If you're an e-commerce business you know one thing, mailers are a way of life. That's because customers that love these kinds of experiences have raised the bar for what is acceptable.
So you're likely looking for new ways to enhance your branding and your mailer. You've come to the right place!
When it comes to Mailers, it's all about the experience. But how do you create an unboxing experience that lasts with customers? Is printing on the inside enough? What about additional freebies?
It all starts with the overall design, your graphics, and your key choices. But that doesn't mean supply chains, optimization, and building customer profiles aren't important.
Let's dig into 5 Design Tips For Custom Mailers.
A mailer box is a type of paperboard packaging used to store and ship goods. It's simple to put together thanks to interlocking flaps and wings, and it doesn't require any sticky tape to close. It is more robust and travel resistant than other forms of paperboard packaging due to its two side walls.
What do your customers want? What is a must have, and what is a nice to have?
Creating a customer profile early on helps you plan for things like color palette, shapes, sizes, and more. Using data from the beginning of your customer journey before they become a buyer is invaluable.
If your customers prefer sustainable brands, the box should scream sustainability! This can be color choices that are earthy colors like brown or green, or calling out that you use less materials or recyclable items.
Other customers may want to re-use the box and keep it, if the design is a special campaign. So consider designing a mailer box that can be reused.
Next, think about a new graphic for every delivery instead of a one-size-fits-all design. Every mailer box should still fit in with your overall design, but with each unique graphic customers will feel like the purchase is more special.
Printing more graphics doesn't need to break your budget. This could simply be color changes that fit the season, or the overall theme. And instead of using traditional printing technique like Flexo or Litho, you could switch to Digital Printing.
High-Speed Digital Printing allows you to print as many designs as you want without printing plates, or waiting for additional tooling.
That means you can stay fresh in the customers eyes easier than ever before.
Although custom mailer boxes are designed with additional space, it doesn't mean they're always as optimized as possible. For example, you may include a freebie that's larger than expected which pushes the content to one side of the box.
With this in mind, solid shapes like squares and rectangles can help to optimize the space before printing begins.
Another way is by removing barriers between your products and your customers. That means no plastic bags, or cellophane wrapping on the product before it hits the box.
Both of those make it more difficult for customers to see what they'll receive and also makes them less likely to re-use your mailer packaging after opening their order.
So simple things like tissue paper instead of plastic bubbles could be a nice touch. But what about the tissue paper?
Another way is to be creative with your designs! Fancy shapes aren't just for traditional marketing. And if you have those fancy shapes, why not use them? Think about all those little wasted areas as possibilities instead of problems.
If you're going to include something like this make sure it's a recycled or recyclable type of material, and that it's biodegradable.
Now that you've considered the space in your mailer box, consider how customers will interact with it when they're opening their purchases. A lot of people like to take pictures and share them on social media, so this is something to keep in mind when designing a custom mailer box.
Creating a simple unboxing experience can go a long way towards building a positive relationship between you and your customers over time. Online or offline relationships are very important!
If your customer feels special, then you'll have more talking points for upselling future purchases. And if they feel good about buying from you, they'll spread the word about who they buy from. But this also depends on other factors such as price and quality.
This is what leads to a brand becoming a viral hit online as they want to immediately share the cool unboxing of your product with everyone they know. So become your own customer, and open up the box and look for unique ways to surprise them.
Maybe you should create a higher tier of products for higher priced items and customers. Instead of delivering your products in the same old box, deliver them a box that feels special.
Everything about this mailer box should be more premium feeling to justify the higher costs. The best way for e-commerce brands to succeed is to build a connection with their customer, and make them feel special.
For example, if you're selling t-shirts online then perhaps the additional cost is because it's printed on better materials that are more expensive.
Or maybe your orders are coming from around the world instead of just one country which increases the shipping costs too much without this nice premium packaging.
Although there are always exceptions, most people would pay extra to feel special when opening up their products. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but make sure to do it right.
So if you're offering a higher priced product, consider creating a custom mailer box option. This can be done for high-end customers such as influencers and brand partners, or it could simply be an option for anyone who feels like they want to upgrade their order with something special.
So you’ve decided to order custom packaging for the very first time. Cool! You’ve made a good choice.
The process for ordering custom is a little bit different than ordering stock packaging. You’ll be required to make a few more decisions, about elements you might not have thought about before.
This is a good thing. Custom packaging puts YOU in control of everything from protection to aesthetics and everything in between.
To help you prepare for your first-ever custom packaging order, we’ve put together an easy guide that covers exactly what you need to know, with a focus on packaging used by ecommerce businesses for shipping. Here are five things to consider before ordering custom packaging for shipping to your customers.
First and foremost, you’ll need to decide what style of box you need. Three of the most popular box styles for shipping to your customers are the Mailer, the RSC and the Five-panel Wrap.
The most popular choice for e-commerce companies and subscription box businesses, the Mailer box offers the best combination of form and function. It’s self-locking, requires no glue to manufacture and features plenty of unobstructed, tape-free areas for you to add printed designs, including the inside of the box. With the mailer, you get an unmatched unboxing experience!
Because it’s self-locking, the mailer can make fulfilling your orders easier and faster; however, it does require more material and a more time-consuming cutting method to produce, so it’s typically 10% more expensive than other box styles per square foot of material used.
