Engaging visuals, creative headlines, and a brief message are what gets your prospects’ attention.

We understand someone has to at least HOLD a direct mail piece for 3-5 seconds before they decide to throw it out. So make those seconds count. Don’t bore your audience with mundane images and too much information.

Since the average person has the attention span of a goldfish – more or less– the goal of direct mail is to get your message across quickly, and get people to call you , or to your website.

Your prospects’ time, and your marketing budget, are too valuable to not make an immediate impact. (And getting your direct marketing noticed is one of our specialties.)

Check out some of our direct mail work below and see if you agree. If a marketing company can’t keep your attention for 5 seconds with their work, it’s a safe bet they won’t be able to do it for your direct mail and advertising.

MidWest Fresh

No fruits or vegetables were harmed during the making of these postcards.

MidWest Fresh was at a loss for what to send their customers and prospects to get noticed. They’d been sending out letters and that weren’t doing any good. (No surprise there!)

So we gathered information about what it was they did that was beneficial to their customers, and depicted it via fruits and vegetables, and created a series of 6 postcards for the promotion.

(Granted, the visuals weren’t a totally original idea: there was an awesome series of books called “Food Play” that inspired the approach. But we did original photography, creating food with personalities.)

The direct mail effort got a great reaction from the restaurants, country clubs and catering services that received them. Once they received the second postcard, they knew it was a series, and in some cases, we heard people started taping them to their office walls to show off the entire set. (They were “collectibles”!)

Bob Boyd Lincoln Mercury Service Department

Making a relatively boring service stand out.

Admit it. Getting your car serviced isn’t the most interesting thing to do. And how do you even know which repair shops, or service departments, know their stuff? Our goal was simple enough: show this dealer’s service department were top-rated professionals.

This series of direct mail pieces for a Lincoln Mercury dealer’s service department was directed towards their current Mercury and Lincoln owners.

The mechanics were great sports, and through six postcards, the Lincoln Mercury dealer got the response they wanted. Through an offer on each postcard, they were able to track the responses. This series resonated with their prospects and achieved their goal of bringing in more customers.

American Eagle Printing

Bringing mundane services to life.

We were approached by American Eagle Printing to help promote their shrink wrapping, laminating, and punching and binding services.

Since they were a printer, they wanted to send out a series of 6 printed pieces promoting these services. Trouble is, these services were pretty mundane. So we went about showing them from a new perspective that would get the recipients attention.

Once the second card arrived, the recipients realized these were part of a series so they started noticing, and in some cases, kept the previous postcards handy to see how the series progressed.

American Eagle was happy with the postcards and the response, which is why we started out with 3 postcards, and ended up with 6 postcards in the series.

Hackman Capital

Showing interesting ways renovation cash could be used.

Hackman Captial, based in Los Angeles, owns multiple warehouses in Central Ohio. In a competitive environment, they were offering $400,000 “move-in” money as an incentive. The offer was made through real estate brokers, so the message is geared towards them, opposed to their tenants.

As with all marketing, getting your audience to take notice of your piece in a sea of direct mail is half the battle. We created visuals that are unusual, stop people to take notice, and tell the story of what the client was offering.

In the past, Hackman Capital was sending out direct mail pieces with not very dramatic images of their buildings. Those don’t catch the attention of people who are filtering their mail.

But when each piece of mail is given 3 seconds before someone decides if it’s wort their time, getting their attention with a unique visual and headline is critical.

Treplus Communities

Creating a unique mailer that reflected their homes

When Treplus Communities needed a direct mail piece that got noticed, we worked with them to have the unique architecture of their buildings make the mailer stand out.

The edge of the direct mail piece extended beyond the fold to mimic their roof line’s distinctive edge. This concept allowed the direct mail piece to stand out among other pieces that were in the mail.

That’s critical because with direct mail, like any advertising, you only have a few seconds to get someone’s attention. That’s the time between when they hold it in their hands and toss it in the trash. If you don’t get their attention in those few seconds, you might not get it at all.