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.