The RSC box, or “Amazon-style” box, is the most common type of box used for shipping. This is the box everyone thinks of when they think of boxes. While they may look standard, they can also be dressed up with custom printing and colors, and their shape makes them highly versatile.
Easy to manufacture thanks to the lack of curves, the production of RSCs doesn’t require the use of special cutting dies or advanced cutting techniques. This makes them faster and cheaper to produce — savings you can pass onto your customer.
They require tape to be closed, which reduces the printing real estate on the top part of the box, but they’re about as equally protective as the mailer and come in at a slightly lower cost per square foot. They’re often used to transport large, heavy and fragile objects.
The five-panel wrap is the most basic form of packaging. It’s essentially a creased, unfolded piece of cardboard you must tape, glue or staple to assemble.
If you’re shipping to a distributor and all you care about is how to ship products safely and at the lowest possible cost, the five-panel wrap is a great choice.
While it can function as a great branding medium, it does require the most tape to be closed (unless you’re stapling it shut) which can take away from your message and increase assembly time.
Once you’ve decided what type of box makes the most sense, you’ll need to think about material.
You’ll typically choose between four types of material: kraft, mottled white, kemi white or specialty paper.
The flute size — the size of the squiggly lines in the middle of the cardboard — determines how thick your box material will be and how much protection it will offer.
The most common thicknesses are:
For a small box with light contents, go with a thinner flute like an E or B flute. The thinner flutes make for a better printing surface and have a less industrial aesthetic.
For a box containing large, heavy or fragile contents, choose a heavier flute like C flute or double wall for better protection and durability.
Don’t forget shipping considerations. With E Flute being half the thickness of B Flute, you can fit approximately twice as many boxes on a pallet. With shipping as expensive as it is, this can have a big impact on your final per-unit cost.
When you choose a 100% custom size, if the order is small enough (approx. 250-400 boxes and under), it will typically be be cut and creased on a digital cutting machine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twfkiF1iFXQ). This process has its benefits (it saves your from investing in an expensive die – approx. $250 to $700) but because it’s quite slow, it can still be quite costly.
So how do you avoid investing in a die or running the job on a digital cutter?
Easy. You select from a list of sizes that your manufacturer already has a die for!
The thing is, going the stock box route has its costs too. Settling on an oversized box means you’ll have a lot of unused interior box space which will need to be filled with void-fill. Not only is this an additional expense, it can at times make your package look less professional.
As shipment costs depend on both weight and dimensional weight (the size of your shipment), larger boxes can add a significant amount to your courier charges. Not to mention, the bigger the box, the more material you use (and pay for).
It really comes down to striking a balance. When deciding whether a stock box will work best, the base cost per box is only one part of the equation. One should consider both the cost to make the boxes and the cost to assemble them, protect the goods inside, and ship them. It’s all important.
If you plan to print on your box, you’ll want to be familiar with the following:
This is the 2D layout of your box — typically provided as an Adobe Illustrator or PDF file — that you will use as a template for designing your box. It acts as the foundation for creating your design and contains three lines: the cut line, the crease line, and the bleed line (the line where you’ll need to extend your art to).
Your supplier will usually provide you with an Adobe Illustrator file with the dieline included on its own Layer. Before starting your design, you’ll want to lock this layer and create separate layers for your artwork, so you can avoid accidentally altering any of the lines.
Usually listed on your supplier’s website, these are the elements you’ll need to onsider when creating your artwork. They will differ slightly from manufacturer to manufacturer, but will typically include, at a minimum, four primary instructions for how to prepare your files:
If that sounds like gibberish, you might want to hire a graphic designer or do some additional Googling before designing.
The 2D view of the dieline makes it tricky to determine the orientation of your artwork, including which side of your box faces up. To visualize your box and help prevent errors, we recommend that you print out your dieline on an 8.5×11 sheet and cut and fold it into place or use our online box designer.
For smaller runs (approx. 500 – 750 or less) it is usually financially more sensible to go with digital printing, a printing method that utilizes no printing plates and produces high quality results. For larger runs, you have two choices: offset (litho) printing or flexo printing. For more simplistic designs (one to 4 colors), flexo printing will be the more economical choice. For those aiming to achieve photorealistic designs, offset (litho) printing will be what you need. It is more costly as it requires a separate lamination process; however at very high quantities it can be quite close in price to Flexo printing.
The principle of economies-of-scale is pretty well understood; the more you buy, the more you save per box. But what a lot of people don’t realize is how significant this principle is when it comes to custom packaging.
When a manufacturer gets a custom order of 250-400 boxes they’ll often cut your boxes digitally. While this saves them from investing in an expensive die it also takes a lot of time to make each box – time your manufacturer has to make up in the price per box.
On the other hand, while a large order can significantly reduce your cost per unit, it can also put a strain on your cash flow and eat up valuable space in your warehouse.
Whether a large run makes sense for you often comes down to cash flow and space. If you have the cash and the space, it usually makes sense to order more than less. If you’re tight for cash and not ready to settle yet on your design, a shorter run will make more sense.
Ready to design your own packaging? Give our DIY box design tool a try!
OR simply want to learn more about ordering custom packaging? Drop us a line at contact@customboxbuilder.com and we’ll happily answer all your questions.
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