Why would you want to spend more time on foil letterhead printing? Foil printing does make letterheads shiny, true. But there are a number of very real benefits that come with using this process for your letterhead and envelopes. Here are a few great reasons to try foil printing for your business’s stationery materials.
1.) Foil gives your brand or message an upscale vibe
If you want to add a touch of class to your letterhead and envelopes, a little foil can do this quite easily. Foil printing lends itself quite well to reinforcing the image of luxury brands, perhaps due to the way we associate the shiny details with precious metals. For this same reason, foil printing is also highly popular for formal invitations for weddings and other important occasions.
This perception of value is also often directly transferred to the message itself. This is great news for anyone who wants to improve response rates on their letters and direct mail, as this will usually result in a message that more credible and compelling to a recipient. This brings us to our next point:
2.) It makes recipients curious to learn more
Harvard estimates up to 100 million trees are used up each year for junk mail, which is quite awful if you consider that more than half of direct mail isn’t even read. This puts the burden on businesses to make sure that anything they send out actually fulfills its intended purpose.
This is where foil printing comes in. Because foil-printed letterhead and envelopes seem more valuable, they’re far more likely to pique someone’s interest. They’re much less likely to be thrown away and more likely to be read and kept by the recipient. This, in turn, means better response rates, and far fewer trees wasted.
3.) Foil creates interesting optical and tactile effects
Though most people will not be able to understand what it is about the foil-printed letterhead that’s different, they will instinctively know that it’s not the same as the others. Human beings are generally drawn to shiny objects. A recent study has conjectured that it may be due to how our ancestors looked for sources of water. Whatever the real reason, our basic attraction to all that glitters is the raison d’être for foil printing.
Simply using foil letterhead printing is often more than enough to draw the eyes to a custom letterhead. The benefits of foil printing, however, do not end there. The process will typically create an interesting tactile effect as well – the prints will feel different when you run your fingers over them, compared to regular print. This makes foil letterhead printing especially useful for creating a more compelling message.
4.) It gives imaginative designers more possibilities
While quite effective on its own, foil printing isn’t exactly a magic bullet that will make every letterhead and envelope you send out that much better. However, it does give a good designer an incredibly potent way of creating letterhead and envelopes that will get people interested and talking about your business. A good designer will be able to use foil printing in a way that enhances the look of your letterheads and envelopes without creating unnecessary clutter.
