Hotcards, Full Color Printing In The Nation

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

At the Graphics of Americas Personalized Communications Conference over the weekend, this was the subject of the keynote address. You can read all about it on the great print news site, WhatTheyThink.

The concept behind ‘direct mail with teeth,’ as explained by speaker Harvey Hirsch, is the trimming of mass marketing communications down to something that’s lean, mean, and very effective, in scope, while being less like mail, and more like an interactive 3D experience, in form.

Take direct mail printing, for example. Hirsch suggests that instead of running a campaign of ten of thousands of mailers, you invest in just 100 very targeted, very personalized, high quality packages or ‘kits’. Offerings so darn lovely, clever, and compelling (What’s…in…the box!) that you can expect response rates of 50 to 90%!

With Hirsch’s method, instead of printing ten thousand postcards, you might have your printer design and create 100 posters, which would wrap around 100 screen-printed t-shirts, which would, in turn, conceal a magazine, brochure, or even a business card, all specially tailored to attract your small but very well-targeted audience.

An additional benefit of this style of direct mail printing is that it consumes fewer resources while offering a greater return. The upshot? Your campaign is eco-friendly!

Before you get too excited about this, however, don’t forget that Hirsch’s keynote speech was also a pitch for his own services (he specializes in creating these marketing kits). If anything, the real gem of wisdom here is to always strive to get outside the box when it comes to direct mail printing. Modern consumers are savvy, eco-conscious, and skeptical of all but the most cutting-edge advertising. Whatever form they take, the direct mail campaigns that succeed are the ones that truly – pardon the pun – push the envelope.