USPS postage rates are set to increase in May

Its official, the USPS just announced a rate change on postage that becomes effective on May 11, 2009. The biggest change is that the price of a 1-ounce, First-Class stamp will increase from 42¢ to 44¢, and other USPS mailing service prices will increase as well. So what does this mean to the direct mailer? You can now expect to mail standard rate letter-compatible pieces weighing up to 3.3oz between the rates of 19–21.9¢ each, if mailed within your SCF or BMC. In addition to the rate for standard mail, periodicals and package service rates will also be changing. The USPS has also announced that they will continue to adjust their pricing annually in May.

For more information, see the USPS website at www.usps.com/prices/pricechanges.htm

Should you add brochures to your direct mail mix?

Your organization probably has some sort of brochure or collateral that you distribute to prospects who request it. The great thing about a corporate brochure is that it can perform many functions throughout your marketing. If it is designed in a mail-friendly manner, one might even consider using it as part of your direct mail efforts. However, is it a good idea to use a brochure as part of your direct mail campaign?

If your direct mail campaign has the right goal in mind, your brochure can be a great element to add to your direct mail campaign. Here are a few ways they work best:

Use your brochure as part of an awareness campaign
Your company brochure most likely depicts a general overview of your company, and its service or product offering. If you are looking to distribute a mail campaign to generate awareness alone, your brochure could be a great, readily available way to do just that. The only thing you would need to be sure about is that the brochure has a mail panel built into it to be mailed as a self-mailer or that it can be housed in an envelope to be transported through the mail. In the future, you may want to design your corporate brochures with this possibility in mind, and make sure to include a mail panel area.

Include your brochure with a letter mailing
Another way to integrate your brochure into your direct mail mix is to include it with your letter mailings as extra information about your company. As we discussed last month, letter mailers are great for building credibility, and inserting a brochure can help supplement the information provided in your letter mailer and help build that credibility.

Follow-up to information request
Finally, your company brochure can be used as part of a follow-up campaign to prospects requesting information. Most organizations receive dozens of leads per day, and implementing a follow-up campaign to touch base with those leads who fail to make a purchase can convert to more sales in the future. Following up with your prospects through the use of a direct mail piece, such as a brochure, is a great way to maintain contact with your prospects for a greater duration of time and strengthen their bond with your organization.

Why high-resolution images are important

Have you ever asked your designer to pull a logo or image from your or one of your affiliates’ websites, only to receive a blank stare? This is because your designer understands that the use of web images is not a good practice, and it will very well degrade the overall professionalism of your mail piece design.

So why exactly are web images such a no-no?

To start with, you need to understand what makes up a digital photo. All digital photographic images (including website images) are created of hundreds of pixels. These pixels are incredibly small and should be completely invisible to the naked eye when you are viewing an image at full size. If you were to zoom in very closely on a digital image you could see each pixel and how each one’s color slowly shifts to provide optical illusions of smooth color transitions that make up your photo.

Web images are saved at 72 or 96dpi (dots—or pixels—per inch) because web browsers view at this resolution, and print images are saved at 300dpi. When a print designer is asked to take an image from a website, it must be scaled up from 72dpi to 300dpi, which essentially means each pixel will be enlarged to three times its original size. This creates a “pixelization” effect. Pixelation appears because the pixels that make up the image have been enlarged so much that you are now actually starting to see each one individually and the smooth optical illusion breaks down. The information in the image has essentially been stretched to such a degree that there are now gaps in the display of the pixel information, and no amount of “photoshopping” can supplement this lost information. Because the pixels are now over-sized, pixelated images will appear blurry in print, which does very little to enforce the professionalism of your organization.

To avoid this problem, all individuals who are involved in coordination of print design should make sure you always keep a copy of the native, high resolution image files on your hard drive or on a back-up disc. This way, when your you or your designer needs high-resolution images, you will be able to access them quickly and easily.

Nonprofit Tip: Ask while you can

In our current economic state, most non-profits are facing the daily challenge of staying financially afloat. Many are wondering what they can do to keep their donors dedicated to their cause in order to keep donations coming in. The reality is that the economy could still get worse and non-profits need to make the most of every opportunity to motivate current and potential donors. At every touch point with potential donors, your mission, and how it effects your donors, needs to remain at the surface. Don’t be afraid to ask for support. Be it in your corporate communications or in everyday conversation, now more than ever it is important to drive home your goals and clearly request donor support—and every contact counts.

How does direct mail stack up to email marketing?

With technology improving daily, there is an ever-growing buzz about how direct mail and email marketing compare. The fact is that it is hard to be exact with which medium is better—it greatly depends on the nature of your message, your audience and your relationship to your recipients. We’ve outlined a few items below for you to consider.

