How To Design The Perfect Flyer With a Voucher Offer - 5 Step Guide With Tips For Online Retailers

Best Practice Example

The ParcelPush team has designed and analysed hundreds of voucher flyer creatives over time and shares with you a 5-step guide about how to design the perfect flyer with a voucher code offer on it in order to get the highest possible conversion rate results for your webshop:

Step 1: Print Size And Weight
We have found a DL-sized format (99x210mm) at 150gsm or 175gsm to work the best for the following reasons:

1. It fits into envelopes
2. It is big enough to be noticed
3. It reminds customers of a dollar note shape (perceived value)
4. It can still be folded or carried in a pocket easily
5. It is big enough for all relevant elements (see below)

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Step 2: Copy writing And Text Elements
The copy of your flyer is crucial and these are the standard elements that need to be worded according to your brand guidelines:

1. Headline: Your headline needs to stand out in big letters and should ideally be less than 5 words. Based on your brand you can choose to make it catchy, dramatic, fun or informative. It always helps to be different and creative.
2. Main text block: It helps to inform your customers in very short bullet points or through customer stories about your product or service, but remember that it is always better to talk about benefits or why customers really want it rather than talking about features or why customers need it - Customers want EASE, PHYSICAL COMFORT, MENTAL STIMULATION, IDENTITY REINFORCEMENT or SOCIAL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT.
3. Deal terms and conditions: This part is usually the fine print on the bottom somewhere in small letters (legally, they need to be readable though!). You need to inform the customer about all the terms of your offer. Be honest and try not to forget a detail. You also need to specify the currency and GST or other tax implications accurately. Often retailers forget to mention that "this is a one-time offer" and that "no cash redemption is possible", which is very important in order for customers not to claim that they can use a voucher code more than once or that they can exchange it for money. A link to your terms and privacy policy may be needed as well plus ideally another explanation how and where the voucher can be redeemed.
4. Disruptive element: You may choose to include a disruptive element e.g. like a circle or bubble with a short single message like "Free Delivery" or "Act Now" or "Free Signup" or "Only valid in June"

Step 3: Define Your Offer And Set Up The Right Conversion Tracking
This is probably the most important part, which many advertisers still get wrong although all marketing should really be made trackable. Always use these three elements for a flyer with a voucher code offer on it:

1. Highest possible value for your offer: We found Dollar values to work better than a percentage-off. Think twice about who you market to, what their customer lifetime value is and what offer you can afford. Obviously a $20 off will work better than a $10 off. If your webshop / shopping cart system allows you to attach minimum order values to a voucher code, it may help to consider your gross margins and shipping costs as well on certain order values in order to maybe raise the dollar value of your voucher code offer by attaching it to a large enough minimum order value. Whatever you decide, you will need a two or three digit value e.g. "$20 off" as a key design element for step 4.
2. You will also need a voucher code they customers can enter into your online checkout to receive the offered discount. Make it as easy as possible to redeem the voucher. Very sophisticated advertisers that ParcelPush works with, even let us print personalised codes for them on thousands of flyers, which prevents the codes from being published on numerous coupon sites. Other advertisers choose to only disclose the voucher after customers signed up with their email on a landingpage which can work, but may reduce your conversion rates slightly. Make sure that you have a reporting set up for any voucher code setup in order to exactly measure when codes have been redeemed, by whom, how much the customers spend and what their customer lifetime value is over time.
3. Landing page URL: We always recommend to set up a special landing page URL (e.g. www.yourwebsite.com/get-the-wow) for your offer rather than sending customers straight to your website for the following reasons:
   a) It allows you to measure the "click" conversion rate (#visits / #flyers) as well and to track what the customers do on your site before they purchase (funnel metrics) rather than just measuring the code redemption rate (#redemptions / #flyers)
   b) You can give customers a smooth landing through a nice design that picks up the elements of the flyer and that explains again in brief words or in a video or graphic how it works
   c) It allows you to drop a cookie e.g. to measure returning visits and to measure other interesting data like time on site, exit paths, etc.

Step 4: Design and Layout
You need a graphics designer or an agency like ParcelPush, who is experienced in Photoshop to get this right as the design really makes a difference. Here are our design tips to get it right:

1. Avoid an overload and minimise text as much as possible
2. Use the colours of your styleguide
3. The front of the flyer needs at least 30% of space for the value of your offer. Have a look at a 100 dollar note... the size proportions of the number is your minimum!
4. The headline should stand out with enough free space around it
5. You need ideally only one catchy image in the front and one in the back. Again: Less is more. Product images are good, but images that create emotions e.g. through people, faces or animals are better, especially if you promote a service.
6. Make the landing page URL obvious with or without a www. in front of it.
7. Some designers prefer to use the front e.g. like on a postcard only for one big image and all the information gets put onto the back. While we accept this method since it surely looks nice and it can bring a brand message across quite nicely, we would always recommend the "dollar note" approach with a clear value and a dollar symbol in the front.
8. Only use images for which you have the copyright e.g. buy them from istockphoto.com or use the advanced search of flickr to find images with a tolerant creative commons license by checking all the CC fields on the bottom
   - Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content 
   - Find content to use commercially 
   - Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon
   so that the search string looks something like this example for the word "apple": http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=apple&l=commderiv&ss=0&ct=0&mt=all&w=all&adv=1

Step 5: Create And Test Different Versions Of Your Flyer By Measuring Results
Graphics Designers need to think like managers or entrepreneurs in today's data-driven world and need to find ways to learn and iterate designs quickly. Hence there is no way around AB testing different designs. Here are a few tips how to do design AB testing correctly:

1. Make sure to only change one crucial element as a point of difference between version A and B in order to test the result.
2. Make sure both designs go out to enough people at the same time, so that results are statistically relevant and free from any external influences such as weather conditions.
3. Really think hard about what graphical elements will make a different and what to test. Come up with a hypothesis beforehand and read the book "The lean startup" by Eric Ries
4. Ask your IT team for all the data and make sure you get it in time and that you understand it to make the next design decisions and to iterate your work. Conversion rates or customer lifetime values are always the best actionable metrics. Avoid vanity metrics such as visits or views.