Concerned about the planet? You may be wondering… What’s the environmental impact of direct mail marketing? Let’s explore it in more detail so you can make sure you’re only having a good impact on the planet. 

Direct mail marketing involves a lot of paper. There’s not much way of getting around that! But what impact does it actually have on the environment? And is your marketing doing bad things for the planet? 

Let’s check it out in more detail… And look at some ways you can make sure you’re being an eco-friendly marketer. 

The Environmental Impact of Direct Mail Marketing 

There are two concerns when it comes to the environmental impact of direct mail marketing. One, the sheer amount of paper it uses, which of course is a result of a destructive process that has a huge impact on our forests. 

Two, plastic envelopes. These aren’t biodegradable and often end up in landfills, because in truth, the envelope means very little when it comes to content or information. 

What You Can Do To Be More Eco-Friendly 

The good news is that the environmental impact of direct mail marketing can be a positive one with just a few small changes! Here are a few things you can start implementing to make your mail more eco-friendly. 

Use Recycled Paper 

This is easy to do and costs you nothing. Check what your paper choices are and go for recycled over anything else. Another handy tip—repurpose old, unused flyers as packaging material! 

Design Carefully 

Design down so you fit everything into as small a space as possible. Wasted space equals wasted paper and wasted resources, which is a negative environmental impact of direct mail marketing.

Edit down your content so you can get your message across in as small a space as possible. Rather have a value-packed one-pager than three pages of fluff! 

Another excellent way to boost sustainability is to add a “Please Recycle” badge or CTA to your mail. This lets customers know that you’re eco-friendly and encourages them to do their bit. 

Target More Directly 

A scattergun approach means your mail will be going to people who don’t want/need what you’re selling and simply throw it away. Spend some time targeting more directly so you’re only sending mail out to people with a high likelihood of buying. 

Forgo Plastic Envelopes 

If you do need to enclose your mail in something to protect it from the elements or hide sensitive information, choose polyethylene bags over plastic. It’s recyclable and does exactly the same job your plastic envelope would do! 

Choose Your Direct Mail Partner Carefully 

The best way to make sure your direct mail marketing campaign is eco-friendly is to partner up with a service provider who values sustainability as much as you do. 

Here at DMS, we believe the planet is worth saving. Speak to us about our eco-friendly products and processes if you’re conscious about the environmental impact of direct mail marketing and you’re planning on running a direct mail campaign that’s good for your business and the environment!

A catalogue is like a storefront in a brochure. If you’re selling a variety of products, catalogue marketing could be an exciting way for potential customers to browse, compare, and choose what suits them best. 

Are you an ecommerce brand with multiple products to sell? Are your customers spoilt for choice when they shop with you? If this sounds like you, a catalogue should definitely be in your list of printed marketing materials. 

Everyone loves the idea of window shopping from the comfort of their own couch! That’s pretty much what catalogue marketing is—and you should be taking advantage of it. 

Here’s all you need to know about it and how to start. 

What Is A Catalogue? 

A catalogue is a list of items, usually in some sort of order. For example, it may be alphabetical. Or in the case of an ecommerce brand showcasing products, they could be grouped according to price, use, type, or collection. 

It usually includes a picture of the item for sale and the price. More extensive catalogues may include a description of the item too. 

You’ll often also find contact information or advice on how to choose the right thing for you, usually in the front or back of the catalogue. 

Catalogues are much more commonly used for product-based businesses, rather than services. Some examples may be a shoe catalogue from a certain shop, a guitar catalogue from a particular brand showcasing their models, or a grocery store catalogue. 

If you’re a service-based business, you can still use a catalogue, though! It works best if you have a variety of different services on offer. 

What Is Catalogue Marketing? 

Catalogue marketing is simple. It’s putting all of your products into a catalogue for easy viewing, and sending that off to targeted customers for them to browse through. 

Essentially, you’re sending interested parties a “store-in-a-brochure”. They can sit down, browse through it, share it with their partner or friend, and see what catches their eye. 

Why Catalogue Marketing Is A Great Idea 

Who doesn’t love window shopping? A catalogue is like window shopping without leaving the comfort of your home! 

Research suggests that readers browse through catalogues for an average of 15 minutes at a time. They also seem to hold onto them for a good few weeks, longer than the usual bit of direct mail. 

Here’s why catalogue marketing is a great way to showcase your products: 

Easy to Find Products 

If a customer is looking for something specific, a catalogue is usually a good place to browse. For example, if you sell electronics and a customer is in the market for a new smartphone, there’s likely to be a phone section in your catalogue. 

They’ll be able to compare different phones with specific features, at a variety of price points. They have enough choice to make an informed decision. 

All You Need to Know 

Catalogues have the potential to hold a huge amount of info. Customers can view a variety of product choices, features, prices, and comparisons. 

