Are you looking for a new idea for a tradeshow leave-behind? Look no further than the 60 Second Super Cool Fold of the Week for the Long Triangle Fold. This collateral piece was designed by The Whitmore Print Group from Baltimore Maryland and created for Edge Technologies in Fairfax, Virgina.
Enjoy!
Join Trish on her 100th episode as she shows us how to create a super cool direct mail piece from Hyundai. This is another good example of how direct mail can be powerful and innovative and can help your customers impress their target audience.
For Print Providers who specialize in direct mail pieces, the challenge to come up with something new and interesting for your customers can be daunting. However, if you can create something that your customer has never seen before and something that is sure to excite their target audience – you can be sure that they will continue coming to you for direct mail solutions. Check out the Super Cool Fold of the Week for innovative direct mail ideas. In this week’s edition, learn how to create this cube design pioneered by Schmitz Press in Baltimore and produced for the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Even though the USPS is struggling, and digital and social media are all the rage, direct mail is seeing renewed interest and technological advancement—for good reason. Printed material in the mailbox, done right, is still the preferred and most effective way to reach a customer. The key to whether or not the opportunity is a wasted one comes down to format and technique. I’ll give you an example:
Recently, I was involved in a collaboration with Sappi Fine Paper. I provided content for their highly acclaimed educational publication series The Standard Volume 4: Scoring & Folding (you can obtain a free copy of the publication by clicking here).
To launch the project, we did a seven-city speaking tour, which included myself and world-famous designer Kit Hinrichs, who was responsible for the design of the piece. Sappi sent out a save the date email blast in each city, which received some response. They followed it up with an exotic “Twist Fold” direct mailpiece in a brightly colored envelope, and the RSVPs skyrocketed the day that piece hit mailboxes. Hundreds showed up at each venue for the events. Print can be powerful.
For this instance, the concept was on target, the design was great, the fold was interesting, and the envelope was attention-grabbing. This was a special piece mailed to a targeted audience and they got the response they were looking for. So, is the moral of the story that you have to spend a lot of money, use a funky fold and an envelope that screams to get good results these days? Of course not. The lesson here is that email alone won’t cut it. Print alone may not cut it, either, but good design and smart decisions along the way can save money, while getting you the response that justifies the expenditure.
Here are a few tips:
By leveraging current technology, marketers can use print as a way to create a dialogue in B2C communications. Send an email, then a targeted print piece with a PURL, a microsite or QR code to increase points of contact and gather more information about the customer’s interests. In doing this, they’re saying goodbye to the old-school “spray and pray” direct mail methodology and choosing to spend more on the piece to ensure its visibility and return on investment. So what does folding have to do with it? Successful direct mail involves the alignment of several variables, and choice of folding style is one of these variables, however so is color palette, text and imagery, paper choice, layout, format and even schedule. Below is a list of questions addressing machinability for direct mail. I’ll be posting in the future about envelope choice, tips, tricks and techniques to help you get the most out of your DM investment.
Is one fold better than another at getting the most into a standard letter envelope?
Not really. There are always different configurations for folding paper that can get a very large amount of information into a compact size. When designing for folded materials, what is most important is to focus on the organization and reveal of the content so that it does not confuse the recipient, and the placement of critical marketing messages. I always suggest that you mock up your layout and hand it to a few people to make sure the message is properly communicated. If your small test group doesn’t get it, your mailing audience won’t get it, either, and you should rework your layout and test again.
What are the most effective machinable folds for direct mail?
The key to successful machine production for direct mail is closed edges. Perfect example – the accordion fold is notoriously problematic for both self-mailing and for auto-inserting. The trouble is caused by the format—accordions don’t have a closed edge. The open sides make it very difficult, if not impossible, to auto insert, and if it’s self-mailing it’ll need four tabs to seal both sides. Expensive and unattractive. However, if you choose a wrapped accordion (see illustration), you get the accordion experience you’re looking for with its pull-out panels, but you also get a closed edge, which changes the tab requirement and offers a closed edge for inserting. So, sometimes you can get what you want with a little creativity.
How important is machinability for direct mail?
I’ll answer a question with a question: How important is it that you don’t throw money away? I see it all the time—a really great design built in a format that instantly adds a .20 per piece non-machinable surcharge to the mailing budget. Why???? I have samples in my collection that miss USPS aspect ratio by 1/8 inch. It’s silly. What a mindless and costly mistake. In my opinion, there are two things to consider when talking about machine production—machinability of the fold and machinability for mailing. Unless you don’t care at all about the budget, ideally, you should aim for a maximum of one of the two options, but never both. For example, if you’re printing a fairly short run, you may choose a unique folding style that has to be hand folded, but you should try to produce it in a format that is within USPS aspect ratio. Or, similar scenario, design a machinable fold in a square format if you must, however, your most efficient solution will always be machinable fold in a machinable mail format.
Editors Note: You can find more ideas from Trish at the foldfactory 3-D sample library and watch short videos of hundreds of folding ideas that will be sure to add some variety to the everyday.
You can pack a lot of information into a compact package with this cool accordian z fold from Z Card. See more of their cool stuff at www.zcardna.com Take a look!
