Multisensory Screen Printing: Increase Customer Engagement

Whether being exposed to 100, 1,500 or 5,000 ads per day, it’s challenging to draw consumer attention to your brand, whether it’s a product or service.

One increasingly effective way to capture consumer attention – from retail packaging and POP/POS displays and gift card printing, to promotions like custom pull-tab tickets, custom scratch-off cards and tickets and scented wrapping paper, to developing a unique new product, multisensory screen printing and the special effects that it creates has been proven to increase customer engagement, sales and brand equity.

Don’t take our word for it: numerous studies have documented the link from multisensory experiences to emotional connections to sales with the sense of touch and smell being particularly engaging.

Study Finds that Scent Ranks Highest for Profitability

The Print Industries Market Information and Research Organization (PRIMIR) surveyed 577 print service providers, print buyers, and brand managers to investigate the impact of 23 printing special effects, including glitter, gloss and matte, scents, scratch-off, glow-in-the-dark, and textures printed with UV coatings and other specialty inks.

The PRIMIR survey found that scented inks rank highest for increasing profitability among all other value-adding printing techniques with specialty cardstock and textured printing were not far behind in their ability to provoke a particular feeling.

The Smell of Nostalgia

Smell has always been a direct pathway to our emotions, making the use of scent in marketing a powerful tool. According to Oxford University’s Professor Charles Spence, head of the Crossmodal Research Laboratory: “The sense of smell has very strong links to emotional parts of the brain. There is also the Proust Phenomenon, which deals with how smells can take us back and remind us of things in a way that other senses just can’t do.”

Named for French writer Marcel Proust, the phenomenon is, whose novel describes memories provoked by the smell of a tea-soaked Madeleine biscuit.

According to Bob Yirka of MedicalXpress on how scent stimulates nostalgia. “Most everyone has had the occasion of breathing in an odor and suddenly finding themselves lost in the reverie of a memory from long ago; the smell of freshly baked bread perhaps bringing back mornings at Grandma’s house…”

The Power of Touch

A study by Ohio State University found that touch can be profoundly influential in our buying decisions. Touching an item on a store shelf can create an attachment that makes us more willing to buy, while also increasing the price we are willing to pay.

Other studies have shown that many people experience a sense of ownership even before purchasing an item but, the Ohio State study was the first to demonstrate that such a sense of ownership can begin within 30 seconds.

Adding texture or stimulating the anticipation of a “reveal” with inks that react to heat, light or water also create an irresistible incentive to touch your product or promotion.

Messaging that Feels Different

Textured printing with its various “feels” create associations like luxury, health or even credibility. A study by a renowned neuroscientist found that subjects who read a company brochure printed on high-grade, coated paper understood and remembered more information than those who were given the same material on uncoated, low-grade paper.

Participants were also more likely to recommend a brand whose content was printed on higher-quality paper and still preferred those brands more than a week later by a factor of 3:1.

Harnessing the Multisensory Appeal

The research and the possibilities are limitless. Speaking with a skilled, multisensory screen printer can help you understand how to use scent, texture and chromic special effects to evoke the perfect association for your brand.