But there’s also ample room in a catalogue to add educational information to help your customer make the right choice. 

Easy to Share With Others 

Catalogues are practically made to be shared with others! Window shopping is always more fun with someone else, and the same is true for catalogues. 

They tend to be shared, shown around, and kept for much longer than the usual type of direct mail marketing. 

If you have a physical store, you’ll find that people start walking into the store with the catalogue, pointing out specific items that they’re looking for! 

Tips for Effective Catalogue Marketing 

Interested in trying catalogue marketing for your business? Here are some tips to do it effectively and see more sales! 

Group Your Items Carefully 

Sometimes it’s easy to see the groupings without trying too hard. For example, shoes might be grouped in sections like athletic shoes, cross-training shoes, dress shoes, work boots, and so on. 

Other times, it’s not so easy. You’ll need to decide what makes the most sense for your products. Does grouping them by different types make sense, eg. a furniture company grouping by “couch”, “cushions”, “desks”, “lamps”, etc? Or would it work better to group them by function, like “cooking”, “cleaning”, and so on? 

If all else fails and you can’t find a great way to group your items, going by price from lowest to highest is never a bad idea. It’s an excellent way for customers to shop within their budget, but still dream about higher-ticket items! 

Offer Some Guidelines for Buying 

There’s plenty of space in a catalogue for some educational content. Find a way to provide some value to your potential customer. Here are some examples: 

• Clothing store ideas: “How to Dress Warmly + Stylishly for Winter”, “Best Ways to Pair Accessories With Your Outfit”, “Best Eye-Catching Colour Combinations”, etc
• Shoe store ideas: “Shoe Sizing Guide”, “How to Care For Your Leather Shoes”, “Do You Need a Wide Shoe Size?” 
• Sporting goods store ideas: “How to Knock In a New Cricket Bat”, “How to Keep Warm Running in Winter”, “Finding the Right Sized Hockey Stick For You”, etc 

Link to an Online Store 

One of the best ways to get customers to buy without ever having to leave their couch is to direct them to an online store in the brochure. 

If you want to get fancy, you can include a QR code with each product that they can scan to take them directly to the item in your online store. 

Or just add an easy-to-spot CTA to buy their favourite items at your online store, with a website link directing them there. 

Make sure the items online have the same names as those in your catalogue! It’s likely your customer will want to search for something specific they liked when they get to the online store. 

Another great idea is to offer a discount code for holders of the catalogue. Add a code with your CTA for 10% off their next purchase, free shipping, or anything else you can think of, and you should have people taking advantage of that.

So you’ve got a great idea for a piece of direct mail. You know what you want to say… How you want to say it… You’re all set with brand colours, an eye-catching design idea, and your target market. 

All that remains is to decide what kind of mail you want. And this is where it can sometimes get complicated! Do you go for a brochure? A pamphlet? A flyer? Or a leaflet? What’s the difference? Is there even a difference? 

We’re exploring the various forms of direct mail in today’s article to un-confuse some of the complication! 

Difference Between Forms of Direct Mail 

Who knew a simple bit of mail could get so complicated! As if messaging, brand colours, and design isn’t enough, now we’ve got a bunch of different mail styles to choose from. 

The good news is that once you know, you know! It’s partly about content, partly about physical design, but either way, you’ll never mistakenly refer to a flyer as a brochure again. 

Here’s how to tell which is which, so you can make the best decisions for your own direct mail campaigns. 

Flyers 

Flyers are the most common kind of piece of mail you’ll come across. They’re a single piece of paper, usually rectangular or square, sometimes printed on one side and sometimes on both. No folds, nothing fancy. 

They’re usually pretty cheap and quick and easy to print. However, we’re bombarded with flyers every day, handed out on the streets, stuck in your windscreen wipers, or stuck in your post box. 

The key to being successful with a flyer is to make it eye-catching and make sure it’s high-quality and looks professional! 

Leaflets 

Leaflets are pretty similar to flyers. They tend to be a single page, sometimes printed on just one side and sometimes printed on both sides. 

You can use the terms quite interchangeably, but if you’re a stickler for correct terminology, there are a few very minor differences between the two. 

Leaflets tend to be a bit more high-class than flyers. Whereas flyers are often handed out on the street, outside stores, or placed randomly into mail boxes, leaflets are often aimed at a bit of a higher-class audience. 

Typically, they have a better paper and print quality than flyers. Flyers aren’t designed to be kept for a long time, but leaflets can be placed on a fridge and kept for future reference. 

Because they’re better quality than flyers, leaflets are usually a bit more expensive to produce. Still cost-effective in the long run, though! 

Brochures/Pamphlets 

The terms brochure and pamphlet are used interchangeably to describe the same kind of design. These bits of mail are folded, usually (but not always) into three sections. 

