Power Up Your Direct Mail With Strong Visuals

The goal of direct mail is to grab attention, peak interest, and avoid going straight into the recycle. Direct mail marketing breaks up the digital chatter we see everyday, it’s personal, and it’s physical. The visuals, whether they’re graphics or photography, must have the power to entice a viewer to pick it up, look at it, read it, and prompt an immediate response to your call-to-action. If you power up your direct mail with a strong visual, you’re more likely to entice a prospect to read your message and to commit your brand to memory.

Why visuals are more impactful than text

• 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual in nature.
• Graphics are processed 60,000 times more quickly than text.
• Images will live long in the mind after text has already been forgotten.
• High quality infographics are 30 times more likely to be read than plain text.
• 65% of people are visual learners.
• 67% of people say that the quality of the product image is very important in selecting and purchasing a product. When you split up text with compelling images, people are more inclined to finish reading what you’ve written.
• 80% of people retain what they see vs 20% retain what they read.

Strong visuals cause a faster and a more powerful emotional reaction than words. They help viewers engage with content, influence memory retention, and effect buying decisions. Actually, reading text is more of an effort than looking at images. Make it easy for your prospects to remember your message and brand.

Tips to power up your direct direct mail

• Select an image that has a “wow” factor. Ask yourself, is your image strong enough to grab attention?
• Choose imagery that’s bold, colorful, and crisp.
• Use lifestyle imagery, if applicable. Pictures of people using your product help a prospect understand how it will enhance their lives. Show them and then TELL them how they’ll benefit.
• Use high resolution 300 DPI images only. Read more about how to determine the DPI of your image here.
• Avoid cluttered backgrounds, they’ll take away from what you want a viewer where to focus.
• Don’t put text on top of images with busy backgrounds. Place text on a solid color over the background image as portrayed above. Alternatively, make the background muted with a blur effect, or use a colored transparent overlay.
• Always use close-up photography for food, it will stimulate the brain to think about how the food will taste.
• Select images that evoke a positive emotion whether it’s laughter, happiness, surprise, or trust.
• Take advantage of dynamic variable data printing. It allows you to target specific audiences with personalized images. For example, if you know certain customers always purchase a product, you can remind them that it’s time for another purchase with a personalized product image.

More reasons why strong visuals are so important

• The way a product looks accounts for 93% of why people buy it. The better the product looks, the better your direct mail response rate will be.
• Using a bold color will increase a viewer’s willingness to continue to read a piece of content by 80%.

Before you embark on designing your next direct mail piece, spend more time thinking about how to power up your direct mail with strong visuals.  Ask yourself whether the imagery you’ve selected is good enough to stand out, grab attention, and entice your viewer to read on.