Direct Mail

Direct Mail Study Reveals the Impact of Print Embellishments

March 18, 2025

Contributed by the Foil & Specialty Effects Association

With all the tools that marketers employ today, statistics clearly illuminate the power of direct mail. However, to make authentic connections with a targeted direct mail audience, brand managers need to utilize tactics that will resonate. Unless a direct mail piece strikes an immediate emotional tie through relevant personalization components and highly attractive designs that feature coatings/laminates, embossing or decorative metallics, the piece likely will not receive the attention desired or optimum results.

Consumers positively react to printed pieces that resonate with their emotions, needs and values, and the direct mail story must be designed so that the sales message is enhanced with visual and tactile effects that invite the recipient to connect.

Although there is plenty of evidence that special finishes and embellishments have helped with the response rate and performance of many direct campaigns (either as an embellished self-mailer or envelope), there are little to no facts available on specific results. Many companies simply look at the results and success as confidential information they would rather not share.

With this in mind, the Foil & Specialty Effects Association (FSEA) recently embarked on a study to specifically measure the results of a direct mail campaign and the impact of print embellishments on direct mail results. Through the partnership of Charlie’s Car Wash, a national car wash company located close to the FSEA offices in Kansas and with multiple locations throughout the Midwest, the company agreed to share the results from a postcard mailing to a targeted neighborhood surrounding the location of one of its newest car wash facilities. The results of the study, which differentiated between printed postcards and embellished postcards, are outlined below.

“I had been working for several years to find the right partner to create an embellished direct mail piece where we could measure the results of a plainly printed mailer vs. a printed and fully embellished mailer,” stated FSEA Executive Director Jeff Peterson. “The marketing department at Charlie’s Car Wash was wonderful to work with to create a program that we could track and would provide quality results.”

Methodology

Closely working with the car wash company, a postcard was designed to mail to approximately 7,500 residents in the neighborhoods surrounding the opening of a new car wash location. Of the 7,500 total postcards, 50% were digitally printed (4-color process) on the front side and 50% were digitally printed (4-color process) with the addition of offline digital inkjet embellishments. These print embellishments included spot raised and textured coatings and raised digital metallic decoration in gold. The postcards were printed and embellished by Salt Lake City printing company, Hudson Printing (www.hudsonprinting.com).

The backside of the postcard, also digitally printed using 4-color process, described a special offer for a free car wash if the direct mail recipient brought it to the car wash location within a certain period of time. Separate barcodes differentiated the two types of postcards – one for the printed postcards only and one for the embellished postcards, allowing the car wash to determine how many of each postcard type were redeemed.

Results

The response rates for each group were as follows:

Print-Only Postcard Mailers:

Total Sent: 3,750

Responses: 480

Response Rate: 12.8%

Embellished Postcard Mailers:

Total Sent: 3,750

Responses: 631

Response Rate: 16.8%

Conclusion

The result of this campaign clearly demonstrated that embellished direct mailers with tactile varnish and/or metallic finishes significantly are more effective in generating responses compared to standard print-only direct mail campaigns. The embellished car wash postcards with the free car wash offer achieved a response rate of 16.8%, which is a 31.25% improvement over the response rate of the printed-only postcard. The statistical analysis confirms the significance of these findings, providing compelling evidence to support the use of tactile embellishments in future direct mail campaigns to enhance engagement and response rates.

By continuing to innovate through the exploration of creative enhancements, new benchmarks can be established for success in marketing efforts. This direct mail study underscores the value of investing in embellished mailers as a strategic approach to improving campaign outcomes and achieving higher engagement from recipients.

For more information and further details on this study and other studies on the impact of embellishments on both direct mail and packaging, contact the Foil & Specialty Effects Association (FSEA) at www.fsea.com or call 785.271.5816. FSEA provides a wide range of resources to help companies remain profitable today and into the future. From cost-saving programs and educational opportunities to green initiatives proving the sustainability of foil decorated paper/board, the FSEA strives to provide its members with ideas, resources and solutions to grow in today’s marketplace.

