Complete Story
03/22/2019
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President’s Conference Presentations Are Now Available
Printing Industries of America has made the recent President’s Conference Presentations available to members. All of the presentations are available (in PDF format) and free for members to download. Act fast! The presentations will only be available to download for one month. This is a free benefit for members in conjunction with PIA. If you need a log-in, please contact your BDD or the association at (888) 576-1971.
Avoiding Common Mistakes in Mail Piece Design
Source: Rob Hanks, Mailing Systems Technology, March 18, 2019
Your choices of fonts, envelopes, and color used in your direct mail campaigns can not only impact your customer response rate and overall delivery of your mail piece, but they can also cause postage costs to increase — which is never something a mailer wants to see. It’s vital to avoid mistakes in order to have a successful direct mail campaign and keep postage costs at a minimum; however, it can sometimes be daunting to stay updated on all the mail piece best practices. So, let’s explore some of the most common mistakes that can have a big impact on your campaign if not rectified.
Fonts
The USPS prefers that a sans-serif font be used when addressing mail pieces. The font size needs to be eight-point or higher, and all capital letters is preferred. The difference between serif fonts and sans-serif fonts is that sans-serif fonts do not contain the little feet on the bottom on the letters. This helps USPS equipment better read the address block of the mail piece.
Sans-serif fonts are broken up into four families: Grotesque, Neo-Grotesque, Humanist, and Geometric. Grotesque fonts are the oldest of the sans-serif fonts and included New Gothic and Franklin Gothic. The Neo-Grotesque family is more modern and includes Helvetica and Arial, which the USPS prefers. Humanist includes Gill Sans and is even more modern than the previous two families. Finally, Geometric is (not surprisingly) based on geometric shapes. Futura is an excellent example of a Geometric font.
The important thing to remember with fonts is choosing a font that will work with your audience. If your offer is going to an older audience, you will want use a font that is clean and easy to read; Arial is an excellent choice here. On the other hand, if you are mailing to millennials, you may want to use a humanist font such as Gill Sans; the more modern look piques the interest of a younger generation and can increase your response rate.
Read more about Envelopes and Colors in the rest of the article.
The Printing Industries of Ohio • N.Kentucky Employment Exchange Report
Just a reminder. If you’re looking for new employees for your firm, check out the Association's employment links, including the Job Bank. Job seekers can post their resumes at no cost. Employers can review resumes for free or list their job openings for a small fee.
