Today’s blog post might be an obvious tip for some Marketing professionals, but we have a perfect example below as to why it’s worth mentioning.
When you’re quoting out your direct mail campaign that involves an outer envelope, always look at 2 color versus 4 color.
We did this for a potential client recently. The outer envelope was a 6×9 and we quoted it 2 color and 4 color…all other specs were the same.
The end result was that the 2 color version reduced the cost by 60%.
There are more variables, however, that go into this. For example, the quantity on this project was smaller than usual for us, but we have a printer in our network that has a small, 2 color jet press with really aggressive pricing.
Your print vendor should be looking into all options for you to reduce costs. This includes determining the best printing equipment for the job.
It’s what we do for all our clients and sometimes we undercover significant cost savings like this example shows.
2 comments ↓
Wow – 60% difference in cost! That’s a lot. It’s hard to justify 4-color envelopes with many of the products/services that my clients promote. I’d say 1 out of 4 of the envelopes we create are 4-color. And more often than not, they are NOT printed on glossy stock. 4-Color envelopes tend to require a heavier or less “absorbent” stock to show off the imagery. So there’s not only the added ink cost but also an added paper cost to account for the better quality stock.
Hi Cynthia, yes 60%, pretty significant. It was a small project so the actual savings amount wasn’t huge, but it’s still a sizeable percentage.
I would say half our projects are 4 color outer envelopes. It really depends on the client.
For example, our B2B clients rarely use 4 color because the mail piece is obviously made to look business-like on purpose.
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