Category: Dimensional Print Marketing

“Won’t Be Fooled Again!” by Steve Marsden

Posted On: Category: Custom Design & Printing, Dimensional Print Marketing, Marketing InsightsPosted By:

I get a lot of bills in the mail. It’s really a fairly unpleasant ritual, going through my mail pile. I sift through it with great efficiency, looking to separate that which is necessary to keep, that which might be worth keeping, and that which can go right into the recycling bin (I try to do my part for the environment, too).

Those plain little letter sized envelopes with anonymous return addresses from somewhere in the Midwest…I assume they are bills, so they automatically get placed into the “must keep” pile. They all survive the first cut. Guess who knows this…the people who send them. They know I will think it’s a bill, and that’s one reason why they send their information in this way (besides that fact that it’s cheap). At least, that’s what I believe.

Anyway, once I have done my civic duty and placed the unwanted ‘junk’ where it belongs, I look at the stuff that I find interesting (because I really don’t want to ruin my day just yet by looking at the fuel oil bill for my house). I may spend a little time flipping through a cool catalogue, and maybe looking at some kind of coupon offer made by my local purveyor of “whatever”. Eventually, though I get my courage up and begin slicing open my “bills”.

It’s not a painless experience. I want to get it over with as quickly as possible. I make sure to open them all at once, plowing through the envelopes with a letter-opener. Once they are all open, I take them all out of their respective envelopes, put the envelopes in a pile (also meant for the recycle bin), and begin the gruesome task of looking at how well I have lived for the last month, knowing and regretting the fact that I now have to pay the fiddler.

But, wait! As I thumb through the pile, I find (much to my relief) that half of the stuff in my “bill” pile is not bills at all. They are actually marketing offers! I am not only relieved, but excited!! Why am I excited? Because I have fewer bills than I thought (for the moment)! Then, my emotions turn again…this time to disdain. Disdain for these marketers who attempted to trick me into looking at their offers by making me think that their communication was something that I needed to look at…or else! Do you know what I do with these “interlopers”? Not only do I NOT read on to find out what a great offer has come my way, I throw them in the trash! They aren’t even worthy of the time it takes me to bring them to the garage. Trickery is no way to get people to do business with you. Neither is cheapness.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to receiving mail, I actually appreciate the thought and creativity that people put into their messaging. Not that many companies do it, but for those that do, it creates a positive impression. If nothing more, they have impressed me and I think more highly of them. I may even take the time to read about what they have to say and what they are trying to sell me. Structural Graphics can certainly help those that want to do a better job of enhancing that positive impression, for me and everyone else that they would eventually want to call a customer.

Tips to make your landing pages work well with your direct mail

Posted On: Category: Custom Design & Printing, Dimensional Print Marketing, Direct Mail MarketingPosted By:

Though our core business is primarily high-impact print solutions, we are always encouraging our clients to think “integrated” with their campaigns. Effective campaigns require several components to work in harmony to produce the best possible results. The two major areas of focus are the direct mailer and the landing page.

The landing page acts as the lead repository for your campaign. In most cases, your prospects will have their last interaction with your campaign on the landing page, so you need to pay extra special attention to its design and execution. When we are designing a landing page for a client we often gather the designers of the print piece, the creative team, our marketing team and the account manager.  That way we can be sure the design is completely in sync with the print piece and the objectives of the campaign.

Here are some tips for designing your landing page for an integrated campaign. These tips include some universal best-practices for web design because many landing pages are used for a long time and hence, should be given the same attention as your corporate website.

1. Cohesive Design: It’s crucial that the look and feel of your 4windowpulllanding page is similar to that of your print piece.  Be sure the colors, fonts and overall design feel are the same. In fact, we have found that a lot of our high-impact designs work well on the web! For example, take our 4-Windown Pull. The unique design allows users to pull tabs and reveal and image or additional copy. For one client we needed to translate this to the web. We created the same four squares using little images. When the user hovered over the images with the mouse they appeared to flip and change into another image. It was very similar to the effect of the print piece.

2. Keep your offer above the fold: Due to various screen resolutions, “above the fold” can vary from user to user. However, a rule of thumb is to offer your best content, headlines, or offer within the top 300 – 500 pixels.

3. Just ask, you may be surprised: Many landing pages concentrate too much on how great the offer is. They offer tons of content repeating the fabulous offer, but they forget to “ask for the sale”. Known to all sales people, “asking for the sale” is a key principal. It seems basic, but sales people are often intimidated or lack confidence in their product/service, so they forget to simply ask for the sale. If you want a user to fill out a form, just ask.

