Card to be placed in a local tourist office, consider how it will be viewed. Depending on the placement of the card, the middle and bottom may not be visible. It is therefore vital that the top portion of the card be visually interesting (i.e. brightly colored), have a large typeface that stands out from a distance, and provide clear, concise messaging. 

The impact of a Rack Card should not stop there. When it is picked up, the audience should be taken in by the rest of the print design. Below the heading, for instance, use high-quality, eye-catching photography relevant to your brand or services. By arranging these design elements strategically, the audience should naturally move their attention from the top to the bottom of the card, where additional details and contact information are found.

Thinking practically about how people are encountering and interacting with your print designs will help make your strategy clear. “In my experience, if intimate knowledge of the customer engagement is not understood, even the most amazingly designed pieces can fall flat,” Jonathan adds.

Printing Design Ideas and Suggestions

“As a designer, it can be easy to get lost in the minutia of your layout and graphics but the effectiveness relies heavily on the strategic presentation,” Jonathan says. At Printing for Less, we are here to empower you and give you the tools to create printing designs that are optimized for function and engagement. In the end, we understand that well-conceived and designed print media can make a big difference in how your brand is understood. Here are some of our top printing design ideas:

Appeal to the Five Senses

While digital media appeals primarily to our visual and aural senses, print media has the unique opportunity to engage more senses, like touch and even smell. Soft-touch or glossy coatings, embossed surfaces, and scented inks can take your printing designs to the next level and give your customers a more dynamic experience.

Use interactive elements

Arguably some of the most impactful print strategies we’ve worked on have included interactivity. Adding elements to your print design that people can physically engage and play with will heighten the overall experience and make your brand memorable. Die-cut pieces that can be punched out, foldable 3D features, stickers, infinity folds, and hidden messages revealed with decoder glasses all appeal to the child in us and our enduring love of play. 

Integrate the digital 

You shouldn’t think about print media as totally separate from digital media. Instead, link both sides of your brand by integrating digital elements into your print designs. For example, QR codes are a great way to transport the customer from the printed page to your website or social media accounts, where they can find more information and become a follower. QR codes can also be used to share vCards to seamlessly import contacts into a smart device.

Have a color story

Color is a huge part of print design. Not only does the right combination of colors look good, but color can also be used strategically to convey tone or mood. For example, choosing orange as your main color can convey optimism, pleasure, and freedom. Green will set the tone for harmony, health, and prosperity. Choosing warm or cold-toned colors will also influence your print design’s impact, with the former being welcoming and the latter being soothing.  You can find more on what color communicates here to find a palette that matches your brand and message.

In the end, combining a solid strategy with these printing design ideas will help your brand not only create a dynamic experience for existing and prospective customers, but will also set you apart from the competition. 

In today’s digital age, thousands of brands compete for consumers’ attention. It’s estimated that most people see between 6,000 to 10,000 advertisements daily. Brands that want to make a lasting impact on their target audience must find ways to cut through the digital noise. 

While some think print marketing may sound dated, this retro strategy lets companies reach consumers in unexpected and memorable ways. Let’s take a deeper look at why your company should implement this timeless technique into your marketing campaign. 

Print Marketing Is Essential: Here’s Why

Print marketing is an important component of a company’s omnichannel marketing strategy, “the secret to successful marketing is using all your channels well,” eCommerce Marketer, Amy Auble, says.  “We encourage the use of mailing campaigns as a part of a larger omnichannel campaign that incorporates print and digital. It’s hard to catch people’s attention these days, and using mail can be another point of contact.”

Omnichannel marketing allows consumers to connect with your brand through multiple channels. Marketers who implement this strategy earn a 287% higher purchase rate than those who use a single-channel campaign. This strategy lets marketers meet customers wherever they are. Since nearly half of US adults find print ads more trustworthy than social media ads, it makes sense for marketers to incorporate direct mail as part of their omnichannel marketing approach. 

Benefits of Print vs. Digital Marketing 

Stronger Recall 

With so many digital ads bombarding consumers daily, it’s hard for folks to recall what they’ve seen. If you want your ads to have an impact, they need to be memorable. Our Director of Sales, Katie Young, believes print advertising is the key to helping consumers remember your brand. “We have a better attention span for tactile mail. Even if you take the mail and throw it in the trash, you still spend three seconds looking at the brand message instead of the moment it takes to delete an email.” 

