To ensure the seamless preparation of your documents for printing by Econoprint, please follow these guidelines:
1. Document size verification: Create your document with dimensions which are the same as your intended output. If there is no template that matches your desired size, use the “custom size” feature to create the exact dimensions you need.
2. Bleed setup: For designs where any element (photo, artwork, background or graphic) extends to the document’s edge, you need to set up a bleed. This is done by extending the element by 1/8 inch beyond the page’s edge. For more information on bleed setup, refer to our blog article: Bleed Setup.
3. Resolution quality: Verify that all components within your document are of high resolution, with a minimum of 300 dpi, to ensure optimal print quality. Further details can be found in our blog article which explains resolution: Resolution.
If you have everything correct — document sizing, properly configured bleeds, and high-resolution elements—you are ready to make a PDF for us to use.
Export a PDF:
Navigate to Share > choose “Download” > File type: select “PDF Print”, and be sure to check the option for “Crop marks and bleed.”
DO NOT check the “Flatten PDF” box.
Send us your PDF and we will take it from there!
Econoprint is committed to delivering exceptional print solutions, and by following these guidelines, you help to ensure a streamlined production process.
Direct mail cuts through the digital clutter and puts your message directly in to the hands of your audience.
Brand Loyalty Reduces Costs
We all have heard the statistic – landing a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. How do you build brand loyalty and let customers know they are valuable to you? It can be as simple as sending a personalized postcard.
In the age of digital marketing dominance, direct mail might seem like an outdated relic. However, the truth is that direct mail remains a powerful tool if you are looking to foster strong and lasting relationships with your customers. In fact, when executed effectively, direct mail can be a key driver of brand loyalty.
Cut Through The Digital Noise
One of the primary reasons direct mail is so effective at building brand loyalty is its ability to cut through the digital noise. In a world where inboxes are overflowing with promotional emails and social media feeds are cluttered with ads, physical mail stands out as a more personal and tangible form of communication. When consumers receive a piece of direct mail, whether it’s a postcard, brochure, or catalog, it captures their attention in a way that digital messages cannot. Stand out from your competitors by doing something different – direct mail!
Make A Personal Connection
Direct mail allows you to deliver targeted and personalized messaging to your audience. By leveraging data and analytics, you can segment your customer base and tailor your mailings to specific demographics, interests, and preferences. This level of personalization makes recipients feel valued and understood, which in turn fosters a sense of loyalty to your brand.
Additionally, direct mail offers a sense of exclusivity and intimacy that is difficult to replicate with digital marketing tactics. When consumers receive a physical piece of mail addressed and customized specifically to them, it creates a sense of connection and belonging that digital messages often lack. Which feels better to receive, a hand-written letter from a loved one or an email? Whether it’s a handwritten note or a beautifully designed postcard, direct mail makes recipients feel special and appreciated by your brand.
Direct Mail Is Tangible And Enduring
Direct mail also has a longer shelf life than digital content, allowing it to linger in consumers’ homes and minds for days, weeks, or even months after it has been received. It will be on the countertop, table, or stuck to the refrigerator and seen over and over. A well-designed piece of direct mail can serve as a constant reminder of your brand, keeping you top-of-mind and reinforcing loyalty over time.
Direct mail remains a valuable tool if you are looking to cultivate strong relationships with your customers and drive brand loyalty. Its ability to stand out in a crowded digital landscape, deliver personalized messaging, create a sense of exclusivity and intimacy, and linger in consumers’ minds makes it a powerful complement to your digital marketing efforts. By incorporating direct mail into your overall marketing strategy, you can create deeper connections with your audience and foster long-term loyalty that extends far beyond the digital realm.
Econoprint offers both digital and traditional offset printing. Digital is perfect for high-quality, shorter print runs. Offset printing offers greater cost effectiveness for longer press runs. Contact us today and we can help you decide which is better for your printing needs.
Econoprint is a full-service commercial printer serving Racine and southeast Wisconsin with a complete range of services to cover every aspect of printed communication, from graphic design through printing, finishing, mailing, and fulfillment plus wide format output for signs, banners, and trade show materials.