I found this diemensional promo piece in a Sheraton hotel room. It has different lenght panels with half inch tabs glued to the center. It makes a super-cool reveal – take a look!
Below is the embed code for this week’s fold: Sheraton Dimensional Promo Piece
It’s hard to believe, but to date I’ve done more than 80 Fold of the Week videos. The shirts that have become my trademark have been very popular with my viewers, and I get a lot of questions and comments about them. Many ask if I repeat the shirts, or of they’re new every time. It’s hard to believe, but they are new every week. And, just when I think I might run out of clever folding slogans, my mind sends me a nice little burst of ideas to get me through the next 5 or six videos. Even better, sometimes my viewers send me great shirt slogans to use. For those who don’t believe I could come up with 83 fun folding saying, I give you my list as proof.
And if you like these slogans, check out our new foldfactoryGEAR store.
Get t-shirts and mugs with your favorite folding slogans on them. And, if you don’t see your favorite, contact me at trish@foldfactory.com and I’ll add yours to the store.
CJ Graphics in Toronto produced this 16 page booklet with Stitched-in Folded insert. Check it out:
Folding Makes the World Go ‘Round!
Wow! It’s Folding Nirvana (check the T-Shirt). This video shows a super-cool direct mail piece and includes cost and production details. It’s not a proprietary fold but it does require some hands work. If you’ve got a clean, well targeted list this is worth serious consideration. Check it out.
This example is from ColorTree Marketing Solutions by way of FoldFactory.com. If you’re interested in efficient, completely automated folds for digitally printed direct mail – take a look:
As always, super-cool!
Here’s an example of the “checkbook fold” sent by Papermonkey all the way from Australia.
Pretty tough to automate – but still super-cool for driving response. Take a look:
An exotic fold produced by Lithographics LA for Sappi Fine Papers. Hand folded but still super-cool. Take a look.
The Twist Fold:
We are truly in the golden age of printing. It’s an exciting time full of technology convergence, disruption and acceleration. Along with all of this is the necessary sorting out true cost/benefit of any technology including the energy used to run it. As the old adage goes, you can’t track what you don’t measure. This writing explores that philosophy as it pertains to power consumption.
It is generally accepted that digital printing costs less to both you and your customers in terms of both time and money in specific situations, and although this can be true, the question here is how does power fit into the equation?
Hybrid printing facilities have a variety of options when it comes to jobs that at the outset seem more efficient through the use of one technology over another. Do you run it offset or digital? Preprint shells and imprint data or run an otherwise black-only variable data color job on a digital color press? Sure, time and cost can be calculated in terms of BHC and necessary turn around, but for each piece of equipment what is the true cost of the power used to run it?
The power it takes to run digital versus offset equipment can and should be measured on an isolated basis. There are many permanent and portable power meters and data-loggers on the market generally ranging from $600 to $3000 for a three-phase-capable unit. This cost can be viewed as a quick payoff investment to get a true picture of how much power is consumed by each piece of equipment in the shop for a specified duration, either under load, idle or “off”, provided the results are utilized to proper advantage.
For instance, platesetters, digital presses, cutters &c. all are under idle power when not in use. By calculating the idle time power draw and then isolating a production run under full load, a true picture of the actual cost can be achieved. Now how about warm-up time? Obviously a cutter doesn’t have much of one, while a digital press does. Most shops have these machines powered up all day long, idle or not. How much money could be saved by turning off idle devices when not in use? Of course the same can be said for idle workstations, lighting and climate control, but that’s not the focus here.
On the other hand, offset presses, with the exception of associated compressors, chillers, agitators, recirculators, UV units, thermal oxidizers… well, you get the point, along with folders, stitchers and some types of packaging equipment do not draw active power when not in use. They do however draw at the very least phantom power. In all cases, the question comes down to whether there’s a warm-up time, and how much power that activity consumes and whether or not a lockout device should be employed to completely power down when it would otherwise be “turned off”.
Once the true power consumption costs are calculated for any given piece of equipment how could this play into your organization’s strategy? Here are some thoughts:
1. Benchmark costs for power used for jobs on specific equipment;
2. Track unused idle time and phantom power draw, and find ways to eliminate the same;
3. Report on isolated power consumption as part of a formal Life Cycle Analysis (LCA);
4. Use power consumption as an evaluation tool to cost one technology over another;
5. Integrate power isolation metrics into upper management’s continuous improvement dashboard;
6. Incentivize and empower employees to reduce energy use;
7. Empower customers to make the choice of technologies partially based on energy use;
8. Integrate a power reduction strategy into the organization’s sustainability reporting;
9. Normalize power conservation into the organization’s DNA;
10. Become a champion and tell your story to the masses.
What other ideas can you come up with?
Trish Witkowski of The Fold Factory supplied this video of a direct mail piece from Structural Graphics called “the Book Cube.” It is, as she says, “Super Cool.” It is also a proprietary solution that took time to develop and these types of solutions can sometimes cause a longer production cycle for the customer – and may not be automated.
This company chose to invest in the creation of a line of proprietary solutions and I’m curious to hear what readers think about the cost / benefit of this approach.
And as always – enjoy the video from Trish. Super-Cool Fold of the Week: The Book Cube:
