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How Small Businesses Can Use Direct Mail

Dreamforce_Blog_600 Direct mail is one of the tried and true channels of marketing. It has been in use for a very long time and forms one of the foundations of the traditional marketing mix. With the rise of digital marketing, direct mail has fallen from popularity, replaced by email, search engine marketing (SEM) and targeted ads. Email has become the go-to mode of marketing for nearly all businesses and the result is a flooded inbox. Maybe digital fatigue is why people are up to 5% more likely to respond to direct mail than other forms of marketing, including email marketing.

Can you combine your offline and digital efforts? Today you certainly can. Technologies exist that can help businesses of any size merge their offline and online marketing. Both are better when they work together to deliver messages across different channels (cross-channel marketing).

Small businesses can benefit from adding direct mail to their marketing mix and take advantage of techniques that combine direct mail with digital marketing.

Make a Message that Sticks

The singular power of direct mail isn’t that it is accessible but that it is intimate. Your message – your brand – is sitting on a customer’s kitchen table. It is being held in their hand. Email simply can’t do this. Direct mail is as close to face-to-face communication as you can get.

This a great opportunity to break the mold and stand out. Your message has to be well designed, with a clear call to action and a powerful hook to get their attention.

Once you’ve got their attention – if even for a moment – don’t squander it. The rest of this article is full of innovative ideas for using direct mail but none of them work if you’re sending boring marketing. Take the time (and resources) to really build an excellent piece of direct mail.

Use Personalized Direct Mail

The power of personalized messaging is critical in all types of marketing. Studies show that personalized messages are 6 times more likely to be opened, read and acted upon. Direct mail can be personalized much like email. This level of personalization goes beyond just using your customer’s name. You can add any sort of info that you’ve got access to. For example, you could send a promotional birthday coupon that lands in their mailbox. You can tailor messaging to match gender, location, age or other data. In the printing industry this is called variable data.

Here are some ways to use personalized direct mail:

  • Birthday coupons
  • Personalized maps from their home to your location
  • Gender based design, copy and layout or discounts
  • Age based discounts
  • Use past purchase history to promote new products or offer special savings
  • Reminders of their customer anniversary with your business
  • Print industry-specific messaging and images
  • Include geographic messages and images that resonate with a customers in a certain place

Variable data printing is available as part of a digital print run. Digital printing allows for quick turn arounds and is cost effective if you are doing smaller batches of materials.

Target a Geographical Area

Every Door Direct Mail® (EDDM) is a unique characteristic of direct mail that digital channels can’t easily match. EDDM is a service offered by the US Postal Service (USPS) that allows you to send direct mail to every house in a geographical area. For example, you could send a mailer advertising your grand opening to every home in a specific ZIP code. This is a great way to hit specific communities, neighborhoods and residents.

The service offers cheap postage rates and the USPS provides the address information so you don’t need a customer list! You just pick the area you want to target and your direct mail gets sent to every home in the area.

Using EDDM to promote a restaurant (especially one with a delivery radius) is one great way to use EDDM but you could combine it with a bit of personalization. Because EDDM is getting blanketed across an area, traditional personalization doesn’t make sense but you could call out the characteristic of a neighborhood – maybe reference an iconic building, piece of art, or local sports team. People are proud of where they live, why not make that part of your marketing strategy? Use that pride to get them to read your message.

Here are some great ways to use EDDM:

  • Target households in your delivery area
  • Combine EDDM campaign with an established community event, like a summer concert or major sports event
  • Message to neighborhood pride, building empathy with the community
  • Use neighborhood rivalries
  • EDDM is especially useful for restaurants, grocery stores, local service companies and other businesses that have a neighborhood-scale reach

If you want to know more about EDDM, we’ve got a comprehensive article on it right here.

Direct Mail Creates Urgency and Builds Buzz

Time sensitive sales are a great way to get customers into your business. If you’re trying to create a sense of urgency, direct mail is a good idea. It is less likely to get ignored and a bold, memorable design will combine well with an urgent message. Make the time-sensitive component stand out and don’t be afraid to use loss-language (Hurry! Offer ends soon! This is your last chance!). Even if it seems overdone, loss language works.

