In marketing and nonprofit fundraising, your number one goal when using direct mail is to produce a response from your target audience. To make an impact with your message, your mail piece needs a design that successfully gets the recipient to notice it and then leads them along a path that results in a conversion.
No surprise there - that’s been true for decades. But an important difference today is that you can also take your mail’s effectiveness above and beyond by incorporating digital channels into your design.
What Design Does
Words sell. Design doesn’t. But design is the stage setting for your words. And that’s critical. When they work together in harmony, the copy, images, and graphics of your mail piece that you choose for your campaign should help your prospect or customer by grabbing attention, creating interest, building desire, instilling conviction, and prompting action.
The reason for this approach’s success (when it’s done well) is simple. Direct mail is a physical, tangible channel. Its components - paper, ink, finishes, and scents - engage the senses in ways that digital cannot.
Separate neuroscience studies by Temple University and True Impact Marketing reveal that messages placed on physical printed material, such as a direct mail piece, involve more emotional processing and create better recall in the brain and motivation to act than digital ones.
Print’s tactile impact is magnified when it’s paired with visual and verbal cues on your well-designed mail piece. But how we present and consume information is changing. Today’s technologies on a mail piece can be used to connect customers to online experiences. Instead of treating digital like an afterthought or a silo, use it to create additional touchpoints and message impressions, build your brand recognition, and boost response. According to one survey, integrating direct mail with one or more digital channels increases response rates by 118%.
Let’s take a look at how good design creates a structure for your messaging, and where digital integration can help improve its power to sell.
1. Start with the Right Format
Whether your campaign will mail with a postcard, letter, flat, or folded self-mailer, you need to set up a hierarchy of text weights and sizes, images, and other elements that spark visual interest. In the past, that often meant lots of long copy - and lots of paper.
Today, a well-thought out mail piece uses the written word more sparingly. White space, larger type, bullet points, and short strong headlines make it easy for the recipient to quickly scan the piece, focus on key headlines, and then act upon the offer. This creates an opportunity for saving money on postage and printing by mailing smaller formats.
The flipside of this shift is that a more slimmed-down mailer may not have all of the answers for everyone. So think of your mail piece as the first of a two-step process. It’s designed for the essential copy and other elements to support your offer. For keeping prospects engaged, direct them to a landing page on your website. It can do the heavy lifting with more information about the product or service that you’re marketing. And it can include links on the site that will make a purchase just a few clicks or taps away.
2. Get Personal with VDP
High-quality variable data printing (VDP) offers you a wealth of possibilities to create direct mail that speaks to individuals on a truly 1:1 basis. No more generic images, headlines, or offers. Instead, it leverages data such as the recipient’s name, physical location, purchase history, age, and other factors to create customized mail pieces. Because these personalized mailers are more relevant to the customer, they are more likely to grab their attention, keep them involved, and motivate them to act.
With the right printing hardware and software, your personalized offer or message can shine. Making it multichannel adds to its power. Look for chances to include personalized data on landing pages as well as text and email campaigns. This will allow you to develop and learn from insights from online interactions to use in other communications as well as create a consistent customer experience of your brand.
3. Build Brand with Four-Color & Embellishments
Brand image is how customers perceive your company. To build credibility with your target audience and make an impact with your mail piece, your images should be high-resolution four-color. And they should be carefully selected to support your mail piece’s overall message as well as your overall brand.
You can also create a high-value look and feel by adding finishes that enhance part or all of the format you’re mailing. Logos, names, and photos with spot UV, fluorescent ink, glitter, soft touch coating, and even scents set your mail apart by taking advantage of our basic human senses.
4. Make the Call-To-Action Easy
The call-to-action (CTA) is the last, but most crucial, push on the buyer journey. Your customer should never have to scan through too much copy or look in an obscure or crowded spot to figure how to take their next step. Positioning it with some big type or a highlighted box makes it physically unmissable - a critical tactic just as important as making the actual offer irresistible.
CTAs with a phone or mail response can both be tracked and attributed. And in the wake of the pandemic, QR codes can be, as well. They stand out and provide an immediate bridge between the physical and digital worlds. It requires only a single scan to activate a website, app, social media, or other digital experience. Meeting them there provides valuable analytics on your campaign and opportunities for further engagement or additional sales.
To deliver an effective call-to-action, your QR code usage should follow several best practices, such as using brand colors and logos, providing helpful instructions (e.g., “Scan here for exact directions to our dental office”), and emphasizing the offer.
5. Sync Your Mail & Email with Informed Delivery
USPS Informed Delivery lets consumers see an image of their letter-sized mail before it arrives at their home. More than 65 million people have signed up for either daily email notifications or access to a USPS account.
To get the most from it, use high quality images and intriguing copy or a website, or maybe a QR code, on the address side that gets scanned by USPS's equipment. This builds more interest for the customer than just the grayscale image alone.
If you mail an ID campaign with a color representative image, you want to have good branding to stand out in the consumer's inbox, as well as an impactful call-to-action. Participation is free and includes performance data. And through the end of 2024, qualified campaigns get a four percent discount on postage with an additional 0.5% off for eDoc submitters.
In the end, great design is about how a mail piece works, not how it looks. With relevant data, creative elements, and a digital boost, it should get results. In your hands - and those of your customers - it’s a magic combination that can get your mail piece noticed, support your brand, and turn prospects into customers and donors.
Paul Bobnak is the Content Creator for Who's Mailing What! He hosts the "Meet the Mailers" video podcast as well as writes for the site's blog. He creates written and video content for mailing.com, Lob, and other companies. He also speaks about direct mail at marketing and printing industry events, webinars, and groups.
This article originally appeared in the September/October, 2024 issue of Mailing Systems Technology.
