How Your Paper Choice Can Affect Your Response Rate

I recently received the following email:

"In your blog, Kyle, you offered to take questions. Well, I'm a print buyer in Texas and we are trying to find a stat about paper that will support paper selection and its impact on response rates. I talked to our direct mail guru, and while he isn't able to attribute this to a specific source, he says it all depends on the audience and the message. I tend to agree.

However, our training dept. actually wants to document and communicate the thought that higher paper grades attribute to increased response rates. I'm not sure where to look. Any ideas?"

My response was as follows:

"I’m so honored that I have a loyal reader! You pose a great question. There are no hard and fast numbers about paper grade response rates that I am aware of. However, I have a great example for you about target audience.

We do all of the printing for a local non-profit, which is funded partially by the state and also by donors. For as long as I know, we ran the newsletters on a glossy book paper. Donors began complaining that the glossy paper had to somehow be more expensive to produce, and they didn’t care for their money being spent on such an expensive piece of collateral. So, we began printing their project on a dull book stock. You and I both know that the cost of glossy vs. dull is almost identical, but in this instance it was all about perception. The newsletters were printed, the donors were pleased.

The key to choosing an appropriate paper grade is knowing your target audience and catering to them. I’ll continue to look around for any reports or documents on this topic, but I thought this was a great example. I hope this helps and thanks for reading!"

I love answering questions! If you have a question, you can email me at krichardson@bridgetown.com.

Tuckers New Flex Mailing Solution

Tucker Printing, one of our Consolidated Graphics sister companies, has introduced a new mailing capability for mailing odd-shaped packages (think t-shirt in a plastic bag). This process is known as flex mailing and the postage can be quite astronomical. Tucker, however, invested in this technology to streamline the process and cut costs on postage for you, the client.

Here is a recent case study on how they helped one of their clients save a ton of money on their flex mailing job:

"In the last month, we finished producing 990,000 sets of our flex mailing system for one of our customers, saving them a total of $336,600.00 off their normal postage. The total projected annual postal savings for this customer will be over $1,009,800.00 this year! In addition to the postal savings, switching to our flex mailer saved .02 cents apiece when compared to previous design. This saved them an additional $19,800.00, to bring their total savings as of 1/11/10 to $356,400.00.

Here are a few of our recent inquiries regarding the flex mailing system…

• 200,000 t-shirts inserted into the Xlarge size mailer $68,500 in postal savings
• 500M product mailers to go into the small mailer $170,000 in postal savings
• 2.7MM in an electronics mailing xsmall $918,000 in postal savings

Other developments:
We have been working with CGX’s agency to develop a name as well as a branded mailer and brochure to be available sometime in February. Coming soon we will also have unprinted classic size mailers in stock for short run mailings."

Nationally approved flex mailer sizes… the first size is the outer dimension and the second is the inside dimension for the erected tray:

Xsmall 6 ½ x 5 ½ 3 ¾ x 3 7/8
Small 9 x 6 3/8 6 ¼ x 4 ¾
Classic 10 ½ x 6 3/8 7 13/16 x 4 11/16
Medium 12 ½ x 7 ¼ 9 ¾ x 5 5/8
Large 14 ½ x 8 ¾ 11 ¾ x 7
Xlarge 14 ½ x 11 ½ 11 ¾ x 9 7/8

I realize this information can be quite daunting. Don't hesitate to give me a call at 503-863-5325 if I can answer any questions for you!