An important aspect of direct marketing strategy is frequency. One rule of thumb is that prospective customers may see your marketing messages up to a dozen times before they take action. Make the most of these impressions by maintaining a consistent look across the board, which will achieve ever-higher ad retention, recall, and response with each consecutive exposure.
When your direct mail, email, website, and other communications tie into each other, your brand provides customers with a positive user experience. If your direct mail piece, for example, asks readers to go online to order, it helps if the two channels are designed to work well together, providing a visual clue that web visitors are in the right place to answer your call to action.
Enter the Brand Style Guide
This can be achieved when everyone involved with the design of your marketing materials is working from the same playbook, or Brand Style Guide.
Every designer who touches your brand identity, whether in-house, at an agency, with a printer, or a web developer, should have a corporate branding guide on hand that specifies the use of:
- Logos
- Fonts
- Color
- Graphic Art
- Photographic Images
The document can also provide guidance for topline messaging with:
- A Mission Statement
- Taglines
- Benefit Statements
- Positioning Statements
- Unique Selling Points
- Descriptive Key Words
Such a style guide will help customers…
- Recognize you.
- Recall what you can offer them.
- Perceive your company for how you want to be positioned in the marketplace.
The use of consistent graphic design and communications help sync up a marketer’s visual identity and core messaging across multiple channels. This also paves the way of leading buyers through the sales funnel of Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. With branding all buttoned up, your next direct mail piece may be in prime position to reach your loftiest response goals.
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