4. Ask, but not for too much: There is still a significant portion of the population that believes it’s unsafe to give out information online, and their fear is not totally unfounded.  Recently, Facebook faced huge criticism and a backlash from users for their confusing and lackadaisical privacy policies.  Furthermore, sites like Gawker, Network Solutions, Twitter and more have been hacked with customer information stolen. To minimize this fear only ask for the information you need. If you’re asking for them to sign up for something, then you probably don’t need their birth date or household income, do you? Well, maybe you do for classification purposes, but be mindful of what you’re asking.  Perhaps you can ask for a range (24-35 years old) instead of specifics. Also, insure that their information is going to be kept securely by displaying an SSL certificate badge and your privacy policy.

5. Design for search engines: For longer lasting campaigns it may be beneficial for the landing page to be indexed by Google and other search engines. This is all part of a larger search engine optimization discussion, but this is the basic must-haves. To be sure your page is as visible as possible, use lots of text, not just images or animations. Also, use <H1, H2, H3> tags for your main headlines. This tells search engines what your page is about (in order of importance.) Lastly, be sure you include the following metadata on your page.

<title>: This is visible to the searcher and is usually the first line you see on the search engine results page (SERP). It should be similar to your <h1> headline tag, thus confirming to the search engine what your page is about. Also, this could include your offer, since it will be visible on the SERPs. For example, you may write “Free Gizmo if your sign up now.” If this is in your title tag it will be visible to the browser when they are deciding what page to click on.

Click here for an extended explanation of metadata and best practices.

Hopefully this helps you to focus on the important parts of creating a landing page for an effective integrated campaign. Though there are many other key factors to consider, following these steps will help insure you present a cohesive and effective offer to the prospect.

Your Brain Knows it’s Advertising

Posted On: Category: Custom Design & Printing, Dimensional Print Marketing, Marketing InsightsPosted By:

One thing we don’t talk about enough on this blog is magazine insert advertising. We should because it makes up a significant segment of our business and is still a very relevant form of high-impact marketing. Recently I was flipping through Inc Magazine’s special edition featuring the Inc 500 companies. I sopranoshave a really odd habit of reading through magazines from the back cover to the front. Am I the only one? Anyway, I noticed as I got closer to the beginning of the magazine that the ad saturation increased significantly. This makes perfect sense, but it got me thinking about what ads I was actually looking at and which ones I was ignoring.

I soon realized that when I saw an image that related to something I was interested in I stopped and glanced at the ad. I know, I know, this is print advertising 101, but let me make the point. For example, if I saw a guy in a suite standing there with a self-assured look on his face, I knew the ad must be for some sort of business or financial service I wasn’t interested in. If I saw a large picture of an iPod or cool electronic device I usually gave it a quick glance, because I am a bit of a tech-junkie. If I saw a picture of a woman, well, I usually gave it a glace. Again, print musketeersadvertising 101.

Our brains have the amazing ability to fill in the blanks, saving us from unnecessary processing and allowing us to gather information very quickly. You only really notice what is changing in a scene in front of you, or what you’re specifically focusing on.  All of the background scenery is assumed by your brain and saves you from needing to process an entire scene. However, this has its drawback as you may skip over or not notice important information. For an amazing demonstration of this effect click here.

Getting back to magazine advertising, I think this effect has significant consequences when you’re talking about spending thousands of dollars on a single ad. Most magazines have extremely high ad space rates, so it’s simply not feasible to design an ad that isn’t very interesting. As always, I try to give you solutions not just problems!

Structural Graphics has been designing dimensional magazine inserts for nearly 30 years. The same marketers, like HBO, Conde Nast and NBC have been coming back to us time and time again because they know what they need to do to own a magazine. They want their ad to have a commanding presence in the magazine, not just a page number.

According to a Starch Readership Survey (2007) about 40% of readers remember seeing a flat ad. In contrast, 91% of readers remember seeing a dimensional ad. I personally have no idea who the 9% of people who don’t remember seeing a dimensional ad are, but what do I know? I have, however, seen many samples from magazine insert projects we have done and don’t see how the ad could possibly be missed. Perhaps some of the survey participants were given magazines that they found personally objectionable so they didn’t really flip through them. Who knows, people are odd, heck, some people read magazines backwards.

Click here to see some really cool magazine inserts!

Five Tips for Effective Landing Pages

Posted On: Category: Custom Design & Printing, Dimensional Print Marketing, Marketing Insights, Print ProductionPosted By:

As we have spoken about before, landing pages are an increasingly effective way to increase the ROI of your online and offline promotions. They provide a great avenue to drive prospects to when you’re looking for a specific response, like filling out a form. Landing pages have become a staple with our clients, even those who market primarily with direct mail. For more about our personalized landing pages check out this earlier blog posting.

