Using the ZAP~POST Designer
The design editor allows you to personalise and edit the layout of a Zap.
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The design editor allows you to personalise and edit the layout of a Zap.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
The ZAP~POST designer is a tool that allows you to easily create direct mail designs for specific mail campaigns. With the design tool, you can add images, text, customisations, and QR codes to your Zap designs.
You can keep your designs on-brand and within your brand guidelines by uploading your own fonts into ZAP~POST. You can also save designs for later; these will be ready to use again whenever they are needed.
Once on zappost.com, the designer can be accessed from three different pages:
Home page - https://www.zappost.com/
Design your Zap - https://zappost.com/design-your-zap/
How direct mail works - https://zappost.com/how-direct-mail-works/
When visiting the designer for the first time, you'll have the option to select one of our premade designs, or to start from scratch.
You can filter designs by different sectors or campaign types.
To start from scratch, select the blank template
If you do choose to start from scratch, you'll then have the option to select which paperstock you would like. For more information on our paperstocks and to download a template, see our academy here.
Depending on the paper stock you have chosen for your campaign, there will be a number of different lines shown on your canvas. Simply put, these lines are quality control methods that help to achieve the professional print and finish your designs deserve.
The visibility of these lines can be turned on/off using the view settings submenu.
There are 3 key printer's marks shown on the Impact, Mini and Secure paper stocks:
Bleed area - The red-shaded bleed area extends out an extra 3mm from the solid black trim line. All images or colour that print to the edge of your design should be fully extended into this area to avoid the chance of white lines appearing. This will ensure that when trimmed, your design is printed edge to edge. Make sure not to place any important content or artwork elements in this area, as it will get trimmed off.
Trim Line - The solid black trim line shows the finished size of the document. Anything placed outside of this area will be trimmed off.
Safety Line - We recommend that no text or barcodes are placed outside the red dashed safety line, as anything placed outside of this box will risk being cut off.
The grey, un-editable boxes shown on the canvas are for the postage and returns management areas. Text and barcode widgets can be placed in these areas but they will become opaque and you'll be presented with a warning. Any images placed in these areas will sit behind a white box outline of the area when printed.
Using the asset bar shown below, you can add a number of different assets to your Zap designs. ZAP~POST assets may include the following media types:
You can use the asset explorer on the right of the designer screen to select, rename, reorder and delete assets.
Static Images and Custom Fonts are restricted to three unique uploads.
Dynamic Images are completely restricted
All assets and completely unrestricted when creating an account
Assets can be duplicated by either using CTRL C and then CTRL V, or by clicking the duplicate asset icon. This is useful when you might want to preserve the formatting of an asset, rather than starting from scratch on a new asset with default formatting.
Clicking the static image icon will open the static image window.
Using the static image tool, you can click ‘upload’ to add up to 3 files at once. Accepted formats are jpeg, jpg, png, pdf and tiff. Files can be up to 5MB in size, however, tiff files can be up to 50mb.
These uploaded images are added to your static image library where you can access them at any time.
You can delete any unwanted images from your image library by selecting them and then clicking ‘delete’. You can also create folders in your static image library to organise your images.
To add an image into a Zap design, select it in the static image window then select ‘choose’. When an image has been added to the design, you can use the handles on the sides of the image to resize or rotate the image to your preferred size & position.
Drag & Drop uploads - drag and drop one or more images into either your static assets folder, or straight onto your canvas when uploading them.
By clicking the text icon, a text box will be added to the centre of a Zap design. You can use the handles on the sides of the text box to resize and reposition it.
Select the box to view the text controls in the sidebar. There are two controls worth mentioning here: variables and copy fitting.
This is how you add personalisation to your Zap designs. Select from the dropdown list to choose a personalisation.
When inserted into the design, a placeholder text will appear, this will look similar to ‘<~D:firstname~>’. When you upload your recipient data to ZAP~POST, any personalisations will be replaced with the relevant field from your data.
To preview how personalisations will look, you can toggle the preview personalisation to swap out the placeholder example data. By toggling this on you can then cycle through different sets of example data.
Along with customisation and variables, you can specify the date and time format that's displayed on their designs.
If the data contains a date or time as a custom field, you can select from the below.
