Solid Impressions

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Nearly two-thirds (62%) of customers say their favorite brands treat them as individuals (Marigold, 2024). When you create experiences that resonate with your customers, you win their loyalty. That requires more than experience and gut instinct. It requires data.

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When you look at any printed material, what catches your attention first? Often, it's the bullet points. These concise and impactful lists naturally draw the eye, making them a key element in any layout. 

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Adopting a positive mindset in your marketing efforts will attract optimistic thinkers and unlock the potential for more success. Embrace the power of positivity and watch your brand thrive!

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White space, often called negative space, is the space between and around design elements. While it may seem counterintuitive to leave parts of a design blank, white space is crucial in making a design visually appealing and effective. Here are five ways that white space does just that. 

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While personalization is all around us, not every marketer takes advantage of its benefits. A study from NAPCO Research found that if you aren’t personalizing your direct mail, you’re at a competitive disadvantage

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Direct mail is a powerful tool for retaining customers and building loyalty. It can remind customers about your brand, offer exclusive discounts or promotions, and provide enticing content that keeps your consumers coming back. Let's look at five ways to incorporate direct mail into your customer retention efforts. 

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Lifetime Customer Value (LCV), also known as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), is a metric that helps you, as a marketer, to understand the total worth of a customer to your business. By focusing on LCV, you can make better-informed decisions on allocating resources effectively, enhancing customer relationships, and driving long-term profitability. 

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When selling a product or service, the words you choose matter. It is not just what you say but how you say it. Whether you're fine-tuning a direct mail headline or crafting the subject line for an email, making subtle tweaks can make a huge difference. 

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If there are two envelopes on the counter, one in color and one in plain white, which one will you look at first? The one in color, of course. There are many statistics on the value of color in marketing, including mailing envelopes. But our own experience is often the most powerful evidence of all. We know what a powerful motivator color can be. 

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As the temperatures rise and the days grow longer, it's time to embrace the season of sun, sand, and strategic thinking. While your competitors may be taking a marketing breather during the laid-back days of summer, you don't have to. Use this time to gain a competitive edge. While your competitors are cooling their heels in the sand, you can revamp your strategies for the months ahead.

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In today's digital age, where we are used to hearing, "Go paperless! Go green," print unfairly gets a bad reputation. However, print is a sustainable choice for businesses looking to minimize their environmental impact. Let's look at some compelling data points that highlight the sustainability of paper.

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Pay close attention to the envelope to maximize the impact of your direct mail campaigns. The envelope is your mail's first impression, and optimizing its design can significantly boost your response rates.

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By considering these five circular design principles, you can go a long way toward designing marketing and packaging projects that are environmentally friendly. As a bonus, because they involve reducing waste, these principles can often save you money, too. So be good to the earth– and your bottom line, too! 

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Did you know that loyal customers purchase more frequently, have larger basket sizes, and are more receptive to upsells? It’s no wonder two-thirds of most businesses’ sales come from existing customers. Once you win those customers, you want to keep them!

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A well-defined business value proposition is crucial for attracting and retaining customers. This proposition communicates a company's unique benefits and value, setting it apart from competitors.  

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The average donor retention rate for nonprofits is between 40% and 45%. That means for every 100 donors you have, only 40-45 will donate the following year. But what if you could retain more of them? Imagine the impact on your mission!

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Packaging is one of your most essential marketing tools if you sell products on the retail shelf. When buyers decide between two products, labels and packaging can be the deciding factor. When buyers plan to purchase one product, great labels and packaging can entice them to buy another.

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Want to get your customers’ attention? Incorporate creative folds that add dimension and interest. Gatefolds, in particular, are cost-effective tools that add high interest and engagement to your pieces. Whether you are producing marketing collateral, event invitations, or direct mail, these fun, creative folds can repeatedly engage your audience with your marketing content.

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A strategy of regular, strategically timed communications can have a powerful influence on shopper behavior. That’s why drip marketing is so important. In a drip marketing campaign, the business sends (drips) regular marketing communications, typically through multiple channels, to move a prospect through the sales funnel over time. It uses a combination of direct mail, email, mobile marketing, newsletters, or other content at the appropriate stage of the sales process. 

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Want to increase the effectiveness of your direct mail campaigns? Add a branded email with the same design components as the direct mail piece so that they are part of an integrated campaign. Adding branded email as a secondary touch doubles the customer.

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If you’re a nonprofit, you know how critical direct mail is to your fundraising. In fact, according to MobileCause, donors are three times more likely to give online in response to a direct mail appeal than an email. Here are five tips to maximize your efforts.

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As marketers, we have more data at our fingertips than ever. Data is all around us, from in-house customer information to third-party demographic and behavioral data. However, having more data doesn’t, by itself, generate success. You can personalize your direct mail and email with people’s names, tailored offers, and even customized images and text but still not get the desired results. What’s the secret? Instead of marketing to demographics, market to people.

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Succeeding in Business-to-Business (B2B) sales requires a nuanced understanding of the complex decision-making processes within organizations. Unlike B2C transactions, B2B sales often involve multiple decision-makers with unique needs and priorities. Navigating this landscape requires persistence, insight, and data-driven communications.  Let’s look at three “musts” for approaching B2B buyers.