Brochures are great for use when you have a fair bit of info that needs to be presented in a logical, flowing way. Having various panels to lay your info out on allows you to create more of a story-type flow to your content. 

They’re also quite a lot more professional-looking than a simple flyer! You can get creative with folds, branding, and content sharing as you have a fair bit more space to play with. 

A well-done brochure is like an extension of a business card. It contains everything the reader needs to know about your product, service, or event, and it also has easy-to-find contact details and addresses if necessary. 

Booklets 

Booklets are the most comprehensive of the forms of direct mail we’ve mentioned. They’re often confused with brochures, but they’re a bit more robust and have the capacity for quite a bit more information to be displayed. 

Instead of just being folded like a brochure, booklets are bound and held together with either staples, stitching, spiral binding, or glue. Booklets are also usually printed on high-quality material and may have a bit of gloss or sheen to them. 

Another noticeable difference between booklets and brochures is that booklets consist of multiple pages. The minimum page count for a small booklet is 8 (2 folded and bound paper sheets), but you can get booklets of up to 72 pages, depending on your needs! 

Which One Should I Use? 

Different forms of direct mail work better for different things. While you can go for a cheapy flyer in every campaign, it really would work best if you put a bit more thought into each campaign! 

Consider how professional you want your piece of mail to be. Also, think about how much space you need in order to get your message across. 

Finally, cost will also play a role, but keep in mind that whichever style you choose, direct mail is one of the most cost-effective marketing methods out there! 

Flyers or Leaflets 

Choose a flyer or leaflet when you’re promoting a single thing or event and don’t need to put a lot of info on the page. 

Flyers are great for distributing amongst the general public. Make them eye-catching if you want them to be read before landing in the bin! 

Leaflets are excellent for more business-people audiences. Typically, they have a higher print quality too, and more serious, business-like design. 

Brochures or Pamphlets 

Choose a brochure or pamphlet if you need more space for information. You can get a bit creative with layout, and it’s great for setting out your info in a story-telling kinda way. 

Brochures are very versatile. You can choose how many folds you want, which makes it super easy to lay out your info. 

Booklets 

Booklets are excellent for info-heavy advertising, like catalogues. They can also be a great choice for things like manuals, event schedules, and magazines. 

Conclusion 

Now that you know the difference between forms of direct mail, you can make better decisions about your own direct mail campaigns! 

Branding and content are important, we can’t deny that. But without a quality piece of mail that catches people’s eyes, entices them to read it, and lasts a good while, your message probably won’t be given the time of day! 

Familiarise yourself with the various types of mail so you can make the best choices for each one of your direct mail campaigns. Different forms of direct mail will work better for different events and promotions! 

While we can do your mail artwork for you, we love it when clients supply their own creative files! That way, it’s all you – your ideas, your brand, your words. 

But in order for the printing process to go smoothly, you do need to supply the right file size and type for printing. 

Not sure what’s right? Don’t worry! In this article, we’ll give you the rundown so you know what’s expected and how to provide it from the start. 

Choosing the Right File Type 

We highly recommend supplying a JPG, TIFF, or a PDF file. Your document should be named something like mydesign.jpg, myleaflet.tif, or myflyer.pdf. You may find JPG spelled JPEG sometimes.

These files are compact in size but high-quality. They won’t get stuck in your outbox, but they’re more than adequate for us to print you excellent quality documents. 

Another useful feature is that they’re “flat” files. This means that we can’t accidentally move an element – like a picture of a bit of text – when we open your file. Everything is embedded into a single layer on the document. 

Whichever design software you use to create your leaflet or brochure, it should have an option to save it as a JPG, TIFF, or PDF. Some may require you to export it as a PDF. 

Making Your File the Right Size & Resolution 

You should design your artwork on a document the size that you want your final product to be. For example, if you’re designing an A4 flyer, make sure you set the document size to A4 when you open up your design software. 

At some point, either when creating a document or when saving it later, you’ll need to set a resolution. You’ve most likely seen the number 72ppi floating around. But please take note that it’s not quite high-quality enough for us to print your flyer at. 

Please save your file at 300ppi (minimum). When you save your final document, make sure it’s between 3 and 10 megapixels in size to get the best results. 

Common Resolution, File Size and Type Questions 

What If My File Isn’t a JPG, TIF, or PDF? 

First things first – open your file in the software you created it in and see if you can save or export as one of these options. 

If not, we may be able to work around your file depending on what exactly it is. Shoot us an email and we can work things out! 

How Can I Make My File Smaller? 

If your file is too big to email through, it may be tempting to compress it using a software or online tool. Be careful, though – if your file resolution drops below 300dpi, the quality will be compromised. 

If you can’t manage to lower the size of your file, get in touch with us and we’ll see what we can do. In some cases, using a file transfer service like WeTranfer instead of email is a good solution!