Creating your campaigns with Stannp.com is simple, and we are always looking for ways to make it easier and quicker for our customers to create their mailings.
One of the keys to ensuring smooth and simple campaign creation is making sure your design and data are in the right format for the Stannp platform before you upload them; fortunately our friendly tech team have created lots of templates, guides and resources to make this as easy as possible.
1) Mailing Design Templates
The first thing you need to do is decide which type of mailpiece is best for your campaign, and then download the template. You can download all of our latest templates from the Mailpiece Design Templates section of our support page.
If there is a mail piece design you need and we don’t have a template available please get in touch with our friendly team on 01271 320 863, by email on contact@stannp.com, or through the webchat on this site.
Design Templates Key
Clear Zones
Clear zones are indicated by pink and white shading.
These are the areas that need to remain clear of text and images in order to meet Royal Mail’s specifications. Our system will print the required mailing marks in these areas, which may include things like recipient addresses, return addresses, indicia (post marks) and barcodes.
Trim and Bleed
Trim and bleed areas are indicated by the solid colour borders on the mailpiece design.
These areas should be filled with the colours /design that is the background image of your mailpiece. Any important content text or images should not be in this area as they may be trimmed off.
The templates are slightly larger than the finished mailpiece size, and will cut down (trimmed) to the final size after printing. Doing this allows the background image to ‘bleed out’, meaning your mailpiece doesn’t end up with a white border or strange edge.
Envelope templates will have a bleed (to run the design to the edge of the envelope), but no trim as they are not cut.
Read our blog post ‘The Cutting Edge of Direct Mail‘ for more detail on exactly how this process works.
Fold Lines
Some of our templates (for example the A5 tabbed greetings Card) have a fold line, indicated by the words and a dashed line.
This is where we will score and then fold the mailpiece, after printing and and trimming.
These are not clear zones, you can run a continuous design /background through the fold if you wish, however it’s best if you don’t put important information in this specific area as it may be partially obscured by the fold.
The Fold Line is also the line that divides Front from Back on greetings cards.
Direction Arrows
Some Templates (for example the A5 enveloped greetings card) have direction arrows to show which way up the images and background on that section of the design should be.
It’s really important that your design complies with these directions in order to ensure you have the most readable and aesthetically pleasing design for your recipients.
2) Data Templates
Once you have your design created and uploaded, you need to upload your data. Our Example Data File template shows you the simple format of columns that your excel or CSV file needs to have to seamlessly upload into the Stannp platform.
3) Useful Guides
Our team have created a number of other guides that you may find helpful.
Quick Start Guide; Are you looking to dive right in to using the Stannp platform? Our quick start guide will help get you up and running and your first campaign on its way to your recipients.
Dynamic Content Guide; Direct Mail is at it’s most effective when the content of the mailing is personalised and tailored to the person receiving it. Dynamic content allows you to automate this process so everyone you send to receives a personalised mailpiece.
Triggered Campaign’s Guide: Would you like to setup your campaign in advance, but send to each recipient on different specific dates in the future? Triggered Campaigns are what you need. Great for customers birthdays, anniversaries, renewal reminders…
4) Video Guides
We have a number of video guides and tutorials available on our YouTube channel, giving you a step by step guide to various aspects of our platform. We’ve included links to several of them below;
We hope you find our Easy Campaign Design Guide useful and interesting.
For more helpful hints, tips, guides and info you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, or feel free to speak to your account manager if you have any questions or need any help.
