Operating a successful sales business in the United States requires a good understanding of the available resources that promote your product or service. The United States Postal Service is one of those great promotional resources. Not only can you mail out an endless supply of information about your company and your product or service, you can also mail your product. Through the mail, you can provide discounts and coupons for your services as well.
If you have a specific product, like artwork, you are at a great advantage because it can be photographed in rich detail, so the potential customer can decide their interest in buying very easily. Whether your mailer goes through the post office in Montgomery AL or the office in New York City, it will be treated with the same care and reach its destination. An artwork mailer sent through the post office can be the size and shape you desire within certain parameters.
Mailer Sizes
- According to the post office your mailer in the form of a letter can reach dimensions up to 6 and 1/8th inches high by 11.5 inches long and 1/4 inch thick.
- The preferred shape of a mailer is rectangular as square and other odd shaped mailers tend to jam postal equipment.
- To save on the cost of stuffing envelopes, the post office recommends folded mailers which consist of a
- Postcards have to range in size from 3.5 inches by 5 inches by .007 inches thick to 4.25 inches by 6 inches by .016 inches thick.
The five ways you can successfully market your art through mailers are the following:
- Mail folded letters and mini-posters featuring pictures of your art.
- Send postcards that represent an image of the art.
- Send invitations to gallery openings through the mail.
- Invite potential buyers to local fairs where you will have a booth featuring your art.
- Team up with a local charity and send images of your art along with their effort to collect money. With each donation, you can enter the person in a raffle to win a piece of art. You can then include your URL to see the intended prize and the rest of your collection that’s available to buy.
The first marketing mailing option is quite common. You can probably look at your mail this week and find an example of a mailer consisting of a folded letter with your name, address and postage attached on the outside. This is the least expensive type of mailer, thus a popular choice for marketing your artwork. The folded letter can consist of the artist’s biography or message and clear photo of various art.
The second mailing option is very simplistic because only one piece of art would be adequately displayed on a 3.5 x 5-inch postcard. Somewhere on the card, you could write information about how to contact you and your website or social media for more information.
The third mailing option listed is to send an invitation to a gallery opening where the potential art buyer will see the work up close. At that point, they will decide their interest in buying. A letter in the mail might make a bigger impression than a quick email or phone call.
The fourth mailing option is to send out invitations to potential art buyers or any studio where you will be offering your art for sale. This is a great way to show off your art and add a personal touch to the message you are delivering.
The fifth option is the most complicated one but can be quite beneficial. This one requires you to team up with a charity that would benefit from offering one of your pieces of art as a raffle prize to their list of contributors as they launch a charity drive. This would require you make a small sacrifice to expose thousands of fairly affluent potential purchasers to your artwork.