mailing

September 17, 2013 By Tom Gimer

Common card and matching envelope sizes

It’s nice when you create a piece that fits perfectly in an envelope. Here are some common size combinations for cards and envelopes to match them. If your art has bleeds you’ll need to set your art up properly with extensions and trim marks. (Here our bleed settings are 0.125 in.)

Cards and Invitations

A-6 envelopes (4.75 x 6.5) are a frequent choice for small invitations. The card (or each panel of the card if it is a fold-over) should be 4.625 x 6.25. This is also known as a “Norwood” card.
A-7 envelopes (5.25 x 7.25) are probably the most common invitation envelope. The card should be 5.125 x 7 (“Lee”) but many people use 5 x 7.
A-8 envelopes (5.5 x 8.125) are sometimes used. The card should be 5.25 x 7.875.
6 x 9 envelopes are fairly popular because they hold a statement-sized card (5.5 x 8.5) which is created by cutting a standard letter sized sheet in half

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A-1 envelopes (3.625 x 5.125) are sometimes used for carrying RSVPs or reply cards. The card should be trimmed to 3.5 x 4.825 (“York”).
A-2 envelopes (4.375 x 5.75) are the most popular choice for RSVPs or reply cards. The card should be 4.25 x 5.5 (“Dagmar”).

All of the above can be mailed at standard postage rates. No postal surcharges will apply.

There are many other combinations but these are the most common combinations we see in our work.

June 1, 2013 By Tom Gimer

New Equipment: Formax FD6204 Advanced 2

Our newest piece of equipment does the work of 4 humans, only faster and more accurately. It’s a Formax FD6204 Advanced 2 folder/inserter.

This thing collates, folds and inserts letters and cards of various sizes into envelopes of various sizes. It even seals the envelopes. It banged out 20,000 mail pieces last week without a problem. Now that it has been broken in, we’re programming it for our most common folding, inserting and mailing jobs.

Automation is not only a beautiful thing, it also leads to lower prices for our customers! We can keep working on other projects while the folder/inserter chugs away in the background. It doesn’t whine, complain or tell boring stories either (which has been known to happen when staff, volunteers and other humans gather around the conference table to handle this monotonous type of work!)

You know you don’t want to waste your days stuffing and sealing envelopes, so consider us for your next mailing project. With our new Formax FD6204, we’ll be ready.

February 26, 2013 By Tom Gimer

Marketing tip: try A/B testing

In many of our prior posts we’ve discussed the importance of tracking the performance of your marketing. If you don’t know how well your marketing is doing, and you’re not trying to fine-tune it over time to get the best results, you’re not maximizing the investment you’re making in your company. Now, it’s great that you’re investing in your business, but the idea is to get the best return on your investment. This post should help with that, especially if you’re new to marketing.

One method of fine-tuning your marketing is A/B testing. A/B testing or “split” testing is an experimental approach to design which tries to identify elements in your marketing which increase or maximize a desired outcome or result. Possible outcomes are numerous, such as the submission of a form on your website, a phone call or other direct contact from your customer, a click-through in an email newsletter or landing page, or even a purchase. We’ve talked about these outcomes as “valuable contacts” in prior blog posts, in which we’ve also stressed the importance of setting them up as conversions/goals in your analytics. This will help you monitor marketing performance as well as determine how and why a customer came to find you and/or contact you.

With A/B testing, two versions of your marketing are compared. They are identical except for one variation that you think might impact a user’s behavior. The possibilities for what you change are numerous. Here are just a few:

the call to action language or button
different fonts or combinations
text and background colors
layout changes, placement of content on the page or piece
different images

The goal is to figure out if one version outperforms the other. If the results are significant enough, you know which element should be used going forward.

Many people think A/B testing can only be used to test online marketing, but this just isn’t the case. Your print marketing can also be tested using this method. For example, rather than sending 2000 identical postcards to everyone on your mailing list, you could send 1000 postcards with your current layout and another 1000 with some element modified. To track the performance of A vs. B you’d simply need to include different information to help you collect and analyze the data, such as different landing page URLs (and QR codes that redirect to different landing pages) as well as phone numbers.

Give A/B Testing a try and let us know if it helps you improve your marketing ROI. If you need some help, you know where to find us!

March 6, 2012 By Tom Gimer

What is a mail merge and how much does it cost?

I’ve written in the past about variable data publishing (VDP) and how using marketing materials that are uniquely tailored to the recipient improves response rates, leads and sales. The problem is, we continue to get calls from people who have no idea what any of this means!

So for this post we’re going back to basics and going over one of the simplest forms of VDP — the mail merge. With a mail merge, you are simply printing recipients’ information (such as salutation, name and address) on a piece that will be mailed. Most often these are newsletters, brochures, postcards or envelopes but a mail merge could be done on anything to be printed and mailed. If you have a large mailing list, mail merging will save you a lot of time and energy while at the same time making your materials more attractive and professional. So how is it done? Here’s an overview…

First, you provide a spreadsheet containing all of your members’ (or subscribers’ or targets’) information. Most often this is a Microsoft Excel file, although we can work with other file types. Here’s a post about how to properly set up your data file.

Next, we review what you’ve submitted to make sure that it is properly formatted. More often than not, the file needs work. This is where we earn the bulk of our mailing fee. It could be something as simple as taking out empty rows in your file or adding field names, but regardless of what needs to be done we make all necessary changes to ensure that your data can be properly merged into the printed piece.

The cost for mail merging — essentially working with your data and setting it up to print properly — depends upon how many addresses we are going to print; and it decreases as the number of addresses goes up. Mail merge pricing ranges from as much as $0.15 per address (for just a few addresses) to $0.03 each (for many). There is a $6 setup fee.

So let’s say you are going to send postcards to 3000 people on a mailing list. At this level, merging is $0.04 per address, so our mailing fee is $126. Here is what your $126 gets you:

1. we review and reformat (as necessary) your mailing list
2. we print individual addresses on each of your 3000 pieces
3. we take the postcards to the post office and mail them
4. we save you money on postage whenever possible

Update: Just to clarify, in the example above we are already printing a 2-sided postcard, so our mail merge fee covers merging the names onto the card with the other content. In other cases, such a job where we are mail merging and printing envelopes, printing is additional, and the cost depends on the number of prints and whether we are using color vs. black ink. Contact us with your specs to determine total cost of your mail merge and print project.

So, the next time you think about handwriting addresses, printing and sticking labels and affixing a first class stamp to every piece in your mailing, remember this post and consider letting us handle your mail merge or mailing project from the DC Metro area.

February 1, 2012 By Tom Gimer

How to set up a mail merge

Merging data saves time and energy If you’re sending out a mailing, one of the easiest ways to save time and energy (and look more professional) is to merge information directly onto the printed piece(s). Depending on who you talk to, this is called data merging, mail merging, or variable data publishing. To do this, you’re going to need to create a properly formatted file for the printer. It’s actually pretty easy. Here’s how.

This first thing you’ll need is the right software. Microsoft Excel works fine for this. But you can use any software that is capable of generating a Comma Separated Value (.csv) file.

Next, when you first create your data file, make a column heading for every element of data you’ll be including. Elements could be Name, Address, Address2, City, State, Zip, etc. Some people include City/State/Zip in the same field because they are always printed together. That’s fine too.

Once you have your headings, add or import your data. Make sure there are no line breaks in your cells!

Now that you’re done adding the actual data, you’ll need to save the file properly. “Save As” a .csv file. You’ll need to find .csv in the file type drop down.

That’s it! Send your file to the printer with instructions as to where each element should be merged into the final print!

mailing

Cards and Invitations

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