Turning the direct mail piece into part of a promotion is even better. You can build buzz by having the mailer serve as a coupon, ticket, or game piece. This helps keep your message in hand and top of mind, and even if the customer can’t make it to your grand opening or big sale, they will remember you. There are advanced printing options that can make this sort of mailer stand out, such as metallic inks.  

Combine Offline and Online Marketing

You can combine direct mail and digital marketing pretty easily. Larger companies use marketing automation platforms to make this a fairly seamless process, but you can do it on a smaller scale too. One thing to keep in mind is the way you can direct your customers using these different channels. If all you have are email addresses, direct mail isn’t much use. For small and medium sized businesses it can make more sense to use direct mail to drive traffic to your site, not the other way around.

You could send a mailer that points the customer to your website, drives an existing customer to leave a review, or a household on an EDDM route to check out a promotional page. This tactic works best if the page you drive them to is a valuable resource. The page shouldn’t just be sales copy, create something fun, useful, or meaningful that keeps them sticking around.

Once they are on your website you can try to capture more info such as an email address and personal info like age, gender, and even birthdays. Be mindful with how much info you request, it can be perceived as annoying and it doesn’t add any value to your customer.

Keep URLs used in direct mail short and simple. Consider using personalized URLs (PURLs) as variable data. Creating unique PURLs for your customers may be too costly for a small business but you can create a specific landing page for a direct mail campaign. The goal is to make sure your PURL or campaign landing page has a short, simple, easy to remember address.

If you do have both a customer’s email and their physical address, you can really start to combine things in fun, unique ways. Direct mail pieces can reference emails you’ve sent, and both can drive the customer to new product pages or get them to take an online action like leaving a review or sharing your businesses on social media.

Direct mail isn’t dead and can be a huge boon to small businesses, especially when it is combined with digital marketing. If you want advice on how to best use direct mail for your specific business, our customer advocates are here to help. Printing for Less has been helping small and medium businesses hit their marketing goals for over twenty years. You can inquire here or give us a call at 800-930-7978.

What’s CMYK, Pantone (PMS), and RGB Color?

PMS vs CMYK color

CMYK, Pantone, and RGB are three different color systems in graphic design and printing. Knowing what each of them means may be the difference between a perfect final draft and a project that looks completely different than what you expected.

But First, a Little Art and Physics

You’ve probably mixed paint together before, like red and green to get a murky brown. This is called subtractive color mixing.

However, if you shine red and green spotlights together on a wall, they mix to make yellow. This is additive color mixing. In additive color mixing, you get white when you mix red, green, and blue. It’s counterintuitive, and a little spooky the first time you see it — but it’s true!

additive and subtractive colors

This is the same thing that happens on your computer screen. Little pinpoints of red, green, and blue light (RGB) blend together and create the array of colors you’re looking at right now.

The problem is, if you’re a graphic designer working on your laptop, how can you ensure that the colors you’re seeing are going to translate to online and offline media?

Before we get into the details of converting Pantone to RGB or CMYK to PMS, let’s define these color systems.

CMYK Color

If you remember learning about primary colors in grade school, you have a good start for understanding how CMYK works. CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (the “k” comes from the word “key,” a printing term). You can mix these four colors to get an array of secondary and tertiary colors like violet, orange, and just about every color from your kindergarten crayon box.

However, the one pitfall of CMYK is that different brands of ink tend to have color palettes that vary from each other. If you’re using different printers for your branded materials, your colors may not be 100% consistent.

Pantone (PMS) Color

Unlike CMYK, Pantone uses a standardized color reproduction system referred to as the PMS color process (Pantone Matching System). Each Pantone color, or “spot color”, has a unique identification number.

