24th November, 2011
Welcome to Week 2 of the zero2illo Promotional Mailer Challenge. There’s a lot to get done this week so let’s jump right in…
Measuring your success
Designing and illustrating the perfect mailer to help you land those dream clients is a great start but how do you know whether your mailer has been successful - aside from any new jobs you happen to land from it? Part of creating and sending an effective mailer is to know how effective your mail-out has actually been.
Wouldn’t it be great to know that an Art Director has seen your mailer, liked your work and is interested in it even if the didn’t currently have a project suitable for you?
There are a few things you can do, before you even start creating your mailer, to help make this happen…
Start An Online Mailing List
It goes without saying that you should have a website portfolio and that the URL of your site should feature clearly on your mailers, but something that is often missing from Illustrators’ websites is a sign-up box where prospective clients can sign-up to your mailing list to register their interest in your work.
There are a number of services available to create and manage an online mailing list, these include:
The above services all enable you to easily manage your mailing list online - they handle sign-ups, unsubscribes, double opt-in (absolutely vital to protect you & others from unwanted email and ensure your messages are delivered) and more.
The great thing about having an option for prospective clients to sign-up to your mailing list online is that it will give you a very clear indication of who is interested in your work - and enable you to keep in touch with them via this mailing list using blog updates and/or regular newsletter. The cost of sending these is limited to the cost of the mailing list service and it’s an excellent way to follow up with warm leads.
Pre-paid response cards
These can be in the form of a tear-off section of your mailer or an additional reply card to register their interest in your work - either way, the key is to make it as easy as possible for a publisher or art director to send it back.
Consider filling in the name of the contact and the company they work for on the response card to save an Art Director time, and ensure that you have added the correct postage (remember to check the amount of postage required at the post office, especially if you’re sending your mailers overseas)
You could also consider including an optional questionnaire on your response card with tick boxes so the contacts can let you know if they would like to see a more comprehensive mailer pack of your work or if they aren’t interested in your work (the later may be disappointing but will help you keep a clean and concise mailing list).
Follow-up phone call
A simple and more cost-effective (although a little scary if you’re anything like me) way to measure the success of your mailer is to follow up your mailer with a phone call. You may not get to speak directly to the person you sent the mailer to (remember Art Directors are often very busy people) but it shows you’re human and that you’re willing to go that extra mile - this could put you at the forefront of an Art Director’s or Publisher’s mind when a suitable job comes up.
A word of caution: Don’t be a pest - as disappointing as it may be to get the brush off, pestering someone with call after call really isn’t going to reflect well on you.
Capitalising From Your Mailer
Although necessary, most of us Illustrators don’t get particularly excited about building and maintaining mailing lists, adding sign-up boxes to our sites and licking envelopes - we’d much rather be illustrating.
Now we’ve done much of the prep work, it’s almost time for the fun bit…
However, before you jump right in to sketching out ideas and charging ahead with creating final artwork for your mailer, let’s go back to the work you did in week 1 of the challenge. Remember, we got you to *really* think about the type of work you want to be working on in 2012 and the clients you’d like to be working with?
It’s all very well creating a beautiful mailer that reflects this, but does your portfolio back it up? There’s no point in sending out a mailer showcasing an amazing Illustration, one that is relevant to a prospective client, only for them to visit your portfolio site and find that your work looks nothing like the Illustration on your mailer.
You may only get one chance to impress so make sure that everything is shipshape and water tight. This includes:
- Branding your website in the same way you have on the mailer (or vice versa)
- Making sure that the work on the mailer looks like the work in your portfolio (and vice versa) - give the art director or publisher the confidence to know that they can trust that you can deliver work in the style of and to the quality of that which impressed them on your mailer.
Having ensured everything is consistent and integrated, it should give you the confidence that this mailer is going to give you as good a chance as you’ve ever had to impress…and capitalise on the investment of sending out your promotional mailer.
This week’s tasks:
- Plan how you’ll measure the success of your mailing and implement any necessary actions that will enable you to do this.
- Go through your portfolio site to make sure the work in it reflects the direction you want your career to go and the clients you want to land in 2012. Plan any additional pieces that you need to work on and work out a schedule for completing them over the Holiday season.