Meet The Mailers: Using Embellishments to Spark Engagement

In this episode, I talked with Jeff Peterson, Executive Director of the Foil & Specialty Effects Association (FSEA). The FSEA is a membership association based in Topeka, KS that promotes growth and awareness for specialty effect processes in print, including direct mail, and packaging.

The inspiration for our discussion was a study conducted by FSEA, in partnership with a car wash chain, to prove the effectiveness of embellishments in raising direct mail response.

Peterson revealed the results of a test of 2 postcards, one embellished, mailed to a large audience:

Among the many topics we covered:

• Jeff’s background in the industry
• FSEA’s mission and activities
• The upcoming Amplify Print event in June
• Dealing with sustainability concerns
• His favorite recent direct mail campaign

Here are some questions and answers from our conversation (edited for clarity and space):

• So I am a big fan of embellishments in direct mail. I’ve been seeing a growing use of them. For people in the direct mail space who may not be really aware, can you talk about FSEA’s mission and what kinds of companies are the members?
  

So I always say we have really two types of missions as an association. First of all is to educate our members, both what we call active and associate/supplier. And those are companies that are involved in the processes of finishing an embellishment. It’s all the things that are done after print basically, sometimes inline with print, where they’re adding a metallic decoration or possibly a spot coating, laminations, anything that’s really that additional finishing embellishment process. The companies that are involved in that process, that and and those members are folding carton companies, label manufacturers that are doing those processes. A base of our membership is what we call print trade finishers that do a lot of those processes for the commercial print market, and then commercial printers and digital printers that are doing those types of processes as well.

• Let’s talk about something that brings together both the community as well as the education and that’s Amplify Print which is coming up [June 10-12]. Can you give us a rundown of what this event is all about?
  

Yeah. So, as you mentioned, we’re a little less than two weeks away from Amplify and it’ll be happening in the Chicago area, at the Rosemont Convention Center. It’s very focused on print embellishments, print finishing. So besides the embellishments, processes such as folding and gluing and die cutting, and as well as the foil stamping, cold foil. Certainly a real growth area in our space is digital foil, digital spot coating that’s done from a digital inkjet process or what they call a sleeking process that are both digital processes. So all of that is part of our event. The exhibitors are all around those types of processes from UV coating, foil, lamination and die cutting, folding, gluing, we have all those, we have machinery in those areas as well as over 65 exhibitors that will be at the event.

So I really encourage people to see this if they’re interested in embellishments, if they’re doing embellishments now or considering adding, there will not be a better event for you to attend and see what’s happening in the industry. Digital, cold, hot foil, specialty UV, all of that will be on display and we have programming that goes along with it, so [I] encourage you to go to amplifyprint.org and and look at coming and visiting us in a couple weeks.

• One of the things I noticed in looking over the website for Amplify Print is this technology zone as you call it on the show floor. What is the unique value that this is going to bring?
  

To attendees, yeah, I think this is something that’s very unique to our event is that we have a whole area, as you said, called the technology zone and a lot – and not all – of the equipment, some of the equipment in the business, but certainly some of our larger equipment.

[W]hat’s unique about it is that we have all that equipment in one space and then we do programming, pre-set up programming, and on those different pieces of equipment. So it’s part of the schedule. And people realize they can come over for a presentation demonstration on this equipment over the 2, 2-1/2 days of Amplify. And of course there’s other demo times too, but it does provide these companies an opportunity to have a program on their machine versus just people coming to their booths and looking at their equipment. [T]hat’s a unique thing that we bring that we think is different than just going from booth to booth at a show.

• Sustainability is one of those topics that’s on the agenda. What concerns do brands or printers have about embellishments and what their environmental impact is?
  

Sustainability has been a big topic certainly with packaging and our area has been targeted somewhat, and we believe the reason is because of a lot of the cartons or labels – if they have the fancy shiny metallic foil on it – automatically, brands or even consumers believe “well maybe it’s not recyclable, maybe it’s not a sustainable product.” So we’ve spent a lot of effort in creating some studies that help defend those situations, and we have two very specific ones. Our first study that was done about four years ago showed that having metallic foil on a carton box, or even a label does not inhibit the recycling process. It doesn’t cause a problem if it goes through with the rest of the paper and fiberboard. It’s such a small amount, the actual layer of metal is aluminum. It’s vacuum metalized. It actually can dissolve in your hand; it’s microns thin, it does not cause a problem. We got a second situation where brands said “OK, great. Thank you. But is it being recycled? It’s great that it is recyclable. But is it happening at the MRFs?

And so we did a second study with the people that supply the sorting equipment all over the United States. It’s called Van Dyk. We did a study with them. We put through greeting cards. We went through folding cartoons, several pieces of printed material that had foil on it. And every one of them – 100% of the samples – were sorted for recycling and not for the landfill. And so we have a full study on that. So we’ve kind of covered both bases. That’s really helped our members, and the brands who are concerned about it, have good information about sustainability and metallics.

• So that’s giving them some kind of guidance about the kinds of things that they could be doing for more reusability and better solutions.
  