This system allows you to take your Pantone color to any printer on the planet and have your project come out with exactly-matching hues. And if you’re a brand that relies heavily on a very specific color (think “Home Depot Orange,” “Coca-Cola Red”, or “Barbie Pink”), you can see why Pantone would be invaluable.

The only down side to the PMS system is that your options are slightly more limited than CMYK. Because Pantone has a predetermined set of colors, you’ll have to work within their system. In other words, you can’t create any color and translate it flawlessly to Pantone.

Instead, your color-picking process is more like when you visit the paint section at the hardware store. You select from a range of shades available to you, and an employee mixes that exact shade for you to take home.

RGB Color

As we mentioned up top, RGB uses three colors (red, green, and blue) in different combinations to create every color of the rainbow. On computers, TVs, and mobile devices there are small dots of light in your screen that emit different amounts of red, green, and blue. Your eyes interpret these mixtures as different individual colors. RGB uses a subtractive color mixing process to create all colors, where RGB together makes white and the absence of red, green, and blue makes black.

Which Color System Should I Use?

Is CMYK “better” than Pantone, or RGB? No one system is inherently better, but one may be better for the project you’re working on.

The PMS process allows you to keep your colors consistent no matter where, or what, you print. This is useful if you’re a larger company with vendors across the globe: you can rest easy knowing your logo is going to look the same on a business card or a giant banner at a convention on the other side of the country.

On the other hand, if you’re printing fine art or photographs, you may find Pantone to be limiting. Pantone colors don’t blend easily, so you’ll probably need CMYK to get the variance you need.

And don’t forget to consider the type of printer you’re using. If you’re doing digital printing, Pantone colors don’t translate well on paper, so you’ll want to opt for CMYK.

However, with offset printing, you can take your pick: both CMYK and Pantone produce great results.

Combining CMYK and Pantone in One Design

You don’t always have to stick with one color system in a single design project. In fact, you may be able to achieve exactly the look you need — and save some money — by combining Pantone and CMYK inks.

This is called spot-color printing, or “five color process.” When you print this way, you use a mixture of the standard CMYK colors, but you also add one or two Pantone colors to get specific hues just right.

For example, imagine you’re Coca-Cola and you’re printing the billboard pictured above. Coca-Cola red is a very specific color, and needs to remain consistent across all branded materials — this billboard included.

However, some of the other elements of the design, like the colors of the bottle and soda, don’t need to be as exact. For the most cost-effective process, you would use a Pantone for Coca-Cola red, and CMYK for everything else.

If you were to see the printing press running for this job, you’d see one plate with the red PMS color for the Coke logo, and four other printing plates with CMYK blends to get the color just right.

Converting Between Color Systems

With the prevalence of web design and digital design today, it’s common to have to do color conversions between these three main systems when creating printed materials. Here’s a basic rundown of what to expect when converting between RGB, CMYK, and Pantone, along with links to more detailed tutorials.

RGB Conversions

RGB is used for digital rendering and can have issues when being reproduced with a CMYK or Pantone process. However, sometimes you may be working with a design that originated in RGB and needs to be converted for print. You can usually get your final design close to the original, but know that there are some colors in RGB that simply can’t be reproduced in CMYK or Pantone.

RGB to CMYK

RGB to Pantone (PMS)

CMYK Conversions

With most CMYK colors, there is a matching Pantone color out there. The same goes for CMYK to RGB. Most graphic design programs have a built-in process for converting CMYK to Pantone, but you can also use an online tool to make these conversions.

CMYK to RGB

CMYK to Pantone (PMS)

Pantone (PMS) Conversions

Converting Pantone to either RGB or CMYK isn’t problematic for most colors. However, if you’re working with a metallic, pastel, or fluorescent hue, Pantones don’t always convert well to CMYK.

PMS to RGB

PMS to CMYK

Learn More About RGB and CMYK Color Printing

The Basics of Professional Printing

Print isn’t going anywhere.

Think about it: at the end of an exceptionally long day of work, do you feel compelled to get on your computer and read articles online or cozy up on your couch with a book? Have you ever felt sick from staring down at your tablet too long, or squinting into your phone?