Color copying and digital printing are two distinct methods used to produce color prints, each with its own set of characteristics and applications.
Color Copying
Color copying, also known as photocopying, refers to a process that involves placing an existing document on the glass of a scanner (or copier) and duplicating it x number of times. The process of scanning and then reproducing the original leads to a degradation of the image. Have you ever had to decipher a photocopy of a photocopy when the words were distorted to the point of being illegible?
Color copying is best used for low quantity duplicating where the color accuracy and sharpness are not important. Color copying is a suitable option for basic document reproduction and small-scale color prints.
Digital Printing
With digital printing, each copy produced is an “original” – sharp, vibrant, and with intricate details such as high resolution and smooth gradients. Your complex design elements, including photos, illustrations and graphics-heavy layouts will look great!
Digital printing can be done on a wide variety of papers in different weights and colors to achieve a specific look and feel for greater impact. Will your piece look better on a matte finished paper? Glossy? Should it be on stiffer, cover-weight paper?
One huge advantage of digital printing is the use of variable data printing. This means that each page can be customized with unique information such as personalized names, addresses, images, and text tailored to the individual recipient. And the printed piece will never look like a form letter or a photocopy of a photocopy – it will be a sharp original printed just for the recipient.
Print marketing materials can be highly tailored to customers’ habits and preferences by harnessing the customer data you already have. You can create an experience which makes your customer feel connected and valued – something customers are craving in this digital age.
Digital printing is the perfect choice for targeted marketing campaigns, direct mailers, or any project that requires individualized content.
Digital printing also offers the advantage of producing a proof copy on the actual paper to be used to verify the design, layout and color accuracy before printing the entire run. If you are printing a variable data job, an accurate PDF proof can be produced to verify each unique original before proceeding, eliminating errors and waste.
When your digital printing job is completed, it is immediately ready for anything additional finishing needed: folding, die-cutting, laminating, UV coating, etc. No need to wait for the ink to dry! Digital printing has the advantage of quick turnaround times.
Digital printing is the choice for high-quality, customizable, and cost-effective printing and is well-suited for projects that demand superior color accuracy and intricate design elements.
Econoprint offers both digital and traditional offset printing. Digital is perfect for high-quality, shorter print runs. Offset printing offers greater cost effectiveness for longer press runs. Contact us today and we can help you decide which is better for your printing needs.
Econoprint is a full-service commercial printer serving Racine and southeast Wisconsin with a complete range of services to cover every aspect of printed communication, from graphic design through printing, finishing, mailing, and fulfillment plus wide format output for signs, banners, and trade show materials.
Your post that was a winner last week going nowhere this week?
Social media promotes content that serves its own purposes–more likes, comments, and shares are what get content promoted by the algorithms. Your previously successful content may quickly become virtually invisible.
Social media algorithms also favor content that is relevant to the user. This means if a user has not engaged with a particular account or type of content in a while, it may be deprioritized in their feed. Your efforts to reach followers or a new audience are stalled.
Social media algorithms also prioritize content from personal connections over business or brand content. If a user is more likely to engage with content from their friends and family, posts from businesses and brands may be deprioritized. There goes your reach.
The secret for combatting the arbitrary loss of reach due to the fickle nature of social media: Direct mail.
Leaving direct mail out of your overall marketing plan means you are missing out on an effective way to get your message directly into the hands of customers and prospective customers. Direct mail has a higher chance of being noticed and remembered by recipients.
In today’s digital age, inboxes are often cluttered with emails, and it’s easy for marketing messages to get lost, overlooked, or sent straight to the trash. In contrast, direct mail pieces arrive physically and often end up on a recipient’s desk or counter to be seen multiple times and remembered.
Direct mail can be highly targeted and personalized. You can obtain mailing lists that are highly segmented based on demographics. This allows you to create tailored messaging and make offers more likely to resonate with individual recipients. Personalization can also increase the likelihood of a response or sale.
You also own your database of customers. You have data on their history, purchases, and interactions with your company. This is valuable information! Getting more business from existing customers is usually easier than it is to find new customers.