New Tactile Promotion from US Postal Service

The United States Postal Service recently has reinstated The Tactile, Sensory & Interactive (TSI) Promotion that encourages mailers to excite their customers’ senses by incorporating innovative techniques into their First-Class Mail® and USPS Marketing Mail®. The new promotion runs February 1 – July 31, 2025. For more details on the promotion, visit Association News on page 75 of this issue of PostPress.

Embellished Direct Mail Marketing Creates Sensory Experience

September 7, 2023

By Julie Shaffer, senior vice president, content and programs, WhatTheyThink/ Association for PRINT Technologies

Brands add embellishments to printed products to make them stand out and to grab the consumer’s attention. Studies show that people will look at a branded product with enhancements, such as foil, 50% longer than without such enhancements. Brands put this to work for many packaged products; consider those rows of beautifully embellished wine and liquor labels on store shelves. But there is a blue ocean of opportunity in a market people may not associate with print embellishment – direct mail marketing – and it is proving to be a boon for the savvy marketers who are using it to stand out in the sea of white envelopes in the consumer’s mailbox.

Certainly, digital communication has had a major impact in reducing many forms of mail, especially billing. A recent study shows that 66% of US consumers pay at least some of their bills electronically directly to the biller and 40% pay bills through their bank’s digital payment service. But while billing mail is on the wane, direct mail marketing brings a brand’s message directly to the consumer’s door.

The US mail market is the largest in the world, with more volume than all the EU countries’ mail volume combined. Approximately 66 billion units of marketing mail are sent each year. In fact, the mailing industry represents about 4.6% of the US GDP. Combine this with the fact that the US is a consumer economy, with 70% of the GDP represented by consumer spending, and it’s the perfect medium to carry a brand’s message to a massive potential audience.

And people do read the direct marketing pieces that show up in their mailboxes. Studies show that US households read or scan over 70% of the advertising mail they receive, a statistic that remains unchanged since 2019. Consumers spend an average of 30 minutes reading their mail, and a USPS report on direct mail found that 67% of respondents agree mail feels more personal than the Internet.

That personal touch is an important component of direct mail marketing. Personalized messaging is nothing new, but today consumers almost have come to expect it. This especially is true for millennials, who have grown up with digital communication and are less concerned with sharing data. As the largest living age group in the US today, millennials are an important marketing target – together with Gen X, they make up 42% of the population.

This envelope produced by Parkland Direct is embellished with gold and holographic foil and augmented reality links to a virtual experience.

Contrary to the popular stereotype that digital natives are glued to their digital devices, studies are showing it is millennials who most often interact with direct mail. For example, a recent USPS study looking at how millennials respond to direct mail shows that 80% of millennials look forward to seeing what’s in their mailbox and two-thirds of millennials may bring marketing mail to retail stores or use direct mail prompts to go online.

Still, it can be a challenge for brands to get their direct mail piece to stand out from that stack in the mailbox. And just as brands have found that adding embellishment to packaging helps grab the attention of a shopper, the same is true for direct mail marketing. “If embellishment works in packaging, it can work for direct mail,” said Clint Seckman, president of Parkland Direct, whose company is a leader in high-end, embellished envelope manufacturing.

A big reason embellishments “work” – that is, get people to notice and react to it – has to do with neuroscience. The human brain reacts differently to print than it does to digital media. Over half of the brain is devoted to processing sensory experience, and much of that sensory receptivity focuses on touch. Studies show that people who touch an object, or even imagine touching it, begin to exhibit a sense of ownership. Foil stamping has been shown to significantly affect consumer attention toward a product compared to the same product without foil, and metallized paper envelopes can boost response rates by as much as 30%. Adding a tactile element like texture, or visual enhancers like foil, to a mail piece will make it stand out and stimulate a haptic response.