A study conducted by Canada Post supports this concept. Researchers found that 75% of study participants could recall brand names from print mail advertising, while only 44% could remember the brand names from digital ads. 

Reach Older Audiences

Many marketers focus their advertising efforts on Millennials and Gen Zers, alienating consumers with the most excess money to spend. Unlike millennials saddled with student debt, Baby Boomers hold 53.4% of the United States’ wealth. This generation is now tapping into their retirement funds and ready to spend their ample savings. 

While many seniors are familiar with technology, they spend less time on social media than their younger counterparts. This means digital advertising may not be as effective when targeting older populations as it is with younger audiences. However, Boomers are incredibly receptive to print advertising and prefer direct mail over other types of outbound marketing. 

Authentic Connection 

Receiving mail is a huge mood booster. In fact, 41% of Americans look forward to checking their mailbox each day. Amy recommends that companies take advantage of mail’s mood-boosting benefits to help build authentic connections with customers. “Print marketing allows so much room for connection. You can send someone a nice gift, a gift card, or even a mailer that is specifically branded for them. While it costs more to send a gift than it does to send an email, these pieces show that you actually care about your customers.” 

Current Print Marketing Trends 

While print marketing may be an old-school marketing approach, that doesn’t mean you should rely on outdated techniques. Try implementing the following print marketing trends to stand out from your competition. 

Textured Elements 

Colorful flyers and bold fonts can help print marketing pop. But if you want to make a lasting impact on your customers, consider adding textured elements to your marketing materials. Research shows that the sensation of touch can imprint memories in our brains. This means customers may have an easier time recalling ads from print marketing materials that have a unique feel. 

QR Codes 

Companies need to advertise across multiple channels if they want to create a successful marketing campaign. Incorporating QR codes into your flyers, postcards, and newsletters helps create an omnichannel marketing experience. Once customers scan your QR code, you can direct them to product pages, informational videos, or anything else you’d like them to explore online. 

Personalization 

Customers want a marketing experience that’s tailored to them. The latest research done by LawnStarter shows that 90% of customers prefer working with companies that personalize customer service. While digital marketing has focused on personalization for a while, Katie Young believes it’s an upcoming trend in the print marketing space. “It’s a lot easier to create personalized ads, emails, etc., with digital. The print industry is just catching up to be able to add personalization to mailers. This also applies to our kits. People want to send personalized Yeti mugs or personalized kits to help whoever receives the mailer feel like they’re actually cared for.” 

Staying Relevant 

While print marketing is a useful advertising technique, it shouldn’t be used alone. If you want to make the most out of your advertising efforts, it’s important to connect with customers across multiple channels. Incorporating QR codes, hashtags, and short URLs are all ways to drive online traffic using print advertising. When implemented appropriately, direct marketing has the power to elevate your advertising efforts. People receive less mail today than ever before, making it easier for your printed materials to grab their attention. 

Stand Out From the Rest 

Digital advertising is important, but if you want your brand to stand out from the rest, you need to take an omnichannel marketing approach. Incorporating print marketing as part of your advertising strategy gives your company the chance to engage customers in a memorable way. Need help creating high-quality mailers? Give us a call at 800-930-7978!

Standing in the liquor aisle, there is no shortage of options. So how does one decide what bottle to choose? Sure, some will head straight to the biggest brand names without looking twice. But many people scan the shelves for a label that catches their eye. If that particular bottle can further captivate its audience with a story, there’s a good chance it will be leaving the store with the customer. All that to say, branding—and particularly print branding—is hugely important to drink producers.

Willie’s Distillery, an independently owned business out of Montana, understands this better than most and has succeeded in building a strong client base not only through its high-quality spirits and liqueurs but also through its creative and highly narrative style of branding and advertising. Printing for Less is a close partner of Willie’s Distillery, delivering a variety of printed brand products that help distinguish Willie’s spirits from the competition and share its message with local markets.

Welcome to Willie’s Distillery

Based out of Ennis, Montana, along the banks of the Madison River, Willie’s Distillery has been producing high-quality liquor for over a decade. The company prides itself not only on its production methods, which rely on world-renowned stills, top-quality oak barrels, and choice local ingredients but on its small-town Montana roots as well. Willie’s Distillery makes a point to infuse Montana culture and history into each of its products and is the state’s premier destination distillery.

How Willie’s Uses Drink Advertising

It goes without saying that much of Willie’s success in Montana and the broader American West is due to its exceptionally smooth, rich spirits. But there is more to the story. Branding and drink advertising have played an important role in presenting Willie’s Distillery to consumers and building a loyal client base. 