Although email marketing can be cheap, the long-term standing of it is questionable due to spamming and the possibility of future regulations imposed by the government on email marketing tactics. Emails tend to be easily ignored and people often find them irritating—they are simply one more uninvited interruption in their overly busy day. It is this fact, paired with trying to wrestle your message through spam and junk mail filters, that makes the environment in which email marketing messages are received not very positive. Since most people don’t wish to receive unsolicited emails and it becomes all-too-easy for them to quickly press “delete” and your message is gone forever. Overall, email marketing doesn’t seem to be taken as seriously as direct mail because it has become so commonplace. Well, developed, reliable email lists can be tough to come by and, although open rates can be high, “opened” email is all-too-often given surprisingly little attention.

On the other hand, direct mail response rates generally fall between 1 and 3%, with those rates rising up to 5% and higher when a campaign is being resent to a previous recipient. Overall, direct mail list sources are much more developed and reliable, due to the fact that direct mail has been effectively used for so long. Although direct mail is also unsolicited, it is much less interruptive and people don’t seem to mind it. It has become widely accepted, which lends to its effectiveness. In fact, many people claim to enjoy receiving their mail and look forward to perusing it. This may be because postal mail is much more personal in nature. With direct mail, you can create a tangible connection with your brand, using formatting and paper choices that is just not possible with email. Direct mail is much harder to ignore, and much easier to hold onto for later—how often have you filed a catalog away to make a purchase later? The environment for direct mail is also much more positive than email, as people often make a specific time each day just for opening and reviewing their mail.

With email marketing, a more accepted practice is to use it to encourage current clientele to make a repeat or additional purchase. Additionally, if you can entice them to request to receive your emails voluntarily, much of the negativity can be removed from the medium.

However, with minimal struggle, direct mail marketing holds strong. There are very few drawbacks to a good direct mail campaign. With the ever-increasing amount of advertising messages that are pressed upon us everyday, direct mail seems to be more welcomed than ever, as the control is awarded to the prospect to choose how and when to accept and focus on the message being delivered.

Use letter mailers to instill trust in your offer

Instilling trust in your sales pitch is key to a successful direct mail campaign. But how can you create your campaign to enable this trust from your customer? A sales letter mailer is a great way to start. Letter mailers are one of the most time-tested, tried-and-true direct mail marketing formats available to you.

So why exactly are letter mailers such a great, trust-instilling medium? For starters, letter mailers feel more personal. They also allow for higher quality communication to your prospect and offer the ability to build credibility. Lets examine those qualities a bit more:

Letter mailers feel personal
The letter medium began as a personal form of correspondence and the format still triggers a reaction that just feels more personal. In comparison with other direct mail formats, it seems we are hard-wired to view a letter as a more legitimate form of mail. There is something about opening an envelope that is more private, and therefore personal. Additionally, letter mailers often use live stamps as opposed to an impersonal indicia, signatures and post-script notes to help project a more personal look.

Letters allow for increased communication
The written structure of letter-writing intrinsically lends itself to creating a dialog with your prospect, and it leads your reader through your message more naturally than other forms of direct mail. And since the entire process is more natural, odds are your prospect will absorb more of your message. Plus, the physical format of a letter offers more room for your message than many other direct mail mediums.

Letters help build credibility
Since letter mailers offer the ability to present a great deal of information about your product, service or organization, they also give you more chances to build the credibility of your organization and its offerings. A letter gives you room to provide in-depth information about your product and organization and offer up the statistics, testimonials and facts necessary to walk your prospect through more of the sales process and build their confidence.

Whether you are new to direct mail or a veteran of the medium, a well-written sales letter can prove to be a great option for presenting information in a personal and credible manner.

It doesn't matter if you like your mail piece

When setting up your mail campaign, many things are taken into account: mail list, mail piece format, mail date and most importantly, target audience. Direct mail is all about response. And response is all about your target audience. Many campaign managers get hung up on their opinions toward their mail piece however, for the sake of these goals, it really doesn’t matter if you like your own mail piece. So how exactly do you set your opinions aside and create a mail piece that matters to your customer?

Determine a target profile
To build the most effective mailing, it pays to take the time to determine precisely who you are marketing to, what you want to motivate them to do and how you plan to motivate them. Use any data available to you to establish criteria for details like gender, age group, income group, demographic location, occupation, spending habits or any other discerning qualities that might be important in relation to your prospect and your product or service.

Think like your customer
Once you determine your target profile, you can put yourself in that customer’s shoes and start to think like your customer. Consider the criteria outlined in your target profile and write, design and plan accordingly. A mail campaigned for a woman will probably be completely different than one designed for a man. Different features will matter to different income groups or demographics. Based on spending habits, you could draw conclusions on whether your target group would be expecting a high-end piece or something more standard. Use the criteria outlined in your target profile to jump-start your creative thinking and draw natural conclusions about your prospect and fashion your campaign accordingly.

Don’t be swayed by personal preferences
All-to-often campaign managers let their personal preferences become deciding factors. Since establishing your target profile and thinking like your customer should be the core drivers of your campaign, your personal preferences should not play a part in the creation of the campaign. Just because you don’t like the color pink doesn’t mean it isn’t the right choice to draw in your target audience.

Always remember that direct mail is a statistic-driven medium. Keeping your preferences at the sideline and customer-centric criteria in mind when planning your next campaign can help provide a firm structure to base your mail campaign upon.