Parkland Direct has been in the printing business for 45 years and an envelope manufacturer for over 20 years. Just as its high-volume mail clients have shifted from billing mail toward direct marketing mail, so has the company. Parkland’s embellished envelopes business has grown over the past five years and includes many advanced embellishments techniques – metallic foils, holographic foils, embossing, micro-embossing and a range of textures – on the outside of envelopes. Today, Seckman said, the business is, “all about the customer experience.”

Andy Schipke, vice president marketing and strategic sales, W+D North America, the largest supplier of envelope equipment in the mail market, put it this way: “We have moved the envelope away from being simply a delivery device and made it a part of the promotion.” An embellished envelope, he said, can improve lift and open rates; provide a tactile, memorable customer experience; and help tell a brand’s story, all before it is opened. “The challenge,” Schipke said, “has been how to do this at scale for hundreds of millions of units per customer. Companies like Parkland have been leaders in this space.” Mailing technology, he said, also has been changing to accommodate this need.

Two of the largest industries that heavily use direct mail marketing are nonprofits and the financial industry. Because adding embellishments also adds cost to mail pieces, nonprofits are less likely to use it. Financial companies, however, are putting together direct mail campaigns with all sorts of added embellishments to help to position their products as high quality, like high-end packaged products or a fine wine label. While adding embellishments increase the production cost, Seckman said, these brands measure success not in cost per piece, but in cost per customer acquisition.

Parkland Direct created this textured cityscape design using foil and emboss with clear gloss foil, providing a tactile experience for the recipient.

The USPS is doing its part to help promote physical mail and direct mail response rates through its promotions and incentive programs. These annual programs encourage marketers, printers and mailers to integrate mail with new print techniques and technology for First-Class® and USPS Marketing Mail® with postage discounts. Each promotion runs for about six months, starting at different times of the year. The promotions for 2024 will be the same as 2023, which include discount incentives (typically around 5%) for direct mail projects that utilize personalization, reply mail, Informed Delivery®, retargeting, “emerging technology” and “tactile, sensory and interactive technologies.”

The USPS Informed Delivery program ties physical mail to online campaigns. The postal service, using automated equipment, scans and captures images of each piece of mail. These images are available as a daily preview mail that customers who register for the service can check through email, a mobile app or online dashboard mail before it hits their physical mailbox (so one actually can confirm that the check is, indeed, in the mail.) The Informed Delivery platform also allows marketers to build interactive campaigns around a direct mail marketing piece, providing custom images and URL links along with the image of the mail piece when customers check their daily preview. These links can guide the customer to online content – a video, a web landing page, a storefront – further boosting campaign response rates.

Participation in both Informed Delivery and the promotion and incentive programs is significant. There are over 55 million Informed Delivery customers in the US, and there have been 53,000 marketing campaigns. As for the promotional programs, in 2022, over 22.5 billion mail pieces were mailed as part of the six annual promotions, from over 10,000 direct mailing participants. The program paid $219 million dollars in discounts cumulatively to these marketers.

Carl Boettner is a product development specialist at the USPS and part of the team that manages the promotion and incentive programs. Part of his job is reviewing the samples submitted by marketers for acceptance into the program, and he is a huge proponent of direct mail marketing. “Direct mail cuts through the digital noise,” he said, “and even if a piece of mail that you pull from your mailbox isn’t relevant to you, you’re touching it. You’re interacting with it. That has an impact.”

Schipke agreed. “Marketers are using the science of haptics in whole new ways,” he said. “The customer experience for a lot of marketers begins through tactile nature of a mail piece – whether that be embossing, embellishments or special diecuts – with the understanding that all they have to do is have recipients touch it and feel it and that already will encode in their mind what they want to achieve for the brand. They don’t even necessarily have to read it.”

Perhaps not, but when recipients do open those envelopes, response rates can go through the roof. Seckman said he has clients reporting response upward of 30% for direct mail campaigns in envelopes enhanced with foil or other techniques, a ten-fold increase over the typical direct mail response rate of 2-3%.

