Newsletters are a valuable form of direct mail marketing, especially for businesses that offer services and products that are very heavy on information.  With some smart planning and a good eye for graphic design, these are an important, unique means of both attracting and maintaining a strong customer base.   When you have access to competitively priced traditional print options through online companies like Conquest Graphics, newsletters are both affordable and beneficial for any business. 

1.  Consistent design – Being that newsletters are generally used to create repetition and brand familiarity, your business must make sure to use consistency in the design itself.  Whatever order you choose to include your logo, slogan, or the order in which you present information, must follow from mailing to mailing.  If the top section of your first mailing is news, followed by product updates, then your second issue shouldn’t swap them.  Clean, consistent design shows professionalism.  If customers know what to expect from your advertising then they will generalize that to believing that they will also know what to expect from your product or service.

2.  Minimal use of images – There is temptation when designing newsletters to include a lot of Clip Art-style images to give the newsletter printing some flare.  Unfortunately, it can be very easy to overdo them and lose sight of the strengths of this form of print advertising—the chance to present a bulk of high-quality information in a template customers expect to read through.  Filling up available space with pictures can take away from your overall message and look silly.  If you decide to use images, steer away from stock selections if possible and go a more custom route.  If customers see overused iconography on your advertising, and it reminds them of the advertising of another company, you may be piggybacking on another

3.  Be conservative with fonts – There are obviously a wide variety of different fonts that you can use throughout your newsletter printing, but don’t be tempted to use too many, or to use fonts that are unattractive or unprofessional looking.  Avoid styles like Comic Sans, or anything too fancy like cursive script.  Once you pick the font of your choice try and use it consistently—again, a key word—to help the text flow more easily.  Using a different font for headers or titles can be helpful for creating structure if done well.

4.  Don’t be afraid of white space – Just because you may have a full page of available space, it doesn’t mean you need to fill the entire page with some combination of text and pictures.  White space is important in graphic design because it helps focus the eyes on the vital pieces of information.  It’s also a good idea to take the term literally and use white or off-white coloring as the background color for your newsletter printing.  Almost anything pops against whites and off-white creams and it tends to have a classier look. 

For more information and resources for all of your printing and mailing needs, please visit www.conquestgraphics.com

Direct mail campaigns remain effective and inexpensive thanks to modern methods of cheap printing.  You can often find a high quality on-line printer, such as Conquest Graphics, that offers super competitive prices for printing and can also help you with the mailing end of the job.  But before you begin, it’s important to understand some basic tips for saving money on your direct mail advertising that any business can use.

1.  Keep mailing lists updated – Many businesses forget to keep their mailing lists current.  This means that if you intend to target your direct mail advertising to residents who have purchased from you in the past, and they relocate, your discount printing will not reach its intended target.  If you sell women’s wear then you don’t want to repeatedly send the same marketing materials to a house full of men.  Be sure to match the customers’ names with their residential addresses.

2.  Enhance relevance through customization – Customers are much more likely to respond to advertising when it is personalized.  Now with digital printing, businesses can make their direct mail pop out and grab the resident’s attention.  Use their names, geographical or local cultural references, and other relevant and customized information to let the customer feel like your cheap postcard printing was designed just for them!

3.  Bulk mail discounts – The Post Office gives bulk mail discounts to encourage businesses to send a large quantity of items.  When you presort your mail, either by sorting by zip code or dropping it off at a particular USPS location, you receive special commercial pricing.  The Post Office is willing to offer their services at a lesser price because your business takes on part of the work load.

4.  Automation – Similar to bulk mail shipping, automation is a clever way to save some money through the USPS.  The difference between bulk mail pricing and automation pricing is that automation is the process of pre-printing labels.  This way, when you drop off your mail at the Post Office they can quickly run them through their machines.  Barcoding your discount printing, in addition to shipping in bulk, can save your business a good deal of money.  Cheap postcard printing with stamped labels is a brilliant and economical marketing idea.

5.  Well-designed response forms – If your direct mail marketing strategy involves any sort of response form, which generally also requires a pre-paid envelope, it’s important to make sure they’re compatible.  Some businesses will mistakenly design forms that are inappropriately sized or too bulky for the included envelopes—if they think to add them at all!  The idea behind response forms is that they’re so easy to use that any customer will have the time to use them.  If the forms cost them money out of pocket or seem like any sort of inconvenience they will often be ignored or discarded.

Your business should use these tips to make your cheap printing strategy even cheaper.  By monitoring your mailing lists for targeting, taking advantage of the USPS’s bulk and barcoded incentives for businesses, and making sure that your advertising is eye catching then you are guaranteed to make the most of your budget.

For more information and resources for all of your printing needs and mailing needs, please visit www.conquestgraphics.com