The Shape of Success
As we mentioned in our last post, Please Don’t Shoot the Designer, regardless of how we market, it can sometimes take a few repetitions before people respond. Fortunately, the rewards can be very gratifying.
Many of our readers have seen our oval and round die cut postcards and some will remember the muffler, dog house (no, not Tiger’s), rooster and monitor shapes that we presented at our recent seminar, compliments of Canada Post. We have made the case that tastefully designed mailing pieces featuring different shapes will stand out and be noticed in a sea of otherwise look-a-like mailers and we are delighted to see more customers giving this a try.
Next week, we will be mailing out two exciting new postcard shapes for a new agency/client. These were designed by the agency, but Highland Marketing assisted by ensuring that the cards met the maximum size requirements, while achieving the best postage rates. We were also asked to obtain final approvals on the die cuts themselves from Canada Post, which we were pleased to do.
We are also working with a charitable organization that has come up with a very unique shape that suits the nature of their fundraising activities. Needless to say, we hope that this goes ahead as it would showcase both the cool card design as well as some innovative ideas that they are implementing to minimize the use of traditional donor pledge cards and business reply mail.
You might be wondering how expensive special die cuts are. Well, first you need a die, which your printer can arrange. A basic die is generally around $400 to $500. Of course, the die is usually a one-time investment that can be used for future print jobs as well. Apart from the cost of the die, you also have to add the price of the die cutting after the pieces have been printed, which usually increases prices from 10% to 25%, based on volume, when comparing a rectangular piece to a die cut piece. However, as prices can vary considerably from printer to printer, it really does pay to shop around when considering special die cuts.
I would also like to note that in Canada, there are no additional postage charges when using special die cuts for Unaddressed Admail or pre-sorted Addressed Admail. Nor should there be any additional mail preparation charges. This being said, the incremental costs are for the die and die cutting.
At the time of writing, we are hoping to coordinate a large mailing through one of our clients that will enable us to compare results for rectangular and special die cut mailers that convey the same message and offer. I realize that hard numbers are important for marketers and we will post this information once it becomes available. In the interim, common sense tells us that things that are tastefully different will stand out from the crowd and special die cut mailers will be effective, as long as the products or services are appealing and there is a reasonable offer.
As always if there are any questions regarding this post, or Canadian direct mail in general, please do not hesitate to give us a call.
