Prior to working with Red Paper Plane, Sidnie Grimes said a colleague of hers at Great Basin College showed her some dimensional print pieces that caught her eye.

“She actually showed us some pieces and called this marketing meeting where we kind of just explored and brainstormed what we could do with these designs,” she said.

The designs were part of a free sample pack the graphic designer had requested from Red Paper Plane.

Inside were examples of various templates - The Flapper®, The Extendo®, The Pop Up Cube, etc. - that designers and marketers can customize online with the click of a mouse.

Sidnie, who works as the Career Technical Education (CTE) College Credit Coordinator at Great Basin College, was looking for a more impactful direct mail piece that would get the word out about her program. The piece would be displayed in Nevada high schools, targeting students interested in continuing their education after graduation and their teachers.

“Traditionally, I was actually going to go with the Well Box and put USB drives with all of my programs and documents inside, but then I started thinking about your Web Key,” Sidnie said. “I mean, the answer was right there. The link leads you right to my documents, my website, which keeps everything current, so that’s kind of why I went that route.”

The Web Key, one of more than a dozen customizable designs on RedPaperPlane.com, is unique in that it links both physical print and digital media, like a website. Aside from their size, which marketers can integrate into brochures, mailings or handouts, these small, palm-sized (or smaller) tools allow you to track who is actually interacting with your marketing.

So, how does it work?

Similar to a USB flash drive, a web key plugs into the USB port of a computer and is able to direct users to a specific landing page or company website, where you have the best chance of turning a prospect into a customer. Web keys are also incredibly cost-effective because they’re already built into your marketing.

“You know, it’s as simple as that,” Sidnie said. “The likelihood of people booting up their computers and typing in my website is kind of slim when you just give them my normal brochure. So, it’s now giving them a piece they can just plug in and up pops my website. It’s completely achievable.”

When teachers and students plug in the Web Key, they’re immediately taken to a web page with an aerial photo of Great Basin College. The further the viewer explores, the more information he or she receives.

But what is, perhaps, most clever of all, is that there is a poster that comes with the web key that teachers can hang in their classroom to reinforce the message.

Sidnie and her team, who recently received their final pieces, said, “it’s all amazing”.

“I've only been able to hand it out to a couple of my high school teachers and counselors that I work with but you know, even the other GBC faculty when I show them [the piece] you can just see their eyes light up like, ‘Wow, this is awesome’. You know, you open it up and it's like, ‘Oh here's this poster’ and then the web key component. It captures people’s attention.”