According to the Rochester Institute of Technology, about 56% of people say that the print market is the “most trustworthy” of media channels. That’s more than half of customers, which speaks volumes about the importance of a business’s letterhead.
A lot of people don’t understand this crucial fact but a business letterhead is more than just a blurb at the top of a business’s written correspondence. It is one of the company’s most important offline marketing strategies and comprises a few crucial elements that are essential for your brand awareness and brand memorability.
1. The Letterhead Comprises 3 Crucial Marketing Elements
The three elements of marketing that are compressed into a letterhead include the brand name, the logo/ trademark, and slogan, and the contact details:
The Letterhead Introduces Your Brand Name
Your letterhead has your business name emblazoned on top of it and serves as your business’s ID card. Unfortunately, though, it is more common than you think to get letterheads that do not have their brand name displayed noticeably on them.
This is one of the biggest lost opportunities for companies to market themselves. The company’s name is the most vital aspect that letterhead designers include in all your print material. When you include your brand name on the top of the letter, it is placed front and center and is the first thing that the recipient sees.
This name does not just introduce you to the company, but also declares the correspondence as an official document of communication that needs attention and solidifies your client’s confidence when it comes to doing business with you.
It also makes you stand apart from your competitors, enhances your business image, and improves communication.
The Letterhead Displays Your Logo and Slogan
Some people think that it is not necessary to include your logo and slogan on the letterhead. However, in truth, this is one of the major ways you can build brand recognition.
The human brain has the capability to process images 60,000 times faster than text. In many cases, your customer won’t be able to remember your company’s name, but they will recognize the logo on your company’s letterhead. A person may not recognize the full name of your organization or business, but the logo will help make an association between the two.
This means a letterhead with a logo and slogan can reinforce brand identity. Another big reason is that a letterhead makes your correspondence stand out from other letters and prevents it from getting lost in the clutter.
If you want to take things to another level, you may place your slogan under the letterhead’s logo as well.
In general, most letterheads have a logo on the top left of the page. Some businesses also watermark their logo on the background of the letterhead to make their brand even more prominent, though this is not often necessary.
The Letterhead Provides Contact Information
Another most important piece of information that your business letterhead reveals is the contact information for your business. Your business’s main phone number, email address, and physical address are essential information that your customer needs to contact you.
If you also have a toll-free number, it is a good idea to include it on your letterhead if it will take your client to whoever they need to speak with. Avoid sharing numbers that go into a general queue or a voicemail because if the client wishes to speak to you over the phone, they won’t appreciate being made to wait.
The more contact details you offer on your letterhead, the easier it will be for your clients to reach you. However, that doesn’t mean you should overdo it. Adding social media accounts and handles is also a good strategy but it should make sense to put them there.
Above all, letterhead designers should keep the design clean and minimalistic and place the contact information in a single block beside your logo or at the bottom of the letterhead, so that it is easily noticeable.
2. The Letterhead Represents Your Company
When a business sends out a letter to someone, it is a representation of your organization to your clients, customers, and colleagues. The letterhead present on top of the document will indicate the message was sent in an official capacity and represents the interest of an organization.
That is why it is important for letterhead to be printed on a good-quality paper that tells the story of your business, i.e., it represents a professional and top service organization and shows the recipient that the business puts care and effort into its services and products.
On the other hand, a sloppy, generic-looking letterhead may be a reflection of a business’s chaotic and unorganized practices, and people may not be so inclined to work with such a company.
3. The Letterhead Enforces Credibility
A professionally-designed letterhead expresses a sense of reliability, credibility, and trustworthiness to a business’s clients and customers. A high-quality letterhead sends the impression that the company is dedicated and committed to their cause and will be able to deliver on the promises made to their clients.
A smart-looking letterhead is a big part of your marketing plans as it is the design that will get the most exposure on all of your business communications.
4. The Letterhead Reinforces Your Brand
Your brand image is the most important element of your business, particularly in this cut-throat, highly-connected, and highly-visual world. Businesses and organizations are now moving at a rapid pace and if your company doesn’t stand apart from the competition, it can become lost in the chaos.
Hence, it is the job of your business letterhead designer to create a striking and original letterhead that advertises your company and instantly brings to mind your organization whenever a customer sees it.
Having said that, this doesn’t mean that your letterhead needs to be super-fancy and complicated to reinforce your brand; a simple design makes a very effective letterhead as it has the most memorability. A simplified and streamlined letterhead design that speaks to the core message of your business may be all it takes to reinforce brand image.
5. The Letterhead Offers More Impact
No matter what kind of message you need to send to your client or customer, a letterhead will have a big impact. When a customer sees an email, invoice, or standard mail that displays your letterhead, it will immediately demand more attention than something that was sent on a piece of paper.
This type of impact is especially important when it comes to making essential announcements about changes to policies, billing information, and account information as it can spur customers and clients to take certain actions.
You should also consider placing your logo on the outside of your envelope so that it creates a cohesive design and brand image.
Bottom Line
As you can see, the importance of letterheads is highly underestimated. A letterhead is the most important marketing element on any piece of written correspondence from an organization. If your business does not have a letterhead, it is imperative that you hire an excellent designer and get it done.
The right letterhead can help grab the attention of your customers and clients and portray the image that you want your business to show. Tell your letterhead design service what elements they need to incorporate in the letterhead.. Once you put your brand new letterhead to work, you can see for yourself the impact it has on your business’s popularity and growth.
Business reading a document -DepositPhotos
