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Design Advisory Services
Practical advice achieving the ideal balance of cost and impact
An expert eye during the design of your direct mail campaigns can make a substantial difference to future print, fulfilment and postage costs.
We assess every element of your mailings, from paper sizes to the number of pages, and identify ways you save expense and preserve visual impact. With DM360, effective direct mail design is reviewed and optimised from all angles.
Knowledge that
keeps campaign costs down
A couple of grams too heavy, or a few centimetres too large, can have a massive influence on your mail-pieces and costs further along the direct mail journey.
Our pragmatic advice and attention to detail pinpoints subtle changes to your direct mail designs that keep them within industry thresholds, significantly cutting down your overall expenses. Together we’ll find the perfect balance of style and function to maximise the appeal and ROI of your campaigns.
Size, weight, format –
we cover everything
We put every aspect of your mailings under a microscope to discover where savings can be made.
From proposing different paper stocks and finishes, to removing redundant pages in brochures and magazines – every suggestion is focused on optimising the cost of your campaigns without compromising how effectively they engage your audiences.
Quality control and
direction at any stage
Receive specialist advice on the design, format and layout of your mailings at any phase of their development. We get involved from the outset, or sanity check campaigns before they’re finalised – reach us at any point to ensure your design is perfectly optimised for the direct mail process.
Need more than design advisory services?
DM360 is direct mail covered from every angle. Our 6-stage direct mail journey enables us to manage your campaigns from start to finish, with unparalleled expertise in every area.
Design Advisory
We know great DM design is a perfect blend of style and function. We advise on the size, weight and layout of your mail-pieces to find the right balance of cost and impact.
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From our 6 commercial-grade digital printers, to our partnerships with trusted lithographic printers, we guarantee quality output, budgets met and deadlines delivered.
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Machine & Hand Fulfilment
High-speed machine automation, or the capable hands of our hand fulfilment team. We offer both to fulfil every order with speed and meticulous attention to detail.
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Postage
Working with leading postage providers across the UK, including Royal Mail, The Delivery Group and FedEx, we identify the quickest, most cost-effective way to get your campaigns in peoples' hands.
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Returns & Suppressions
We can manage all returns on your behalf and run suppressions on your mailing lists, to ensure your data is controlled, clean and ready for future campaigns.
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What’s The Cost of Poor Direct Mail Design?
When most people talk about direct mail design services, they focus on the creative behind your campaigns. The typography used, the imagery selected, the amount of white space, where call to actions are positioned – the list goes on.
These are undoubtedly important to building brand awareness and capturing the attention of your target audience. But what often goes overlooked is how design influences the overall cost of a campaign…
Print, fulfilment and postage are all greatly influenced by size, weights and formats. If the graphic design of your mailings have added a couple of grams or a few centimetres, the costs you incur further along the journey can be significantly higher than they necessarily should be.
For example, it is a remarkable 179% more expensive to send a mail-piece weighing 101g by 1st Class Royal Mail than one weighing only 100g. When your campaigns expand to thousands of mailings, this can have a huge impact on your budget.
No ‘full-service’ direct mail design agency is complete without assessing the practicalities of mail-pieces and seeing if they are as cost-effective as they could be. Our Design Advisory service plugs this gap – our specialist knowledge of print and postage costs means we can recommend design changes that save you substantially in the long run.
By cutting out any excess, while protecting the visual impact of your direct mail marketing, we help you produce campaigns that excite potential customers and deliver maximum ROI.
Direct Mail Design Advisory Services: Frequently Asked Questions
Can you help with direct mail design?
Our design advisory service assesses your designs from a purely practical perspective, advising on how you can optimise your proposed design, layout or formatting to reduce costs across the rest of your campaign’s journey.
This takes into consideration:
- Paper sizes
- Type of paper stock
- Finishes of paper stock
- Weight of mail-pieces
- Format of mail-pieces
- Number of pages
- Volume of designs and images
We do not offer a specific service where we work with you or your agency to develop the creative of your direct mail campaigns. In most circumstances people who use our design advisory service already have a design in place – our role is to suggest subtle tweaks that can often lead to significant cost savings.
What do your design advisory services look at?
With DM360, our design advisory service can be applied to all examples of direct mail, including (but not limited to):
- Brochures
- Catalogues
- Letters
- Postcards
- Magazines
- Tabbed mailings
This acts as a valuable step in your overall direct mail marketing strategy to minimise the overall costs of your campaigns, whatever materials you are producing, before they proceed to print, fulfilment and postage.
We recognise that effective direct mail design is not just visually compelling, but as cost-effective as possible.
How much does direct mail design advisory cost?
Our direct mail design advisory service is completely bespoke, and costs will depend on a variety of factors, including:
- How long you require our support
- How many designs and mail-pieces you would like us to review
- Whether you require this as a one-off service or as part of our end-to-end offering
While you may initially consider this an inessential step, the overall savings to the print, fulfilment and delivery of your marketing campaigns often make this a worthwhile investment. If you would like to discuss this further, get in touch with our team – we are always upfront when it comes to prices and are happy to answer any questions you may have.
What is the best direct mail design or format?
There is no single ‘best’ design or format when it comes to direct mail. Depending on your goals, your audience, and your budget, the ideal size and finish of your mailings will differ.
That is why we take a bespoke approach to each campaign and pull from our vast industry experience to assess every element of your mailings. From paper sizes to the type of finish, we optimise your collateral to ensure it retains its impact in the most cost-effective way possible.
What is bleed and how does it affect design?
In print, bleed is a term that refers to the amount of ink beyond the edge of the paper. This is an important consideration for your mail pieces, as having a suitable amount of bleed on a design ensures there is never any unintentional white space around the edge.
What is the minimum font size I should use for direct mail artwork?
Although it is vital to ensure your mail items are legible, there is no standard minimum font size for a piece of print artwork, as this will depend on a number of factors, including:
The type of mailing being sent out
The fonts used within
The layout of the design
The information being conveyed
Should my artwork be RGB or CMYK?
Only CMYK is suitable for print, as it ensures parity between the colours on-screen and those produced by a printer.
How does artwork design proofing work, and are there limits?
Whether you need our involvement from the outset of a project, or a final sanity check before campaigns are finalised, we can advise on the design, format and layout of your mailings at any phase of development.
However, we do not develop or consult on the creative in your campaign. Our role is solely focused on optimising existing designs and balancing its impact with cost-effectiveness.
What is direct mail design?
Direct mail design is the aesthetic aspect of a physical mail item. This element is crucial in grabbing the attention of your recipients, and can involve a wide range of elements, such as:
Layout
Typeface
Colourways
Paper weight
Print finish
Format and size
What should be included in a direct mail design?
The design of your mail item will vary significantly, depending on the objectives of your campaign, as well as the dimensions and format of collateral.
However, there are core elements that should always be included in a design, such as clearly labelled call-to-actions, logical layouts, on-brand colours, as well as bleed marks for print.
What are the benefits of good direct mail design?
The design of your direct mail item can have a significant impact on its ability to grab people’s attention, engage recipients and generate a meaningful return on your investment.
With a well-optimised design, you can make savings in the long-term without jeopardising the impact of your mailings and help to:
Establish trust
Build credibility
Inspire action
Differentiate your brand from competitors
Go beyond direct mail
today with DM360
Unlock the true power and potential of your direct mail marketing. Whether you’re looking for a single service or the complete DM360 package, fill out the form and let’s get started.
- Reach audiences quickly and cost-effectively with the right postage service
- Source and manage reliable, robust data
- Fulfil mailings rapidly with unrivalled attention to detail