Yeah, and certainly direct mail falls into that too, we’ve had inquiries from that standpoint. Some of the larger businesses …have utilized foil and embellishments on many of their direct mail outreaches …I can maybe say ‘credit card company’ that has used a lot of it. You know some of those questions have come up there too. [T]hese studies have been very helpful to our members who were involved in doing those processes on envelopes and direct mail to make sure they’re letting them know that these envelopes or the postcard or whatever it might be, is recyclable once it’s mailed out.

• Well, in line with all the advancements, as well as industry education, why don’t we talk about embellishments and direct mail? FSEA partnered with a company, a car wash chain, to do an A/B test, like a simple postcard mailing. Can you share the basics of that case study with us?
  

Yes, most certainly. We were able to communicate with and create a partnership with a large car wash that has car washes all over the Midwest and they were willing to work with us on a study, a test where we took a postcard and I can show it on here. This is the postcard [holds up postcard to camera] that we did, that in this one you can see some of the shiny foil. It has some specialty coating on it. And then on the back was a barcode that you could use for a free car wash.

So we took half of the postcards that looked like this and was all cool. And then we did another, the other half of the postcards just looked like this, but just plain printed. There was no foil. There was no spot textured coating on it, and we sent that out to the same general area about 7500 of them and what we found out is that there was over a 4% increase in those who brought the postcard in because they were able to scan the barcode. So the barcode was different for the embellished card and the other barcode, of course, was for just the plain printed. There was an over 4% increase in those who brought the card in for a free car wash from the embellished cards because it was noticed more. And as you know Paul, you’re in the direct mail area, 4% is a pretty huge percentage difference.

We had some partners we worked with, Hudson Printing, who did all the work for us. They’re out of Salt Lake City and all the embellishment was done on the Scodix embellishment, digital embellishment press that did the spot textured coating in the foil. So it all worked out well, hoped for good results and we did receive them. That’s available on our website at FSEA.com if anyone’s interested in getting a copy of that study.

• One barrier to more usage of embellishments in direct mail for some companies might be the cost of choosing one treatment instead of another, or none at all. So what kinds of things can mailers do to keep their costs affordable while still trying to lift that response like happened in that campaign?
  

So, one of the things that in our industry has changed, I mentioned the digital embellishment presses; those are a great way to go if you’re if your quantities are somewhat smaller because the tooling and so forth aren’t involved with applying the foil.

And then if you’re getting into larger runs, you can go more to like a foil stamp, or you can foil and emboss something, so there’s different options. Cold foil is another option that can be done inline with the printing.

It can be more economical for larger sized runs as well. So there’s some different options and really things like quantity and exactly what you’re looking for and how it looks can determine what you might want to do.

But you know, really, it’s kind of like what we did for this study on the car wash is what we need to sell is that, yes, there’s going to be some additional cost versus just printing your envelope or just printing a postcard. But if you look at those types of increases in response rate, having a little more investment is going to pay off more times than not. [T]hose are the things that we really sell, is that that extra investment is going to pay off for you.

• And some of these embellishments, too, if you want to talk about that as well, might be eligible for USPS promotion discounts, which generally I think we’re at about four percent and you know their calendar is throughout the rest of the year. And I believe they’ve been approved for next year already.
  

Yes. So we’re certainly getting the word out there for our members to take advantage of that and some certainly to tell brands and others because the larger mailers really can take advantage of significant discounts with that, and most all of the different types of embellishment techniques are eligible for that. I even see that doing a flood UV coating on a postcard that creates a little different look is eligible. So virtually most of anything that you do extra on top of the print to create a better look to the piece can be eligible for those discounts.

• And there’s detailed guidelines on the USPS Business Gateway for all of these promotions and it really gives you what’s eligible, what’s not eligible. But if you’re really not sure, just contact them and they’ll be happy to help you.
  

Right.

• So one of the things about using embellishments and finishing seems to me like it’s part of about how in a lot of ways, print and mail is becoming more of a premium product instead of like a low margin high volume mass mailing product. And I look at a lot of mail, like I said before, where I’m seeing metallic inks, glitter coatings here and there …soft touch, there’s spot UV …and it really stands out. Plenty of other examples, but is that what it seems to you, like with the decline in mail volumes, that there is that opportunity for using embellishments more to make a mail piece really stand out and be more intentional about how you’re trying to reach your audience?
  

I think that’s a great point, Paul, that everybody knows that printing costs have gone up and certainly we know that postage costs have come up. So companies are smart. So what they’re doing is targeting better than they probably were before, making sure they’re targeting their lists. And then they’re printing less and mailing more.

And if they’re doing that, then they want to make sure that that audience is reading what they’re sending and that it’s grabbing attention. So you know, it’s funny to say, but honestly, I don’t know if it’s good for the industry overall because quantities are going down, but it’s probably really a positive for our niche in the industry, because people realize they better and potentially need to do that, you know, go that extra mile to make sure their piece is standing out and looks good. So I think that’s definitely happening.

Here is our conversation (with all questions and answers). We’ve added timecodes for your convenience.

Thank you very much, Jeff, for sharing your perspective and your expertise! To learn more about FSEA, visit their website at FSEA.com.

Your comments and ideas are very important to us in making your Who’s Mailing What! experience even better for you. Through these engaging talks, we hope you’ll take away practical tips, insights, and personal stories to inspire and build your own success.

If you have any feedback — or are interested in sharing your story and viewpoint with our wide and diverse audience on “Meet the Mailers” — please reach out to me. I’d love to hear from you!