Landing PageThrough our experience with developing effective landing pages, I wanted to offer your some tips to keep in mind when you’re strategizing about your own campaigns. Hopefully you’ll look to us for help when you’re working on such a campaign, but nevertheless, here are some tips.

1. Always provide a clear call to action. This is a fundamental rule of marketing, but it applies especially to landing page design. The reason you don’t send prospects directly to your company website is you want a more focused experience for the user. Let them get in, perform the action you requested and get out. Having too many options only makes things more confusing to the visitor and will more likely result in abandoned visits.

2. Make sure the headline on your landing page matches or closely resembles the link or printed piece that drove them to the page.  Continuity is important and it’s key that the visitor instantly identifies the page and that it is what they’re expecting to see.

3. People tend to read the beginning of the page and the end of the page for headlines or bullet points. Write your copy and lay it out in such a way that accommodates this behavior. Your best points on top, followed by a nice bulleted list. Wrap up with repeating what you want them to do and why, and send them on their way.

4. Limit navigation choices. Your goal is to keep them on the landing page until they perform an action, so try to limit or completely eliminate their ability to click off the page. Many pages I have seen offer a direct link to the company website. You’ll have to do your own testing, but in most cases this is not a good practice.

5. Don’t hide things. One of the biggest annoyances I have with landing pages are they become so focused that the publisher seems to be deliberately trying to hide something. Give the visitor all of the information they need to perform the call to action you’re requesting. For example, you may have seen a page that says something like, “Fill out this form and you’ll receive a gift worth $500 and a free ebook”… or whatever. It’s obvious to most people that there is more to it than just that. When I see something like that I am immediately skeptical and usually jump ship. Sure, I would like a $500 gift but I am not willing to gamble on what it’s going to cost me unless I know ahead of time.

If you would like to learn more about landing pages or discuss an upcoming project please give us a call or visit our website. Ironically, we don’t have a landing page setup to discuss landing pages, so our company website will have to do.

The Evolution of the Gift Card Holder

Posted On: Category: Custom Design & Printing, Dimensional Print Marketing, Luxury & Specialty PackagingPosted By:

With the holiday season fast approaching retailers are starting to roll out their new line of gift card offerings. I never paid much attention to gift card packaging myself, until Structural Graphics started designing really neat dimensional gift card holders several years ago. We worked on several projects with very large retailers and it sort of spiraled out of control from there. Our design department was having a field day creating new pop-up gift card holders.

Of course, the main objective for any retailer is to get their gift cards noticed in the stores. When customers buy gift cards it is instant profit for the retailer.  Furthermore, recipients of gift cards tend to spend an average of 25 – 50% more than the dollar value of the gift card*. But the good news doesn’t end there. With an average of $65 Billion spent each year on gift cards a cool $6.8 Billion is left unredeemed*!

It’s clear why gift cards are smart business for retailers, but there are also two key advantages to a high-impact gift card holder.

First, it creates a personal experience with the shopper. Buying a gift card can seem like a fairly impersonal gift, but by adding the creativity and design element into the gifting experience, you make it personal. This alone will attract more buyers to your gift cards and of course a greater return on your gift card business.

describe the imageThe second key advantage is how high-impact gift card holders strengthen your brand. A great example of this is the Victoria’s Secret LOVE gift card line. Structural Graphics designed a gift card holder using the patented Extendo® mechanism. The design allowed for plenty of room for flashy graphics and an interesting user experience.  This example also demonstrates a good way to create a strong brand connection with the recipient. The result is fast redemption rates and higher dollar purchases in the store.

What’s more, if your gift card line is offered at a Gift Card Mall, where you’re competing for attention on the rack, the high-impact gift card holder will win every time.

Like most other industries, the gift card/incentive industry has evolved with the times. Sure, you can produce nice little plastic cards and put them in a standard one-fold cardboard holder. It works. But, once you take a look at what is available and the solutions we can provide, you’ll quickly realize that by keeping your gift card program original or plain, you’re leaving money on the table. That’s just as silly as an unredeemed gift card.

You can see some examples of our gift card work or request samples here.

*Statistics taken TowerGroup research.

Real insoles in a magazine ad?? You bet!

Posted On: Category: Custom Design & Printing, Dimensional Print Marketing, Inside Structural GraphicsPosted By:

We worked with Sandy Alexander Inc., a well respected New Jersey based printer, to hand-apply actual Dr. Scholl’s Insoles to over 3,000,000 magazine inserts delivering the ultimate tactile experience. An article ran in this week’s New York Times Advertising section about the campaign. The article as well as an image of the insert can be found here.