Educating brands marketers on print embellishment is key to expanding the opportunities for using it in the mailing industry. The USPS offers a webinar series showcasing interesting direct marketing campaigns and provides how-to educational resources at www.usps.com. Parkland Direct has a creative mailing program and regularly designs and creates new envelopes with different types of embellishments, which then are shared with members of the mailing program (readers can register to be on the recipient list at parklanddirect.com.)

Julie Shaffer is senior vice president, content and programs with WhatTheyThink/ the Association for PRINT Technologies. In a career spanning 35 years, Shaffer has been devoted to building innovative business resources and educational programs to serve the industry. She has developed and presented dozens of educational workshops and presented hundreds of seminars and presentations at major industry events around the world. Shaffer also has authored magazine articles and several industry-focused books, including the PDF Print Production Guide (3 editions), the Web-to-Print Primer and the Social Media Field Guide.

Resources

“The Flexibility Factor: Mapping Consumer Demand for Bill Payment Innovation,” PYMNTS and BillGo, www.pymnts.com.
www.census.gov
www.bea.gov/data/consumer-spending
www.investopedia.com
www.usps.com

Direct Mail in a Different World

March 15, 2023

By Trish Witkowski, president of Foldfactory

It’s 2023, and two of the greatest things that came out of the past three difficult years have been the rediscovery of and appreciation for tangible experiences – whether that’s a piece of mail, a visit to a store or an in-person meeting. Digital overload was a very real thing, and although it provided entertainment and helped everyone to communicate, the novelty wore off. The desire for multisensory experiences became greater than ever and continues to this day. Overall, this has been great for print marketing, and the industry needs to pounce on the opportunity.

First, why digital-only marketing has a problem

The days of boasting that digital marketing is cheaper and easier than print now are solidly in the past – the pandemic created an accelerated increase in online competition, due to the shift from in-person experiences to e-commerce. That competition has driven up digital ad pricing, with the average cost per click (CPC) on Google ads between $1 and $4, and the average cost per click on a Facebook ad at 94 cents (WebFX). And that’s just for a click. In 2017, that Facebook click was 28 cents. It was hard to beat the digital pricing argument at 28 cents, but at $1+ per click? Digital marketing is not the low-budget wonder that it used to be. It’s still essential in today’s marketing mix, but a cheap and easy strategy? Not a chance.

In addition to the rise in costs for digital marketing, the other – possibly greater – challenge of digital-only is that the rules always are changing. Here are four examples:

In January 2022, Facebook removed thousands of detailed targeting options related to topics people might perceive as sensitive, such as causes, organizations or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion or sexual orientation. Facebook did not provide a list of the targeting terms that were removed, either. They were just gone.
Ninety-seven percent of Apple iOS15 users have opted into its new Mail Protection Privacy (MPP) feature, which prevents email marketers from tracking users’ email behavior.
Google Chrome, which holds 63% of the browser share, is set to remove third-party cookies by late 2023. Safari and Firefox already block them.
According to eMarketer, more than 40% of internet users are using ad blockers. Additionally, an Edelman study determined that 45% pay for streaming video services that don’t contain ads or that have reduced ad loads.

So, whether it’s the platform or the user blocking the path of marketers, it is getting a lot tougher to get digital marketing content consistently in front of the right customer or prospect.

Print + digital for the win

Whereas the argument used to be “which is better?,” it’s now become much clearer and easier to prove the position that a hybrid, print + digital marketing strategy truly is the best way to enhance the customer journey and drive sales. According to an SG360 study, 92% of direct mail recipients report being driven to digital activity. So, the two work together as a powerful sales team.

Each marketing channel has a role to play – digital marketing works to engage and track (view, click, visit, read) and print is used to slow down customers, narrow their focus and drive them to action. More than just a nice to-do, it’s actually become an expectation that brand experiences will be more nuanced and dimensional. In fact, 85% of consumers indicated that they expect and appreciate a blend of digital and physical engagement with brands (CMO Council).

