Perfect Packaging Ideas: 5 Tips on How to Design a Custom Mailer

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Even in the digital marketing era, direct mail continues to be a $40 billion industry. With so much money being dumped into the industry, there's still a wide variance in quality from one piece of mail to the next. If you want to ensure that you're packaging ideas in a way that your customers can understand, you need to design custom mailers that hit them over the head.

Here are five ways to ensure that you do.

1. Get Your Point Across

Before you jump into the exciting design details of a mailer, make sure you have the important stuff nailed down. While you might have the best design ideas in the world, you need to make sure you get the basic stuff handled. You have an idea and you need to communicate it.

If you don't communicate clearly, you're unlikely to get what you want out of this mailer. It's going to be a waste of time and money.

In order for your mailer to strike your viewers, you need to make sure those one or two key pieces of information are obvious for everyone. Pick one or two short words or a single phrase to grab attention. Choose a bold and easy to read font with colors allowing your letter to pop.

Keep it simple. Don't include too much complicated information. Make your contact information obvious and accessible. Keep any dates clearly visible.

If you're selling or promoting an item, show the item and write less about it. Let the item speak for itself.

2. Keep a Simple Grid

IF you're struggling with making the most out of your print space, break things into a grid. Different types of flyers have different requirements when it comes to how information should be laid out. Hierarchy matters.

Invitations or formal brochures require you to arrange text into a single column on a page. Newspaper layouts can keep your information organized but can keep things looking kind of boring. Consider dividing things into irregular sections.

Creating an irregular layout allows the eye to move around the page and space to be devoted to things as necessary. You can pack in lots of content while still keeping a clean look.

If you're working on a corporate flyer, consider that people are comfortable with white space and prefer it to crowding.

3. Leave it Understated

Understated flyers allow you to aim at a more intelligent or corporate consumer. Keeping away from novelty fonts and loud ideas can ensure that your ideas get through. Flashy and overwrought designs might actually be a turnoff to some people.

Minimal aesthetics that keep it subtle and calm allows you to attract a target market with very little effort. Corporate services and products are much more likely to catch an audience when things are simple.

Black, white, and gray should be the main elements of your color palette. If you add a color, be bold and use just a small splash. This keeps it from being bland while also keeping you from being married to the associations of a color.

Simple infographics and shapes can go a long way in communicating.

4. Keep Yourself Approachable

Don't underestimate how helpful it can be to just show your face. If you have a larger company but don't have a spokesperson, consider hiring a model to use. Use the same face for a whole promotional cycle so that people can get accustomed to the person as a representative for your company.

No matter what kinds of products and services you're trying to sell, having a smiling face to represent you can go a long way.

If your flyer is the first point of contact that customers have with your business, you need to make sure that you leave a positive impression. Remember that people will expect to see that face again when they contact you online. Use the same model everywhere.

Stock images can look overly staged. Having a professional photographer run a shoot on your terms can make things more legit. You can also ensure that your products and services are in the photos.

5. Don't Compromise on Quality

When you're creating a flyer, make sure that you fully understand print quality, image quality, and how to make the two mesh together. If you take high-quality photos and print them poorly, you'll end up wasting your money spend on great photos. Trying to improve the quality of bad images is impossible, so you need to use great quality from start to finish.

Use high-quality graphics as well. Learn how to use soft gradients and reduced opacity to allow your text to shine while also keeping it interesting. If you're using a low-grade printer, the color and images might not come out the way they appear on your screen.

Remember that this might be the first and only impression you get to make on your customers, so you need to make it count. Even if you're using a basic grid layout and using simple elements, even paper quality can have an impact on your audience.

Leave nothing to chance and push for a quality interaction with your customers from day one.

Packaging Ideas Comes Down To Emotion

When you're working on packaging ideas in a way that your customers can understand them, you need to hit customers with emotion. You need your flyers to hit them exactly on that point where they really feel they need to be fulfilled regarding your products and services.

If you're balancing the idea of going paperless with putting together a mailer, check out our guide before you make any big decisions.

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