As digital marketing grows in popularity within various markets, it’s important not to lose sight or feel of direct mail marketing. Local businesses rely on snail mail to communicate special offers, new products and great deals within their communities. Physical mail, envelopes/letters, coupons and flyers are a few of the ways local businesses communicate with their community. Most are bright, colorful pieces that catch the eye of the homeowner. In order to give their recipient a clear view of what you have to offer, the media piece must provide visuals that are intriguing and interesting. Digitally printed mail often enhances the reputability and quality of the message and prompts the reader to read your mailers. Have you ever received a photocopied piece of media in the mail? They are often grainy and hard to read. Not a great first impression. Vibrant communication pieces are conceived as being expensive to print. Digital printing are an economical option for local businesses to print in full color in smaller quantities personalized direct mail pieces to send to homes in their communities.
Can Digital Printing Help Your Business GROW?
Appearance is EVERYTHING! Just like when you meet someone for the first time, the first few seconds are crucial. Same applies to direct mail marketing. Digitally, you can have the most attractive marketing pieces and envelopes to promote your business. If printed on the wrong material and printer, your message may not be professionally portrayed the way they’re meant to be. Where’s the trash can? Using a high quality full color digital printer will enhance and brighten your marketing pieces, making them visually appealing and interesting, making a great first impression.
Full color laser and digital printers offer flexibility as they can print variable images and data on envelopes, postcards, greeting cards and brochures. Teaser messages on the outside of an envelope that match the tone of the marketing message contained within the envelope can have a positive impact on direct mail response rates. Visually appealing pictures and announcements printed on the outside of an envelope creates the catalyst for an individual to open the envelope.
Why You MUST Include Visual Appealing Content
People are more responsive to visuals than other forms of promotion. Here’s why:
- • 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text
- • Adding color to documents and ads/flyers has been shown to increase recall of information by up to 82%
- • 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text. Words cannot adequately describe a product enough to give the audience a clear vision.
- • Visuals are a great way of reducing information to simple ideas; a picture speaks a thousand words.
- • Including visuals in your marketing can tap into the raison d’etre of our brains, allowing people to understand in an instant what your brand is about and what you want to say
Visuals will engage a person much quicker and efficiently than any other form of marketing. To grab an audience’s attention, you must give them something to see in order to reel them in. People respond positively to a flyer or ad with visuals of products or services even before they read the text. Using a full color digital envelope printer will help enhance the quality of your visuals, attracting people to view and observe your ads, flyers and/or coupons, and open sealed envelopes.
Who Benefits From Using Digital Printing?
Many professions and companies include direct mail in their marketing plan. These professionals know and understand the importance of visual appealing content and ads to drive revenue to their business; however many are also aware of the costs associated with printing these pieces.
• Realtor: When selling a client’s home, printing high quality images of the home on a brochure appeals to potential buyers and may prompt them to make contact for a viewing, or better yet, closing the deal.
• Dentist/Orthodontist: Printing visually appealing flyers with images of people with bright, white, straight teeth will attract new patients within the local community.
• Local Pubs: Using vibrant flyers/coupon depicting cool suds running down a frosted glass will surely entice the local community to pop in for a bite and drink, increasing your walk-in traffic.
• Garage Door Companies: Drive awareness by digitally printing various before and after images of garage doors. Before… garage doors with dents and rust. After… garage doors that are clean, sleek and dent free. Images combined with a special offer often create a catalyst that will prompt sales inquiries. The rest is up to you to close the deal.
• Floral Shops: Digitally printing high quality, bright, vibrant colors of flowers and roses, especially around Mother’s Day, Prom and Wedding season have proven to dramatically increase orders. As the industry saying goes… “Nothing says it better than flowers.” … “Flowers for your special someone.”
• Garden Seed Package Companies: Printing detailed images of flowers on seed packages and envelopes in vibrant colors often prompt impulse purchases, especially when located at checkout counters of local greenhouses and retail stores.
• Not-for-Profit Organizations: Imagine receiving a full color image of a young boy with tears running down his dirty cheeks on an envelope. It sends a strong message for the direct mail recipient to “help” even before the envelope is opened.
Have you checked your mail recently? What kinds of visually appealing ads, flyers or envelopes did you receive? Did any make an impression on you? Many companies use color press printers to print their marketing messages in large quantities. Today’s full color digital/laser printers offer companies; large and small, the ability to personalize their marketing messages and can print on demand on multiple stocks in various quantities. Local companies often send “best wishes,” “congratulations,” or “happy birthday” cards to their clients and customers as a way of staying in touch. Their customers often remain loyal and reward these companies with repeat business.
Color Sells
Colorful Direct Mail marketing pieces combined with special offers will increase leads. Community specific content that is included in your direct mail pieces will further increase your company’s brand awareness in your community. Using local print shops in your community who offer full color variable digital envelope printing in short runs will give your direct mail pieces the high quality images you want on envelopes, postcards, greeting cards and brochures. Remember, setting a colorful tone on the outside of the envelope to match the contents in the envelope can have a positive impact on your direct mail response rates.