It doesn’t take long to identify a theme across Willie’s products. While each bottle has a unique design that expresses its contents, they all have something in common. Something that is at the core of Willie’s Distillery’s brand: they all evoke the American West. 

• The blue, snowy mountainscape of Willie’s Snowcrest Vodka matches the spirit’s clear, smooth flavor and references the wild mountains of Southwest Montana. 
• The bottle of Montana Moonshine puts the distillery’s hometown front and center, indicating the flow rate of the Madison River and the temperature in Ennis at the time of bottling. 
• The award-winning Choke Cherry Liqueur tells us it is made from wild-grown local fruits and ties the rich color of the drink into the label’s design.

Willie’s drink advertising also goes beyond bottle labels. Custom hang tags printed by Printing for Less have become a signature of the distillery. These small tags accompanying a selection of Willie’s products provide customers with extra information about each bottle and feature drink recipes. 

They have also proven to boost sales. “We have found that the Montana Moonshine sells better when we have the hang tag on the bottle,” Shanna Mae Swanson, Willie’s Distillery’s Brand and Graphic Specialist  says. “Our hang tags feature drink recipes and a little blurb about the spirit or a short story. With the Huckleberry and Coffee Creams, for example, a lot of people don’t know how to make cocktails with these spirits, so it helps give them ideas on how to drink them.”

The Evolution of Our Advertising

Another key element of Willie’s drink advertising strategy is the Sales Sheet. Each spirit or liqueur has its own Sales Sheet—a one-pager that includes a visual of the bottle, social media details, pertinent legal info, and a selection of drink recipes. Willie’s Distillery gives these out to bars, restaurants, and liquor stores that stock its products. 

When the distillery tried to give these Sales Sheets out at tasting events, however, they were less successful. “We had people reject them because they were a full page,” Swanson explains. But the Willie’s team took the hurdle in stride and designed smaller, quarter-page sheets in cooperation with Printing for Less. 

“We started making Quarter Sales Sheets because people at tastings are far more likely to grab a smaller sheet and put it in their pocket or purse,” Swanson added. Now, the Quarter Sales Sheets are an integral part of its drink advertising and can be found next to Willie’s products at select liquor stores. 

Our Best Advice When it Comes to Drink Advertising

If Willie’s Distillery has one piece of advice about drink advertising, it’s to tell a story. “The most effective advertising I’ve seen is that which tells a story,” Swanson shares. “If you can convey a narrative through a picture or short blurb, you have a better chance at making a sale.” It makes sense: for many, spirits themselves are tied to experiences and personal stories, like celebrating a milestone over a glass of whiskey, or going out for a drink with a friend you haven’t seen in a while. 

Having a strong narrative attached to your product can therefore create more connections with the consumer and form a memorable experience. Willie’s gold-medal-winning Devil’s Brigade Whiskey is the perfect example. On the front label, the whiskey’s name is emblazoned in a military-inspired font and behind it stands a devil with a knife in its teeth and a “USA/Canada” patch. The back label contextualizes the branding, telling the story of the real-life Devil’s Brigade, an elite unit in WWII made up of 60% American and 40% Canadian men.  Fittingly, the whiskey is made from a blend of 60% American Bourbon and 40% Canadian Whiskey.

The true story of the Devil’s Brigade inspired the whiskey and each batch that Willie’s makes is dedicated to an original member of the special military unit. For Willie Blazer, the distillery’s co-founder and an armed forces veteran, having a product that pays homage to these men was important. “The story matters. It is a part of Montana history, United States military history, and, since we have added the names of the original members of the Brigade, familial history as well,” Blazer says. In the end, having a strong story has had two results: Devil’s Brigade Whiskey is one of the distiller’s most talked about spirits, and more people are learning about a fascinating corner of American history that they can in turn tell their friends about over drinks.

How Printing for Less Has Helped Willie’s

Printing for Less has worked alongside Willie’s Distillery to bring its unique product stories to life. “Printing for Less has played a huge role in our drink advertising,” Swanson concludes. Together, the Montana-based businesses have created high-impact advertising—including stickers, hang tags, and Sales Sheets—that not only help Willie’s bottles stand out on the shelves but also share the distillery’s unique story and vision with consumers. 

You hear the letterbox ding, the soft fall of paper on the floor, your dog barks. You’ve got mail.

