Rack card assessment is an important thing to do when you plan on printing rack cards for marketing in an extended period of time. This assessment phase helps you continually improve your designs for rack cards so that each batch becomes very competitive against rivals and highly effective to readers.

Let me teach you how to assess your rack cards properly. Below is a five step plan to assess the competitiveness of your color rack cards as well to gauge its impact upon readers.

1. Testing and Feedback Acquisition – First up, you should test out your rack cards and get real feedback from real readers about them. There is no substituting real opinions when it comes to rack card assessment.

So you should try and acquire feedback from them by actually setting up some rack card testing sessions. You can try to get some sample audiences and do a focus group discussion about the design and impact of your flyers. Also you can just try to simply get friends, family and some colleagues together and have them judge and analyze your color rack cards. This gives you a more public assessment of your custom rack cards, helping you determine the real strengths and weaknesses of your design.

2. Color Scheme Comparison – Secondly, you should do a color scheme comparison. Colors are the ones that "flag" rack cards for attention. You should try to get all your other rival rack cards (or representations of them) and compare their color schemes with yours. If your color scheme blends well among those other rack cards, then your design fails. However, if your chosen colors are distinctly visible when compared to rivals then you have a good chance of succeeding with that kind of theme.

3. Design Comparison – Thirdly, you should compare the design or layout in general of your rack cards against those others. If your custom rack card follows the same kind of rack card template, then your design is no good. Effective rack cards will typically follow a more different layout so that they become more memorable in reader’s eyes. So make sure you check if you are following the same template or not. It is best actually to develop your own original and innovative layout all the time for the best and most memorable impact ton readers.

4. Content Assessment – Next, you should do a content assessment. The best color rack cards typically have content that are powerfully geared towards their target readers. This means that they are composed purposefully with themes, issues and concerns that those target readers like or even worry about.

This gives a deeper connection between the rack card and the reader, making the marketing process a lot faster and better for the campaign. So try to see if your own rack card’s content is good enough to make that deep connection to those target readers. If they don’t have that trait, then you might want to recompose your content for the better.

5. Quality Assessment – Finally, we have the quality assessment. Color rack cards are of course judged (like most other prints) by their material quality. The better and smoother the paper materials the better of course. Also, glossy coatings and glossy inks are a big plus for full color rack cards since they are the most impressive and expensive looking.

Your own color rack cards must be up to par with that kind of quality, and in most cases, you should spend as much money as you can in quality rack card printing. Otherwise, your rack cards will look cheap of course and won’t be able to compete as much with other rack cards.

So those are the things you need to determine to assess your color rack cards’ competitiveness and impact. How does your own color rack cards fare? Use the guide above to find out.