Making that print touchpoint count

Direct mail has a lot going for it these days (and the data to back it up), but rising postage and paper costs, supply chain challenges and inflation mean there are big investments and risks to print marketing as well, so there’s no room for error. With everything on the line, print customers need more help than ever to make sure that their mail campaigns succeed.

The great news is that, as print professionals with a wide array of techniques and tools that can enhance the experience and the engagement of a printed piece, there are so many ideas and strategies designers can bring to the table (translation: VALUE) to help their customers succeed in their campaigns.

I spend a lot of time analyzing different strategies for mail, and I’ve compiled five of my go-to mail enhancement ideas:

1. Special print effects

I’m starting with special print effects because this category is huge, incredibly powerful and can be applied to everything from short- to long-run print jobs. What I love about special print effects these days is that there are many ways to get the effect designers are looking for. Let’s take clear gloss, for example. Designers can use gloss varnish, gloss UV coating, gloss aqueous coating, clear gloss digital enhancement ink, sleeking, gloss laminate or clear gloss foil. I have not even touched upon metallics, raised textures, specialty inks and all of the other great effects in this category. There’s something for everyone and every budget. Sometimes a designer or marketer just needs to know where to apply the effects.

2. Technology

How can one leverage print technology to create engaging communications? Oh, there are so many ways, and not all of them will bust clients’ budgets. My top three technologies are variable data personalization, QR codes and direct mail retargeting/direct mail automation. For variable data, there’s a lot more than first-name personalization – consider batch targeting using imagery and customized content for different audiences. QR codes are a no-brainer these days. Everyone knows how to use them, so make the destination worthwhile. And for direct mail retargeting and automation, check out Lob, PebblePost and Postalytics, to start.

3. Un-envelopes

Supply chain issues with envelopes led to a lot of forced creativity in the folded self-mailer (FSM) category, and one of my favorite solutions is the un-envelope or faux-velope. The concept is to create a folded self-mailer that looks like an envelope, but it is not an envelope. The easiest way to do this is to add a short flap that is glued down and gives the appearance of an envelope, but designers can get really creative by shaping the flap with a point or tab to open.

4. Interaction devices

Creating clever and simple ways for someone to interact with the mail piece is a really easy thing to do. For example, adding a zip strip (or paper zipper) as an opening mechanism creates a great sound and a fun experience to tear it away. In the process, it engages three senses – touch, sight and sound – and the more senses one can engage, the greater the experience and brand recall. Another way to add interaction is with a peek-a-boo panel. If two panels are glued together, leave a section free of glue and perforate the top panel so that it can be peeled up to reveal a message or image below. Fun and easy!

5. Texture and dimension

Adding texture draws attention and sensory interaction, and this can be achieved through print embellishments to mimic known textures like rubber, woodgrain, leather, sand and more. Paper texture is another way to make an impression. Paper itself is dimensional and can be cut and folded in different ways to create pop-up sections and memorable dimensional experiences.

Bring fresh print marketing ideas to the table

So, now I’m going to give the readers of this article some homework: Go back through client work to see if anything has been produced that could be considered a good example of any of the five categories listed here. If examples are found, set them aside to share with customers (if allowed). If there are no examples, I would suggest that making some “house samples” that demonstrate the concepts and can be handed out. Basic order of magnitude pricing scales would be helpful as well. Designers and marketers are visual, and they have to live by their budgets, but if they are shown something that can increase their visibility, engagement and return, they just might jump on it.

Trish Witkowski is president of www.Foldfactory.com, curator of the world’s most exciting collection of folded print and direct mail samples, and host of “60-second Super-cool Fold of the Week” on YouTube. Witkowski also is an instructor for LinkedIn Learning and the author of several books on folding and direct mail strategy.