Differentiating with Direct Mail
2. Communicate effectively
Make it easy to grasp and consider your offer. I'm looking to find reasons to throw out your mail as quickly as possible. If I can't figure out what you do or care about the call to action, I'm going to shred without hesitation. You have very little time to engage.
For us, this is a bit of a challenge because who understands right away what "advertising and marketing production solutions" are? We want prospects to see that Affinity Express is new and different ways to execute marketing campaigns. That's why we try to draw them in with the benefits or the pain points. We also use the words of the contact, articles written about him or her, awards won and so on.
The piece below was created by our team for a client. If I received this, I would save it! All the required info is provided and highlighted appropriately. The image is great, 24-hour service is critical and the phone number that is a cell phone is huge. When you live the snow nightmare for several months of every year, you know "Bobby" gets it! And this promotion was not expensive to design and print.
3. Use design to enhance messages
A clunky, crowded, ugly design will end up in the trash. Consider aesthetics like color, fonts, balance, white space, etc. Ideally, you should guide the eye through the most important points because virtually no one reads all the content. To get through to most readers, include: 1) a large bold headline, 2) a colorful image that tells a story and 3) a call to action that is easy to find tied to a phone number/email address.
We try to create designs so striking and attractive that people have to slow down and look. For a cosmetics company, we created an ad in the prospect's style and made our logo into what looked like an eye shadow palette. The contact could then follow the supporting elements in the design to understand our services. Wouldn't you be intrigued by a company that took the time to design something specific to your brand?
