It’s a typical Tuesday, and you are making your way home from work. You check your mailbox, grab the mail, and then go inside. You shuffle through your mail and pick out all the bills, then head directly to the trash bin to toss out the advertisements. Except… there is one mailer that stands out and for some reason, and you decide to keep it. You may even read it!
How did that company become the only one to have their mailer kept and read, instead of glossed and tossed? Here’s how to raise engagement with super-personalized print pieces and become that one company.
Use your data
You’ve seen the mailers that you know are just a shot in the dark. They are the ones that say something like “Resident at address” or “To whom it may concern” on the front. The company sending it has no idea who they are sending it to and may not even care.
If you have customer data, you need to use it! For each mailer, have the recipient’s name appear throughout the ad. Let them know that this deal, or product, or whatever you’re offering is specifically meant for them. To avoid being seen as junk mail, your mailer needs to include personalization.
Related: 6 Excel Hacks for a Squeaky Clean Mailing List
People love to feel stuff
Whether it’s freshly cleaned soft bed sheets, the grip of a football, or holding a warm cup of coffee on a chilly day, people love to touch. You can take advantage of this fact by making your mailer feel different than standard printer paper. It is no coincidence that wedding invitations are almost never thrown away accidentally. They feel different!
There are a ton of different things that you can choose from when ordering your mailers. You can have them printed on soft-touch stock or cotton. There’s also foil stamping, die cuts, and even silk accents to add interest and catch the viewer’s attention. The point is that if you really want to your mailer to be kept (and not discarded), you should consider making them out of non-conventional materials.
Related: 8 Campaign-Crushing Direct Mail Blunders to Avoid
Eye candy for the masses
A great way to stand out from all the other mailers is to make sure that it appeals to the recipient’s eyes. The goal is that when they are cycling through their mail, yours pops out. That initial glance can make or break the success of a mailer.
The best way to ensure that your print mailer is unique is to hire a professional designer. And I’m not talking about Fiverr! You need to hire an actual design team, like the one we have here at Ironmark, to help you design your mailer. That way, you can set your mind at ease about whether anyone will read your advert.
Related: How to Slash Direct Mail Costs without Sacrificing Quality
Activate their brain
In often-overlooked way of increasing your engagement is to make the mailer activate the person’s brain in some way. You already grabbed their attention, and now you need to make it stick.
How do you do that? You add some sort of interaction. This can be anything from a creative puzzle for them to solve, to a hologram, to even an augmented reality QR code. The main thing is to be creative and think of what would be cool if you received it. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes.
These are just a few of the many ways in which your mailer can stand out from the crowd. Not gonna lie, it takes a LOT of planning, designing and implementing to get someone to read a mailer. And if you don’t do it right, you could be facing thousands of dollars in lost potential revenue, let alone the money you are out getting the mailers printed in the first place.
You should consider letting a professional agency like Ironmark handle all of this for you. Our team can handle all your print mailer needs and we have a fully staffed design team ready to help you! Let us do everything so that you can work on your awesome innovations! Contact us!