No matter how old you are, or how often you receive mail, there’s a certain excitement around the delivery. It sparks curiosity, makes us feel important, and simply put, it’s just fun. It’s why even in a digital world, brands are still using the mail as a marketing channel. Studies show that nearly 80% of consumers will act on a piece of direct mail as soon as they get it; while, 70% of consumers say direct mail is more personal than online interactions.

But brands aren’t writing out individual names and addresses on flyers. Instead, they’re adopting smarter strategies to get visibility at scale. Two of the most popular approaches are Every Door Direct Marketing (EDDM) and Direct Mailing. “What’s the difference?” we hear you ask. All is revealed below, as told by our paper protagonists at Printing for Less.

Every Door Direct Marketing vs Direct Mail

Everyone receives mail, but not everyone understands why they get that particular mail.  Quad Lead Brooke Seidel breaks it down: mailers that don’t have a name or address on them are from Every Door Direct Marketing, meaning they are sent to everyone on the block. Any mail that has a name or “current resident of” written on it, is from direct mail.

Kristi Eby, an Account Executive, says that Every Door Direct Marketing is part of the postal service, “a sender can select a certain postal route area, and deliver the same mailer to every door.” She goes on to explain that the mailer must fit certain size requirements – which Printing for Less can help with. Most people opt for a postcard but there are other options, provided that they comply with the size restrictions still.

For James Casey, a fellow Account Executive, the biggest selling point of EDDM is that the sender doesn’t need a list of recipients. “If someone wants to saturate their target area at an affordable price, EDDM is perfect.”

On the other hand, direct mailing is where the sender creates a list of contacts to get the mailer. This list is usually curated around audience segments for a more tailored campaign.

Katie Young, our Director of Sales, adds that EDDM is more effective to reach a specific area. “Whereas with direct mailing,” she says, “you can get more specific with your demographic, honing in on age, profession, title, and so on.”

Why Use One Over the Other?

It’s a time-old dilemma: whether to use EDDM or direct mail for your business marketing. But the answer depends on what your objectives are. 

If you’re opening a business or have a small business that needs to target one specific area (e.g. the place where you’re launching), EDDM makes more sense because your audience’s most important attribute is where they’re based. Not to mention, EDDM doesn’t require postage or an address, so you have more room to design a unique mailer. 

Our Account Executive, Nathan Gardner, comments that it’s good to think about direct mailing as quality and EDDM as quantity. “With EDDM, you can be less specific about who you are targeting because you simply want the mailers to go to every door. Direct mailing, though, demands being more precise about the characteristics of the people you want to reach, so is generally a smaller pool than EDDM.”

Amy Auble, our eCommerce Marketer, sums things up by saying that “the biggest distinction is to use EDDM when your campaign is location dependent. A direct mailing campaign is best when more detailed factors like age, gender, income, marital status, and so on are the priority.”

If your business aim is to grow and contact as many people as possible, opt for EDDM. If you already have a good user base but are interested in expanding into a new segment, direct mailing is the way to go.

Examples of EDDM & Direct Mailing

OK, but what do EDDM and direct mailing look like in action?

Well, an auto dealership may use direct mail to reach people in the area close to their dealership, who make a certain income and have a history of buying a certain car. Using direct mail enables the dealership to really narrow down the people who are more likely to purchase a car.

Tyler Diebold, another Printing for Less Account Executive, offers the example of a lawn care company that would opt for EDDM because they want to speak to everyone within their vicinity. Likewise, a new restaurant would want to encourage people close by to come and eat there. Meanwhile, Tyler states, “a healthcare company hoping to influence people of a set age and gender, would choose a direct mailing campaign.”

How Printing for Less Can Help

You don’t have to navigate the world of mailing alone. The experts at Printing for Less can support you with various elements of postal marketing. For instance, if you’re unsure about the size requirements for EDDM, we invite you to give us a call and we’ll walk you through what does, and doesn’t fit (literally). We’re always readily available, and encourage you to come and visit us in person.

We can additionally help customers build lists for direct mailing purposes – something that’s extremely valuable for brands who know the type of demographic they want to reach, but don’t have the individual contacts themselves. We can curate these lists (although we aren’t able to share them with clients due to privacy laws) and automate them, so customers can access them on a one-off basis, multiple times throughout the year, or have year-round annual access.

So, are you ready to tap into the marketing power of the humble postal service? Get in touch with us beforehand, and we’ll give you a hand to ensure that big things really do come in small packages.