Forty percent of the success of any direct mail package is dependent upon the quality of the mailing list. The post office delivers an average of 6.7 pieces of mail to your household every day. Which ones go into the trash and which are set aside for possible opening at a later date? The mail pieces you set aside share several characteristics: They are from companies or organizations with which you have had a previous relationship. The information on the envelope hints at a p

Choose a good list Your mailing list can generate more than 40% of your total responses to a mailing, according to the Direct Marketing Association. The best offer in the world—if not aimed at the right people—will fail. To find the best type of list to rent, look at the characteristics of the customers who make up your own in-house mailing file— and build outside lists accordingly. Test various offers The second most influential factor in determining your success in direct m

Marketing consultant Robert Bly estimates that your house file—customer names and addresses—will pull double the response of any external list. Yet many direct mailers penalize themselves by not assembling such a customer list. And some shoot themselves in the foot by failing to keep their house files up to date. Recessionary times, when your phone may not be ringing off the hook with orders, is a great time to put your house file in order. Start by taking the job away from c

List selection determines 60% to 80% of the success—or failure—of a direct mailing, according to veteran New York marketing consultant Lee Marc Stein, who urges mail advertisers to assign top priority to list choice. “Start with the list,” Stein advises. First, he says, identify your recipients. Only then, put together a mailing package designed to appeal specifically to them. Many businesses—to their considerable cost—neglect to learn what the various kinds of mailing lists

Well-chosen lists are key to profitable direct-mail advertising. Most observers agree that the list is as important to a mailing’s success as the offer— and far outweighs the impact of copy, graphics, and all other bells and whistles. Yet, according to nationally respected marketing consultant Jeffrey Dobkin, many advertisers do not pay more than cursory attention to list selection. He offers this advice: The best list of all—bar none—is your own house file of current and pas

Marketing consultant Ron Ferguson advises that you’ll boost your return on investment (ROI) from direct mailing lists if you: 1. Always mail to an individual By all means, stay away from lists that include “proprietor,” “homeowner,” and other entries instead of personal names. Such generic lists are often inexpensive to rent—for the very good reason that they usually generate lower response than full-name lists. 2. Aim your message at “you”—the singular “you” Direct mail, esp

The right mailing list makes a big difference in response rates. Who should you mail to? Direct mail performs best when your prospects are targeted based on the demographics of your current customers. Consider both Consumer Mailing Lists and Business Mailing Lists based on geographic location, lifestyle, purchasing behavior, business size, SIC code, sales volume and other categories. You can also market to "new movers." A new location—home or office—demands new purchases. Fro

Standard drilling is 3-hole, but size and position of holes can be customized Standing dies can save you money During the design process, show the print representative the possible design to determine if there is an existing die. If it is decided to use the standing die, $75 to $450 can be saved. Presentation folders have a standard die with one 4-inch pocket A standard presentation folder has 4-pages and a 4-inch flat pocket. Adding an additional pocket will increase costs b

Die cut tab dividers can assist readers through sections of a binder Tab dividers have an approximate half inch section that extends past the face of a book or multi-page document. The purpose of the divider is to assist the reader to easily find a particular section of the book. The type of binding that allows the greatest flexibility and lowest relative cost of tab dividers would be loose leaf binding such as ring, Wire-O, or spiral binding. The tabs are inserted by hand at

Comb bindings are more vulnerable to damage than spiral bindings. Adjoining pages are held more tightly in register with each other than with spiral bindings. Comb bindings come in several colors and allow screen printing on a document’s spine. They can bind pieces up to 3" thick. With comb binding, pages can easily be added or removed. Plastic comb bindings allow pages to lie flat when opened. However, they cannot be doubled back. And inserting them is a hand operation that

Case binding is the most common type of bookbinding for hardcover books. There is a minimum of 60 printed sheets in case binding . The pages are arranged in 16- or 32-page signatures which are collated and machine-sewn. The sewn edges are coated with glue. Then a strip of gauze adheres to the document’s spine. Finally, the book and its covers are placed in a casing-in machine, which pastes the endpapers and fits the cover, which is made of cardboard covered with paper, cloth,

Spiral bindings are made of either plastic or wire and allow the printed document to lie flat. Pages can also be folded back to 360 degrees without damage to the spine. These are useful characteristics for documents such as technical manuals, notebooks, and calendars. Spiral binding allows play—hence registration inconsistency—between pages. One cannot add pages to documents once they are spiral bound. Also, rough handling may crush the spirals. Spiral wire coils range from 1

A Wire-O binding holds the covers and pages of a document firmly in place by a double-loop wire inserted through holes drilled in their left edges. All of the document’s pages lie flat when opened. Wire-O books can also be folded back to 360 degrees without damage to the spine. Wire-O books allow for images or charts spread across two pages, and are ideal for any book that needs to stay open when not being held: cookbooks, instruction manuals, calendars, or meeting materials.

Perfect binding is an adhesive based binding. It is the easiest and least durable way to produce books, and is how most paperback books are bound. To produce a perfect-bound document, the piece’s folded signatures are gathered together in page sequence, clamped together, and placed in a machine that slices about 1/8" off their left edges. Then roughers mill the newly sliced sheet edges to prepare them for gluing. Finally, the edges receive an adhesive application and and are

Saddle Stitching refers to a very popular book binding method used for booklets, magazines, catalogs, calendars, and many other printed documents. In saddle stitching, the piece is held together with wire staples. A machine drives them through the folded crease from the outside where they are clinched between the centermost pages. A saddle-stitched printed piece lies almost flat when opened, a convenience for readers. However, this method involves certain mechanical requireme

Smaller Saves Rethinking size in general is a good place to start. Can a smaller piece serve the same purpose and have as much impact as a larger piece? Large or odd-sized design pieces may not use paper efficiently and can result in substantial amounts of waste. Digital Photography The advent of digital cameras has drastically reduced waste output. Gone are the developing chemicals and the celluloid negatives. Paper is considerably reduced or eliminated entirely. However, no

Anyone who has used Photoshop long enough is familiar with the Clone Stamp tool. This little gem has been a favorite for many a photographer or artist. But, how do you improve on something that is so great to begin with? Well, you may have noticed that using the Clone Stamp with a hard edge brush can result in obvious dot shapes. You can soften the edge, but you may see differences between the source and destination backgrounds. Also, making precise point source selections ca

Using 100% black on small objects such as body copy text and fine keyline borders is recommended. But if you have a large background of solid black or very large black type, then the solid black may look washed out when printed. Process inks are translucent. They allow light to pass through them, much like a color filter. The light is then reflected back to our eyes and the result is a washed out looking black. To increase the “richness” of the black it is necessary to add ad

Getting your file imaged onto the printing plate at the lowest cost Desktop Publishing Desktop publishing is the process of using the computer and specific types of software to combine text and graphics to produce documents such as newsletters, brochures, books, etc. Which Platform? Both Macintosh and PC platforms are is acceptable. Industry standard software is available for both the Macintosh and PC. Industry Standard Software Applications Page layout: Adobe InDesign Illust

One of the first things to think about when creating a brochure is how it will fold. Making a plain paper folding dummy can help you determine accurate sizes for the panels. A few of the more common folds are roll fold, accordion fold and gate fold. The panel sizes are determined by the fold you want to use. An accordion fold is one of the easiest because all of the panels are the same size because of the zig-zag. The roll and gate folds fold in on each other. To make the bro