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May 3, 2010

Don’t Let This Be You

Category: Marketing, Print — Tags: , , , — Sarah @ 6:06 am

The following is a true story.

A friend of ours recently opened a piece of mail from her homeowners insurance company and was appalled. The envelope contained a letter and a brochure. And both of them would have been better left unsent.

The letter was a typical form letter recommending that our friend consider insuring her car with this company. The message was not out of the ordinary, but the mistakes were. Sentences within the letter ranged from poorly written to actually grammatically incorrect, and the letter concluded with the assertion that this insurance company would be “happy to suite your needs.”

The brochure, believe it or not, was worse.

Instead of hiring a printing company or even using a desktop publishing program, the geniuses running the operation opted to construct this brochure elementary school art project style. That’s right, folks, someone actually sat down with a gluestick and got busy gluing the graphics onto the brochure by hand. The sloppy edges were a dead giveaway that someone tried to save a few bucks.

What You Send Says a Lot About You

The well-meaning staff of this insurance company thought that they were sending out marketing materials, when in actuality, these pieces were the opposite of marketing. Instead of luring our friend in and getting her interested in a new service, the company made her question their credibility as an insurance company. She couldn’t help but wonder, If I ever actually need to make a claim, will they try to fix my house with a gluestick?

Don’t let your printed pieces send the wrong message. There may be some aspects of your business that can be handled with DIY jobs, but designing and constructing marketing materials probably isn’t one of them. Professional designers and printers will make sure that your printed pieces actually bolster your company’s image instead of bringing it down.

And if there are any holdouts out there who still want to make their own brochures, we beg you to avoid puffy paint, pipe cleaners, glitter, crayons, and gluesticks.

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April 19, 2010

Simple is the Way to Go

Category: Marketing, Print — Tags: , , , , — Sarah @ 5:21 am

Have you used your brain today? Okay, we’re sure you have, technically, but have you really used it? Have you, for example, studied electrochemistry? Calculated the surface area of any of your office furniture? Translated any documents from German to Spanish?

Yeah, we haven’t, either.

Even though humans have these awesome brains that can do all sorts of ridiculously complex things, most of us are happiest when we keep things simple and let our brains relax. In fact, we tend to go out of our way to make sure our brains don’t have to do any extra work.

Don’t Make Them Think!

Enter Steve Krug, author of the popular web design book Don’t Make Me Think. Krug makes many great points in his book, but the title really says it all.

Krug points out that when people visit a website, they just don’t want to have to push their brains to the limit. If you want an effective website, Krug believes that you have to set it up in a user-friendly way that will spoon feed your point to the site’s visitors. Web surfers, he argues, are not going to read paragraph after paragraph of text on a web page; they are going to scan the page to find what they need and move on.

Krug’s book specifically focuses on web design, yet the point he makes carries over to print advertising as well. When you send out a postcard or a brochure advertising your business, you can’t expect its recipients to devote much time and brainpower to reading it. You really have to get your call to action out there in a big way if you don’t want your audience to miss it. In other words, don’t present the information in a way that requires your direct mail recipients to use their brains; tell them precisely what you want them to do and why they should do it.

Maybe one day, putting our brains into high gear will become trendy and we’ll spend our spare time solving calculus problems instead of playing Minesweeper and watching reruns of Jersey Shore. But until then, you’ll definitely have the most success with your marketing efforts if you follow Krug’s advice and keep your message straightforward and simple.

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March 29, 2010

More Than Just Pretty

Category: Design — Tags: , , — Sarah @ 7:02 am

Here’s something we bet you didn’t know about us – in addition to being silly, energetic clouds of creativity, we also dabble in psychology.

Now, chill out, good buddy, we’re not going to ask you to lie on a couch and tell us about your childhood or anything like that.  But we do know a bit about how people’s minds work – and we design our printed material accordingly.

See, some people seem to have the idea that design is all about making a pretty product.  (And, let’s be honest, our printed materials are often quite stunning.)  But what many people don’t realize is that creating a product with aesthetic appeal is only part of our job.  The printed pieces we design not only have to look good, but they also have to lure their readers in from a marketing perspective.  And that’s where the psychology comes into play.

We’ve actually studied how people interact with printed materials.  We know, for instance, where on a page people tend to glance first.  And where they tend to look last.  And what thoughts and emotions will be evoked when a person sees certain colors on a page.  And many more exciting tidbits like that.

Since we’ve been trained to design with this information in mind, our end product is going to be very functional in terms of getting a strong message across to your reader.  If you want us to design a postcard to advertise the sale you’re having at your boutique, we know exactly where on the card to place your logo and the important information about the sale so that the card’s recipients will be hooked in.