Screen time drains our mental resources faster than looking at printed content, and screen content can actually make it harder to consume information in an “intuitive and satisfying way”, according to the Scientific American.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a marketer hoping to stand out from your competition or a business owner looking to reach new customers on a different channel: printed content will always appeal deeply to people from every walk of life.

Here’s a primer on what to expect from (and how to get the most out of) the professional printing process.

The Wide World of Printers

There are a lot of printing options and they can seem overwhelming at first. Some printers, like the old dot matrix, had a short time in the spotlight before being replaced by more attractive options. Meanwhile newer inventions, like 3D printers, may be a bit too expensive for mass use just yet — cool as they are to read about.

We’ve boiled the list down to four main types of printing. Here’s a bit on how each of these methods works, along with which projects they’re best suited for.

Desktop Printing

What is it? Chances are you’ve used a desktop printer before. Desktop printers include simple consumer grade printers all the way up to larger, feature-loaded office printers that can crank out thousands of copies at breakneck speed. Desktop printers come in three variations: inkjet printers, laser printers, and photo printers.

How does it work? Desktop printers are usually small to medium-sized devices that connect to a wireless network or through a cable to receive print jobs from local computers. Most home printers are inkjet printers, which create images on paper by squirting tiny drops of ink onto paper.

What’s it best for? Desktop printers are best for simple, one-off projects that can be completed quickly. However, if you need professional quality, a huge volume of content, or custom work, desktop printing isn’t going to cut it. Also, desktop printing can get very expensive — especially if your printer uses one cartridge for all colors, meaning the whole cartridge has to be replaced when one of the colors runs out.

Commercial Digital Printing

What is it? Digital printing is like desktop printing on steroids. You can produce just about anything with a modern digital printer, from simple postcard-sized flyers to complex three-dimensional promotional pieces.

How does it work? Digital printers create printed images using a very similar process to that of a desktop printer. The printed image starts as a digital file, and then the printer deposits toner onto the surface of the paper.

What’s it best for? If you need a large volume of materials or a rush job, digital is the way to go. It’s both fast and cost-effective, since there isn’t much equipment to set up to prepare for a print job. If you’re printing luxury or high-quality materials, however, digital printing simply won’t look as refined as traditional ink-based printers.

Offset Lithography

What is it? An offset lithography machine  is what most people imagine when they think about an industrial printing press. It came about in the 1950s and endures today as the most widely-used industrial print process.

How does it work? In this process, printed images are transferred, or “offset,” from a printing plate to a rubber blanket and then rolled onto the printing surface like a stamp. The printing surface is usually, but not always, paper.

What’s it best for? Offset lithography can produce enormous volumes of materials that have exceptional quality. It takes longer to set up than digital printing, however, and the process can be very expensive if you’re doing a short print run. This style is best suited for ongoing, large-scale projects that require the best quality.

Engraving

What is it? Engraving is one of the oldest printmaking processes still in use. You may have seen engraving used on wedding invitations or other formal print materials.

How does it work? Engraving uses finely-carved plates of steel or copper to print an image into paper or another substrate using extreme pressure. This creates a “bruise” on the back side of the printed sheet, serving as a symbol of how genuine the engraving was.

What’s it best for? This type of printing is much slower than other processes and is relatively uncommon. It’s best reserved for top-end quality artwork, or for fine typography.

Beyond these four examples, there are plenty of other types of printing processes, including gravure, flexography, thermography, and screen printing. Here’s more information about engraving.

Professional Printing and Paper

If your print job was a rock concert, your paper would be the lead guitarist. Sure, you could put any old musician up there — but if you want to go down in history, you need your leading player to be a standout.

Don’t skimp on the paper. Here are the main choices you’ll have to make when working with a professional printer:

Paper Weight

The weight of the paper measures how thick it is. A high number for weight means you’re looking at thicker paper, and thick paper reacts to ink differently than paper with a lower number for weight.

