Mailing a shop: what to send and what to say

Independent shops still buy from paper. A card that arrives in the post gets looked at by the person who does the buying, which is more than most emails manage. This guide is about what to put on that card, and what not to.

The Outreach page in your Shop Manager builds the file — pick some listings, write three short bits of copy, and download a print-ready PDF. This is the thinking behind it.

Two formats, and when each one earns its postage

The postcard is 7.75 × 5 inches, two to a sheet, printed front and back and cut apart on the corner marks. It is the right thing for a cold approach: it costs little, and a buyer can read the whole of it without deciding to. Print it on the heaviest stock your printer will take — you are asking someone to judge your printing, and the card is the sample.

Both sides are used, so there is no clear panel for an address and a stamp. Put it in an envelope, hand it over at a market, or leave it on a counter. If you want to post it bare, write the address on a label and put it over the lower half of the back.

The newsletter is a full 8.5 × 11 sheet, front and back, folded into an envelope. It holds twice as many listings and enough room to actually explain something. Send it to a shop that has already replied, or one you have met at a market. An unsolicited envelope gets opened less often than a postcard gets read.

What goes on it

The Outreach page gives you three fields. They do different jobs.

• The headline is read standing over a bin. Say what you sell, not who you are — your shop name is already printed directly above it, in your own type, and repeating it there was the first thing that looked wrong on a real card. The shipped default, "Wholesale stationery, printed to order", is the shape to keep. Not a slogan.

• The body is the only part that has to work: who you are, where the work is printed, and what an order looks like. The default text says orders start at 50 pieces and the per-piece price steps down with quantity, because both of those are true of every listing on the marketplace and both are the first things a buyer wants to know.

• The call to action is one sentence with one ask, and the ask should be small. "Send us a message" outperforms "visit our website", because replying is easier than deciding.

  Do not offer a free sample. A sample is a paid order here — you set its price on the listing — so a card promising one commits you to sending stock for nothing, to everyone who asks, for as long as the cards are in circulation. If you want to make a first order easy, point at the sample price rather than waiving it.

The back also carries a QR to your storefront, so a buyer who is interested has somewhere to go that is not a phone call.

What NOT to put on it

A discount code. The marketplace has no code redemption, so a code you print is a promise only you can keep, and you will be keeping it by hand for as long as the cards are in circulation. If you want to offer a first-order deal, say so in the body in words you are willing to honour when someone writes back.

A price list. Your tiers are on your listings and they can change. A card that quotes a per-piece price is wrong the day you adjust a ladder, and it is already in someone's drawer.

A deadline you have not counted backwards from. "Order by November for Christmas" is a promise about your own turnaround. Work it out from your handling window before you print it — see turnaround and lead times.

Printing it

Print double-sided, flipped on the long edge. That is the setting the sheets are laid out for; flipping on the short edge puts the back upside down relative to its front.

Run one sheet first and look at it before you run fifty. Check that the two sides line up, that the type is sharp, and — on the postcard — that the corner marks give you something square to cut against. Home printers are not all honest about their margins.

Where to send it

Small independent stationers, gift shops, bookshops with a card rack, museum and gallery shops, florists, and stationery sections inside homeware stores. What they have in common is a buyer you can reach directly.

Chains are a different sale with a different process, and a postcard is not the way in.

What a shop is deciding

Worth knowing what is going through the buyer's head, because it shapes what to lead with: they are not deciding whether your work is good. They are deciding whether it will sell in their shop, to their customers, and how much money they have to tie up to find out.

That is why the minimum matters more than the artwork on a first approach, and why the cheapest way in — a single priced sample, or the smallest tier — is worth more space on the card than another photograph. The full version of that argument, written for the buyer's side, is in buying wholesale stationery for a retail shop — it is worth reading before you write your body copy, because it tells you what they are worried about.