And since bringing in customers is the whole reason you decided to send out the postcards, our psychology skills tell us that you’ll be happy with the results.

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March 1, 2010

Help Your Direct Mail Campaign Go for the Gold

Category: Marketing, Print — Tags: , , , , — Sarah @ 7:56 am

We caught a little bit of curling during this year’s Olympic Games.  And as those intriguing stones with handles sailed gracefully down the ice and headed straight for that icy bull’s-eye, they reminded us of something.

Many of our clients rely on us to put together printed mailers for direct mail campaigns.  So we design some and print them up, and they’re always pretty awesome.  When our masterpieces are complete, our clients mail them out and cross their fingers, hoping that their advertising efforts pay off.

And What Does This Have to Do With Curling?

Okay, so admittedly, we actually don’t know a lot about curling.  But we do understand that ultimately, getting your little stone devices to stay in the rings on the ice is a good thing.

And how do the curling team members accomplish this?  By zooming their curling stones down the ice in the direction of their ideal destination.  Not once during our Olympic viewing did we see a member of any curling team lift up a stone and start hurling it haphazardly at members of the crowd or the other team.  (Although that would have made the event a tad more exciting.)  No, these athletes kept their eyes on the prize and sent their stones straight to the intended target.

So here’s where the fundamentals of curling meet the fundamentals of direct mail.  Even if we’ve printed up a fantastic brochure for a client, it won’t be effective unless it is sent in the direction of ideal targets.  If our clients send those fantastic brochures randomly in every direction, they may find very little return on their investment.  But, if like an Olympic curling team, our clients make their brochures glide straight to the right places, they will be golden.

So How Can We Get Our Printed Materials on a Perfect Path?

It’s easy, really.  Instead of sending your brochures to everyone in your neighborhood, you can just use a mailing list to send them to potentially interested parties.  You won’t believe the types of specific mailing lists that exist these days.  No matter what type of people you are trying to reach, someone has compiled a list of individuals who meet your criteria.

How Do I Get My Hands on One of These Lists?

We thought you’d never ask.  At imPress, we can not only hook you up with awesome printed materials, but also with mailing lists to use when you send them out.  Whether you are looking for a list of elderly Albany men, hospitals on the East Coast, middle aged women with high credit scores, or curling enthusiasts, we can find a list that will work for you.

So take home the medal for most efficient advertising.  Use a mailing list to make your direct mail campaign a winner.

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February 22, 2010

Why Matching Makes a Difference

Category: Marketing, Print — Tags: , , — Sarah @ 8:17 am

All right, business owners.  Here’s a hypothetical situation for ya.  Let’s say that a man strolls into your office peddling printer cartridges.  And let’s also say that this guy is wearing an expensive suit, classy shoes, and shiny cufflinks, but for underneath his jacket, he has chosen a tie-dye T-shirt.

Tell the truth.  You’d think he was a little weird, right?

In fact, you might even see him as weirder in that outfit than you would if he just showed up in the tie-dye T-shirt, sneakers, and jeans.  The weirdness is not so much in the casual T-shirt as it is in the fact that he’s mixing and matching his sophisticated business attire with a ratty weekend shirt.  Either the informal look or the classy look would be a much better choice than a hybrid of the two.

The same concept applies to your printed materials.  If you look at all of your print collateral as an outfit, it should match from head to toe.  We’re talking about envelopes, brochures, leaflets, letterhead, business cards, folders, fliers, fact sheets, direct mail pieces, and anything else you happen to have in your printed materials toolbox. There should be a consistent look and feel throughout the entire body of marketing collateral.

Why should your printed materials match?  Part of it goes back to the plight of the printer cartridge salesdude.  With a mismatching outfit like that, the guy just wasn’t looking his best and didn’t leave a great first impression.  In the same way, a welcome folder full of mismatched printed materials is going to leave a weird vibe with its recipient.  It may be a bigger deal to some people than others, but in any case, it’s not helping you put your best foot forward.

The other reason matching is so important has to do with branding.  In addition to its lack of visual appeal, the printer cartridge man’s outfit would leave everyone with a lot of questions about what he is trying to communicate with his look.  People who see him will think, What kind of fellow is this?  Is he a hippie?  A professional salesman?  A guy who forgot to pick up his dry cleaning? If your printed materials don’t match, you could be leaving your customers with similar confusion.  Every document generated by or for your company should be in line with your brand in an effort to present a consistent picture of who you are as a company.

So it might be time to do a closet cleanout and assess your printed materials.  If there are a few printed pieces that don’t match the rest, replacing them can update your company’s image and effectively communicate your brand.  Whether your printed pieces are more like parts of a tuxedo or a Halloween costume, you’ll be good to go as long as they all match to make one spectacular ensemble.

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