Thicker, higher weight paper is often called cover stock and can get be as thick as cardboard. Thinner paper, sometimes called text stock, is more like the paper you find in a novel — and can even run as thin as the paper in a phonebook.

Coated or Uncoated Paper

Paper can be coated or uncoated. Coated paper tends to make colors more vibrant and produces a sharper look. It’s also glossy and spill-resistant, which makes it a great choice for printed materials that’ll be exposed to the elements — self-mailers, door hangers, and postcards, for example.

Uncoated paper has a matte finish and can be written on. It’s great for business cards, trade show handouts, or other materials that you may want to make notes on. During printing, the ink or toner seeps into uncoated paper, which gives its colors a warm and soft feel.

Color Options: CMYK, RGB, and Pantone

Though CMYK or RGB may sound like the latest acronyms in text-speak, they’re actually two ways of describing color in professional printing.

CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (or black). These four colors make up most print colors, and they’re the main color cartridges you’d buy for a home desktop printer.

Sometimes called a four-color process, CMYK describes the range of colors you can get from combining just these four colors. Though the range you can get from CMYK is pretty impressive, you can mix in Pantone colors to get a five- or even six-color process. CMYK is the gold standard for printing colors and it by far the most common color process.

RGB color is what you see when you look at your computer screen. It’s an additive color model that uses red, green, and blue light to make any combination of colors. While you may create a design in RGB, when it comes time to print that design, you’ll need to convert it to CMYK.

Certain RGB colors cannot be replicated with CMYK inks, which is why people often use the four color printing process (CMYK) to avoid RGB conversion issues. If you have a special color in your logo, you may need to use the Pantone Matching System to meet your specific color requirements.

What’s the Pantone Matching System?

Pantone is a patented, standardized color matching system. Instead of combining variations of CMYK to make a color, the Pantone system features unique colors on their own.

Because the colors are standardized, different manufacturers in different locations can make sure two colors match perfectly by referencing a Pantone number. The result for your brand is ultimate consistency no matter where you print.

What’s the Difference Between CMYK and Pantone?

With offset printing, you usually need four color plates – one for each color in the CMYK model. With a Pantone system, you may only need one or two plates, which saves you some money.

On the other hand, there are some colors that don’t have Pantone hues to match and may require a combination of CMYK. While the Pantone solid palette consists of an impressive 1,114 colors, CMYK can make almost any color you can imagine.

Because printing offers so many options, it’s a good idea to connect with a company that understands the full suite of possibilities. When you discuss printing, be clear about three things:

  1. Your business’ core value
  2. What you want to convey
  3. How you want to reach people

If you discuss these concepts clearly with any printing company, they will be able to give you a detailed explanation of your options and potential costs.

Customizing and Personalizing Your Printed Materials

No matter what kind of company yours is, printing is one of the most effective methods to display your brand personality and creativity. One way to do that is by printing materials with personalized, variable data.

What’s variable data? Imagine feeding a lead list with names, contact information, and job titles into a printing process so the materials you print have personal names and info on it. You’ve probably seen these pieces in your own mailbox. The personal touch catches your eye and sticks in your memory.

There are other options to make your printed pieces stand out, including:

  • Die-cutting, to get a unique shape
  • Large format text
  • Hot foil stamping
  • Embossing
  • Specialty inks (glow in the dark, anyone?)
  • Specialty papers
  • Custom folds
  • Custom binding
sandwich postcard mailer

A combination of several custom print effects can have powerful results, such as a fold out map with personalized directions from your prospect’s home to your store.

Mailing and Distributing Printed Materials

Your print design isn’t worth much if you don’t get it out to customers! The next step is understanding how a printing company can help you actually get the message out.

A commercial printer usually offers various distribution options, including:

Think of content distribution like the old “tree falling in the forest” metaphor (if no one’s around, does it make a sound?) In other words, you want to produce beautiful, attention-grabbing content that’s printed cleanly and customized for your prospect — but if you do all of that work and the content never reaches your audience, does it make an impact?