Direct mail is more trusted than email. With the prevalence of online scams and phishing attempts, many people are hesitant to click on links or download attachments in emails from unfamiliar senders. In contrast, direct mail is perceived as a more legitimate and trustworthy channel. This can make recipients more receptive to the marketing message and more likely to act.
Printed materials also are easier to comprehend. They are not subject to the electronic distractions of pop-ups and alerts or competing with simultaneous incoming messages.
Contact us today to begin leveraging the tactile, personalized, and trustworthy nature of print and direct mail to stay in contact with current customers and find new customers!
Econoprint is a full-service commercial printer serving Racine and southeast Wisconsin with a complete range of services to cover every aspect of printed communication, from graphic design through printing, finishing, mailing, and fulfillment plus wide format output for signs, banners, and trade show materials.
So, you’ve created your masterpiece in Canva, Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign or some other application. Your boss has signed off on the project and you are ready to have hundreds or thousands of copies printed.
But your stomach knots up and you feel yourself growing a little pale when you are asked some questions:
Does this bleed? Will you provide a PDF with crop marks? What resolution are your images?
Fear not! Econoprint can help. For over 50 years, we have been your local commercial printer serving Racine, Kenosha, and all Southeast Wisconsin. Yes, over 50 years, so you guessed it—we know our stuff!
We hope the following explanation of terms will help, and we are always happy to talk with you about any other printing questions you may have.
What is a bleed? It sounds scary (and messy).
Your masterpiece of printed communication, which will get lots of responses and make your boss ecstatic, has a photo (of a puppy) that goes to the very edge of your page. And you have your favorite color (eggplant) as a background going to the edge of the page on the top of your document.
Here at Econoprint, we are going to make 5,000 copies of your masterpiece (which we can also mail for you!) in a lot less time and for much less cost than you can do yourself. How do we do this?
We print an exact copy of your masterpiece on a larger sheet of paper. Then we trim the larger sheets of paper (with 2, 4 or more copies of your masterpiece on each sheet) down to the size you need. But there’s a small problem. When we cut your masterpieces out of the larger sheet of paper, as good as we are (and we are very good), if there is the tiniest fraction of an inch of your photo (remember that cute puppy?) or your background (that delicious eggplant!) that doesn’t go all the way to the edge of the page, there will be a very noticeable space. We don’t like that. And we don’t think you will either.
So this is where a bleed comes in.
We extend anything that is supposed to go to the edge of your page an extra 1/8 inch past where your paper will be trimmed off (this is called a bleed!). Now there won’t be a chance of white space showing at the edge of the page.
What is a crop mark? In our explanation of bleeds we described trimming a larger sheet down to the size of your printed piece. We need a guide to do this, so crop marks let us know where to place the blade on our (big and expensive) paper cutter to trim your brochure exactly right. Pretty cool if we don’t say so ourselves.
Why does my photo look so bad on my 24″ x 36″ poster? It looked good on my screen! Let’s talk about resolution.
Printing an image on paper needs much more data (pixels) than displaying on a computer screen.
Lets use a photo taken with your cell phone as an example. Your phone may take photos that are something like 3000 pixels wide by 4000 pixels tall.
Many computer screens display at about 72 pixels per inch (ppi). So that image from your phone will look great at any size smaller than 42″ (3000 pixels /72 ppi) by 56″ (4000 pixels / 72 ppi). That is huge!
But the math works out differently when we print to paper. To have smooth transitions in colors and sharp text, we need to print at a minimum of 300 pixels per inch – more than 16 times as much data (pixels) per square inch.
So, to make that photo look good in print, that same 3000 px x 4000 px photo needs to be printed at less than 10” (3000 px / 300 dpi) by 13.3” (4000 px / 300 dpi).
Now imagine that you have cropped that photo. That means there’s less data (pixels) to work with. Let’s say that after your photo has been cropped it is 300 px wide by 400 px tall.
This will look great on a computer screen at 4″ wide by 5.5″ tall. But when we print that to paper, it will only look good 1″ wide by 1.3″ tall or smaller.