Date Formats: Original Formatting MM/DD/YYYY - 12/25/2023 DD/MM/YYYY - 25/12/2023 Month DD YYYY - December 25 2023 DD Month YYYY - 25 December 2023 Time Formats: Original Formatting 24 Hour - 13:00 12 Hour - 1:00pm
This is directly related to Variables. If using a personalisation that potentially has different lengths of data (eg. a first name), copy fitting will ensure that the text will be automatically resized to still fit inside your text box. There are two types of copy-fitting:
Shrink Copy to fit area - this will decrease the font size to make the text fit inside the text box if it is too long.
Grow Copy to fit area - this will increase the font size to make the text as large as it can be within the text box.
'Shrink copy to fit area' is turned on by default, but both of these settings can be toggled on and off using the toggles.
QR codes can be inserted into any design by clicking on the QR code icon. When added to your design, you have four options to select from, Standard, Phone, Email and Tracked QR.
Standard QR
There are two options when defining a URL for the QR code. You can either choose a customisation that will use a URL stored within your data, or you can manually enter a URL using the text box field in the QR Code control sidebar. You can select the barcode colour along with the background colour and set a transparency for the background.
A word of warning: QR Codes will only scan when there is enough contrast between them and the background. Make sure that your QR code is sat on a white box or on a light colour background to ensure it will work as intended. A QR code must also be at least 2cmx2cm in size to scan successfully.
Phone QR
When selecting phone, you can either use a customisation found in your data or enter a fixed number. when this is scanned on a mobile device, that users phone will automatically start a call phone call to the number entered.
Email QR
When selecting email, once again, you can use customisations or enter the email address, subject and bodt text manually. When this is scanned, that user will automatically compile an email using the stating subject and body.
Tracked QR
If you select 'Tracked QR' from the drop down, you'll be shown a list of fields to populate, this will then create a UTM tracking URL for a Google Analytics campaign.
Website URL - the full website to direct your customers to (e.g. https://www.zappost.com) Campaign ID - used to identify which adds campaign this referral references. Use utm_id to identify a specific ads campaign. Campaign Source - use utm_source to identify a search engine, newsletter name, or other source. Campaign Medium - use utm_medium to identify a medium such as emails or cost-per-click Campaign Name - used for keyword analysis. Use utm_campaign to identify a specific product promotion or strategic campaign Campaign Term - used for paid search. Use utm_term to note the keywords for this ad. Campaign Content - used for A/B testing and content targeted ads. Use utm_content to differentiate ads or links that point to the same URL.
QR Code usage can be easily tracked using ZAP~POST. By turning on the 'Add ZAP Insights' toggle switch, you can measure how many scans you receive from your Zap submission.
When you have turned on ZAP Insights for QR codes, the scans will be recorded and grouped according to the submission the Zap was a part of. You can download a CSV of which recipients have scanned a QR code using the 'QR Code Tracking' download button in the furthest right column of the table on the Zap Processing screen. You can also view the QR scan data in the graphs shown on the insights page.
With ZAP~POST, you can upload custom fonts for use in your ZAP designs. To do so, you should first select the ‘fonts’ icon from the asset bar to navigate to the font management area. From here, you can upload fonts in either .ttf or .otf file formats. You can view, edit or remove their existing custom fonts. Any fonts uploaded will be available to use in the text editor tool.
You can select a background colour for your design. On the right hand side under assets you will see an option called background. There are multiple ways you can choose your colour, RGB value HEX value HSV value
There are two reasons you will want to save your design: 1. To be able to come back later and amend them 2. If you sign up to an account, the design will be waiting for you in the ZAP APP
Saving you design is easy, click 'file' and then 'Save' or click on the save icon in the designer.
The Auto Save feature ensures that your work is continuously saved after every change you make, providing a safety net against unexpected disruptions or crashes.
You have the flexibility to toggle the Auto Save feature on or off, based on your preference and workflow. To turn autosave on, click the toggle next to the save icon in the designer.
Autosave will be turned on by default when you create a campaign. If you have not yet saved a design for that campaign, then autosave will create a file for you. This file can be found in your saved designs folder in the Zap Designer accessed from the file dropdown menu.
When you're happy with your design, and you've saved your changes, you can create an account by clicking Sign up
For more detailed information on creating an account, see our Sign up guide