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Your existing customers are your most profitable customers. They buy more frequently, and they spend more when they do. But are you paying sufficient attention to them? Could you be losing customers without knowing it?  Understanding why customers defect to competitors is the first step in retaining them, so let’s look at four key reasons you might be losing customers without realizing it.

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When economic times are uncertain, different businesses take different strategies. Some tighten the belt, hunker down, and wait for things to improve. Others see opportunities. When their competitors pull back, they invest so they are way ahead when times get better.

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Do brands have identities? Sure they do! Think about some companies most associated with a strong brand identity: Starbucks, Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola. When you think about these brands, you think about more than products. Whether it’s excellence and determination or the warm feeling of bonding with friends and family, each brand has a strong identity of which customers want to be a part.

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In today's digitally driven world, it's easy to assume that everyone is connected, but the reality is quite different. Millions of Americans still lack access to high-speed Internet—42 million Americans, to be exact. (The FCC defines “high-speed” as download speeds of at least 25 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3 Mbps.) This underscores the importance of keeping print in the marketing mix. Printed marketing materials like postcards, sales letters, and other direct mailers reach every American, regardless of their Internet connectivity.

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In today's marketing landscape, the importance of data-driven marketing cannot be overstated. Gone are the days of relying solely on intuition and guesswork to make marketing decisions. Instead, successful businesses harness data's power to drive their marketing strategies and achieve remarkable results. What are some of the benefits of building your marketing strategy on data?

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In the ever-evolving marketing world, getting caught up in the digital buzz is easy. However, there's a timeless charm to a well-executed print campaign that captures attention and makes a lasting impression. Print has unique qualities that can elevate your direct mail efforts. Let’s look at five elements that make print special.

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Marketing copy is the heart and soul of your advertising efforts. It connects your product or service with your audience, compelling them to take action. Let’s break down five essential steps to writing effective marketing copy.

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As you seek to break through the marketing clutter, the more channels, the better. Pairings such as print with email, email with social media, and social media with print will result in higher response rates than any single channel alone. As you plan your efforts, you may wonder about the terms “omnichannel marketing,” “multichannel marketing,” “cross-channel marketing,” and “integrated marketing.” What are the differences between them? Is one approach better than another?

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Whether you are sitting down to design your first folding carton package or your hundredth, it helps to have a pre-design checklist. This ensures that your packaging looks and performs its best. Here are ten considerations you don’t want to overlook.

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In the world of direct mail, creativity is everything. You want to design pieces that stand out and catch the customer’s eye. But be careful! Sometimes this leads to designing mail pieces in nonstandard sizes that, in some cases, can make the mailpiece undeliverable. Failure to meet minimum mailing dimensions is the number one mailing mistake cited by the United States Postal Service.

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In marketing, being "top of mind" means being the first brand or product that comes to mind when a shopper thinks of a particular industry, category, or need. For example, when someone says “soda,” what comes to mind? Coca-Cola? Pepsi? When someone says “electronics,” is it Apple? Samsung? LG? Whatever your product category, you also want to be top of mind.

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The ability to tailor documents with precision, incorporating variables like gender, income, and geographic location, holds immense potential in print and email marketing. But savvy marketers know that data points, by themselves, don’t make communication effective. So what does? Relevance.

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Marketers learn from what some do well and from what others don’t. Either way, they learn. Let’s look at five “don’ts” we can take away from the mistakes of others.  See any you need to fix in your marketing?

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When you are shipping products, do you include a simple thank you? You might be surprised by what a difference it can make.

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One of the fastest-growing types of marketing is content marketing. Why? Because it works.

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Whether you are writing copy for direct mail, email, or mobile video, it is essential to be authentic.

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As a marketer, you know the value of email. You may also see the value of print marketing. But do you know the areas where one is better than another?

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For nonprofits, every dollar they spend on overhead, administration, and marketing is a dollar not spent on their mission.

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If you are trying to sell costume jewelry and organic smoothies, price and opportunity might motivate customers to purchase spontaneously or switch from a competitor. But if you sell higher-end..

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Keeping your mailing list up to date is essential for making the most of your marketing dollars. It ensures that your messages arrive in a timely fashion and provides other benefits such as cost savings and better targeting.

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The global pandemic has had a profound impact on the world of consumer marketing, and one of these impacts has been to bring QR codes more into the mainstream.

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What does it take to create customer loyalty, the kind of loyalty that makes customers stick with you, even when their favorite sales representative, hair stylist or financial advisor moves on? 
Here are some tips from the experts.

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When it comes to business marketing outreach tools, it just doesn’t get much more venerable than the newsletter. In fact, some even describe the newsletter as the perfect intersection of tradition and technology.

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With a limited marketing budget, it’s important for your business to make every penny count. And, according to a DMA Response Rate Report, direct mail marketing consistently outperforms all digital marketing channels. 

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Understanding buyer psychology is key to grabbing consumers’ attention and getting people to buy. The 6 Principles of Marketing Persuasion by Dr. Robert Cialdini is one of the most influential models in this approach. 

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