A Direct Marketing Piece by Yours Truly

Aiphone Corporation, where I am employed, is a business to business type company. We manufacture entry security and communication intercoms for a variety of applications. Since Aiphone does not sell direct, we rely on our rep firms, dealers, and other sales channels to sell our products to the end-users (consumers). In effort to help our sales channels sell more Aiphone intercoms, we will team up with them to produce a direct mail piece for mailing or emailing purposes. As a graphic designer in Aiphone's marketing department, one of my responsibilities is to create these type of custom collateral pieces. Sometimes the piece is for snail mail, sometimes it's for email, and sometimes it's for both. Which ever the case, I aim to provide our sellers a relevant piece with the proper message, a strong concept, and an aesthetic appeal to reach their target audiences. Even though it is Aiphone product on the direct marketing piece, the call to action is to contact the company for whom the piece was created.

Recently, I did a project for Renaissance Communication Systems, an Aiphone dealer based in Illinois. The owner of Renaissance wanted a piece to communicate to school industry end-users that Renaissance has school security solutions. Below is what I created to be utilized as both a mailer and an email. The mailer portion has not quite gone out yet, but the email was sent a couple weeks ago. The email included the front side of the postcard, along with Renaissance's call to action. So far, Renaissance has received about twenty leads in response to the email, which is a pretty good start. I was also informed that each lead had received a quote from Renaissance. Though getting a quote is not necessarily a sale, it is one step closer. The interest that was generated by the email showed me the message of the direct marketing piece was relevant and effective. Of course, the piece was effective for a couple reasons. First, it made a significant difference that Renaissance had an email list comprised of school affiliates and school decision makers. The postcard message and graphics were then aimed directly at these recipients, making the concept relative to the target audience. An additional factor that probably helped the piece receive so much response is the current surge of school security improvements due to recent tragedies that have taken place. Having the right audience with the right message at the right time all helped boost the interest of Aiphone products through Renaissance. My hopes are that the mailer portion receives an immediate response like the email did.

Front of Postcard (used in Renaissance's email blast)

Back of Postcard