Direct mail is one of the oldest and most effective techniques to market your brand in existence today. There are countless elements that go into creating an effective direct mail campaign, but there’s one aspect that should never be overlooked: graphic design. In fact, leveraging direct mail graphics can help rocket a marketing campaign to untold success.
Here’s what you need to know about how graphic design works in a direct mail setting, and how direct mail graphics can turn your marketing content from drab to fab.
It’s All About Accessibility
Direct mail is an incredible tool for reaching out to prospective customers because of its tangible nature. Being able to hold a physical piece of mail in your hands leads to better understanding; you can study the postcard or mailer, turn it over in your hands, and feel the texture of the item itself.
According to research into the effectiveness of direct mail, the sheer physical presence of direct mail in this manner makes them easier to process, reducing the cognitive effort to understand the content of direct mail by 21 percent.
The role that graphic design plays in making direct mail more accessible can’t be stressed enough. A piece of direct mail that contains nothing but text is dull, boring, and a wasted opportunity, as recipients are likely to toss aside such an uninteresting piece of mail without a second thought. Using direct mail graphics prevents this from happening, as the brain processes visual content, such as graphics, much faster.
90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, and visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text.
Source: Hubspot Blog
Direct Mail Graphics Strategies that Work
So what kind of graphic design elements should you include in your direct mail marketing campaigns? It takes more than bright colors and flashy art to attract and keep the attention of prospective customers. Here are some of the best direct mail graphics strategies when it comes to design.
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Clean, Uniform Presentation
It’s important that a piece of direct mail catches a reader’s attention. However, don’t lose sight of the fact that you’ve also got to convey important information about your products and services in an understandable manner. One way to do this is to use clean and uniform presentation. During the design process, you can accomplish this by laying out your content using an imaginary, invisible grid to keep things neat and orderly.
Optimal Use of White Space
You don’t need to fill every last inch of space on your mailer. Once you’ve added your images, your content, and your call to action, let any remaining open space remain blank. Leaving this white space on your mailer will help focus the attention on your message. At the same time, this prevents readers from feeling overwhelmed with a mailer that’s too crowded with content and graphics. This goes for breaking up content paragraphs as well — ensure that you insert a single space for better readability and flow.
Space is the breath of art.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Use High-Quality Graphics Files
Modern printing practices can reproduce some of the highest-resolution images ever. Use that to your advantage; when adding photos or illustrations to your direct mail, make sure that they are of the highest quality you can find.
There’s no need for grainy, blurry, or pixelated images, especially if you want to be taken seriously by your recipients. High-quality image files also help your company logo stand out. You can emphasize this further by offsetting your logo from any content to make it pop even more.
Don’t Forget Text Considerations
When most people think of “direct mail graphics” or “graphic design”, they don’t realize that your choice of text font is included in that. You need to make sure your font is clear and legible, that you vary the size for emphasis appropriately, and that you don’t use text colors that are too lightly-colored or that will blend into your background.
Finding the Perfect Partner for Direct Mail Graphics
Designing a direct mail campaign can be a challenge. The simple task of creating effective marketing copy in and of itself requires careful thought and effort and combining that copy with attractively laid out graphic design adds yet another level of complexity to the task that can leave you wanting to pull your hair out in frustration. This is compounded even further if you don’t have much in the way of experience in direct mail marketing to begin with.
The answer isn’t to give up, of course. Direct mail provides too many potential benefits for business growth to simply ignore. In this case, the best course of action is to partner with a service provider that can craft a direct mail marketing campaign on your behalf based on your needs. This includes effective graphic design choices as well. In this case, what better choice than the full-service printing company that’s already handling the printing and mailing already?
Finding All-in-One Graphic Design Services
The days of printing up a few dozen flyers at home are long gone. No one goes down to their local copy shop to print up a couple of hundred copies, take them home, and stuff envelopes all night. No, today, the smartest way to manage a direct mail marketing campaign is to find a professional printing company that can produce high-quality print runs and then oversee the process of getting your project in the mail stream as quickly and accurately as possible.
Today, part of this process also includes graphic design services. The best printing service providers can and do sit down with you and help you design the look of your direct mail campaign inclusive of the direct mail graphics and other visual elements you would like. These experts explain how and why which approaches will work the most effectively, ensuring that your direct mail campaign will have the maximum impact you’re looking for.
We put the Graphic Design in Direct Mail Graphics
Are you struggling with your own company’s ability to provide professional-quality graphic design to your direct mail marketing materials? Are you finding it difficult to create these marketing materials in the first place? Are you in need of a partner to help design, print, and then mail out these materials in a timely and cost-effective manner? Then turn to LVCG to help pave the way.
Here at Las Vegas Color Graphics, we have a long history of providing full support for direct mail campaigns. From the design and prepress stage through the mailing of the physical postcards or mailers, we have years of experience in providing personalized, custom solutions for your company’s direct mail needs. This includes eye-catching and effective graphic design for direct mail graphics. Contact us today to learn how we can help you supercharge your next direct mail marketing campaign!