Of course not. That’s why it’s essential that you partner with a printer who can help you deliver your materials to the right people at the right time.

Why Printing Is Important a Marketing Strategy

personalized professional postcard

Consider some of the main approaches that marketing consultants are pitching to clients these days:

 

  • Social media: The reach is potentially spectacular, but over-saturation is causing organic reach to decline, meaning you’ll have to pay to get people to see your posts. Connection to a company is often weak, and while people may remember the idea of a campaign, they’re not necessarily going to remember the company or what they sell.
  • Email marketing: You might get a message directly into someone’s inbox. Then again, your emails might get lost or sent to a spam folder. Even when email marketing is done right, average open rates are usually only 20% and average click-through rates are 2 – 3%.
  • Advertisements: It can be expensive to buy digital ads, and traditional advertising like commercials and radio don’t offer the same targeting capabilities of other channels.

Printing is a fantastic complement to these digital channels. It gives you flexibility, it’s cost effective, and the end product is a real, tangible thing that people can hold in their hands and remember — even pass on to other potential customers.

Printing has staying power you just won’t find in digital message. Fortunately, you don’t have to choose between the two, and they’re best used in tandem to create clever and effective marketing campaigns.

For more information on print effects, direct mail marketing, and graphic design, check out our Knowledge Center.

Printing for Less (Printing for Less) has been an industry leader and provider of high-quality, unique printing services since 1996. Though we are a large company with customers across the globe, we treat our customers with the attention and care you’d expect from a luxury printing boutique. From business cards and banners to letterhead, flyers, and beyond — Printing for Less knows printing like no other.

Let’s talk about your project! Our print consultants are available 8am-5pm MT Monday through Friday at (800) 930-7978.

Is EDDM Right for Your Business?

EDDM_IsItRight Like most small business owners, you’ve probably heard the term EDDM and wondered what on earth it was. EDDM, or Every Door Direct Mail, is a simple but powerful small business marketing tool that gets your message in the hands of select potential customers.

EDDM is a USPS based direct mail program that lets you advertise your business based on carrier routes. This is a great way to target potential customers in a specific geographical area. There are many different options and best practices when it comes to running a great EDDM campaign. That’s why we’ve put together our favorite tips for doing just that. In the article, we’ll answer your questions about:

  • What EDDM is
  • How EDDM works
  • If EDDM is right for your business
  • Best practices for great EDDM

Read the full article.

Need help with your print? Talk to a live print expert today: 800-930-7978.

Grow Your Business with Direct Mail

GrowwithDirectMail_04222016 If you’re thinking about new ways to get the word out about your business, one of the best options is direct mail. This tried and true marketing channel puts your message directly into the hands of current and potential customers and grabs their attention.

If you’ve never given direct mail a chance, it can be tricky to know where to start, and what the best options for your business are. That’s why we’ve put together a few best practices and bright ideas for growing your business with direct mail.

Inside the article you’ll find

  • Surprising statistics about the power and response rate of direct mail
  • Suggestions for unique physical pieces
  • How to create a memorable brand experiences for your audience with direct mail

Learn more about direct mail marketing for small businesses.

Need help with your print? Talk to a live print expert today: 800-930-7978.

Boost Your Small Business Marketing by Repurposing Your Website

RepurposeContent_04222016

As a small business owner, time is one thing you don’t have just laying around. You need all the secrets to saving resources and money you can get, especially when it comes to important but time consuming aspects like content.

Great content can change the way customers perceive your brand, engage with you, and purchase. But for many small business owners this seems overwhelming. That’s why we’ve pulled together some of our best secrets for repurposing content you already have to better market your business. In this article, you’ll learn how to:

  • Create reusable content
  • Repurpose website content for blogs, emails, direct mail and more
  • Get multiple social posts out of one piece of content
  • Drive customer engagement with content across multiple channels

Learn more about repurposing your content.

Need help with your print? Talk to a live print expert today: 800-930-7978.