3 Steps to Using Promo Products in Direct Mail
By: Acree Graham, Current Not yet Rated

To use promo products strategically you must incorporate them into your other marketing efforts. Adding promo products to your direct mail campaigns will make customers look twice at your letter, card or flyer. Conversely, using direct mail to distribute promo products will effectively place your brand in the hands of your clients.

Here’s how to strategically combine direct mail and promo products.



1. Choose promo products that are small and compact. This way you can easily slide the promo products into the envelope before they go out, without having to pay a lot of extra money on shipping. Balloons imprinted with your logo are an example of a promo product that is small and lightweight. You could easily include one in an envelope or taped to a flyer advertising an outdoor event or children’s camp.

Buttons and business card magnets weigh a little more, but still fit inside standard envelopes. The business card magnet is a popular promo product that people tend to hold onto. Check out your home refrigerator and count how many promotional magnets are on it. Almost all the magnets on my refrigerator advertise some product or service, even the souvenir vintage magnets a friend bought me from the Coca Cola Museum. (Coca Cola, as an aside, is incredibly sly in its use of promo products. People actually buy promo products advertising Coca Cola every day, from Coke’s museum gift shop or even your local grocery store. I have a pack of Coca Cola branded playing cards at home, and when I graduated from college I received a customized Coca Cola glass bottle with my graduation year imprinted on it. I’m sure you probably have at least one Coca Cola promo product at home.)

My department’s favorite promo product to use in direct mail is the calendar strip. The calendar strip peels off its adhesive backing and sticks to the side of your monitor or desk. It includes two calendar years, and is an inexpensive promo product that lasts. It is also small enough to fit in a standard envelope, and lightweight enough not to affect postage. We often include calendar strips in direct mail as a bonus, since they are easy to toss in an envelope with a flyer or thank-you card.

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Consider keeping calendar strips and business cards on hand by your mail station to slip into outgoing mail. Customers will hold onto these items and remember you the next time they need your product or service. Promo products are a powerful medium for instilling a sense of gratitude and loyalty in your clients.

2. Use promo products to refer your company. In addition to spicing up a flyer or letter, you can include promo products in any referral kits that you send to potential clients. These can be almost any promo products that you have on hand, including those surplus lanyards you ordered for an event last year and still have sitting on the top shelf of a storage closet. Branded sticky books and reusable tote bags are two inexpensive, compact items with a high-perceived value. They’d fit perfectly in your referral kits.

You can also choose industry-specific promo products to mail out to potential clients: toothbrushes and floss for dentists; light bulb-shaped magnets for energy companies, and rulers for educational institutions.

Other promo products convenient for mailing include keychains, pens, bookmarks, letter openers, mousepads, and collapsible can coolers.

3. Brand your direct mail with customized stickers and envelopes. Think about the packaging you use to send out products. Do you use a plain brown box? Clear packing tape? White labels?

Think of your packaging as a blank slate to brand your company. The same way you would customize your shoeboxes if you had a store in the mall, your mail packaging should stand out and represent your brand.

Outdoor gear and apparel company Moosejaw, as an excellent example, uses branded packing tape, signature-of-receipt labels that say, “Sealed with a kiss,” and stickers that read, “Don’t be surprised if you’ve seen this box before. We recycle” to incorporate direct mail in their theme of “Moosejaw Madness.”

Start thinking of your packing materials as yet another opportunity to engage your customers. What will you say to them? How will you say it?

Best of luck with all your endeavors to think inside the box by branding your direct mail with promotional materials.

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Acree Graham is a Marketing Coordinator at Pinnacle Promotions, where she writes articles, blogs and onsite content about marketing with promo products.

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