Branded packing tape vs. regular packing tape 

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Custom packing tape is the best kept secret of the Internet’s smartest retailers. It gets your brand exposure while your shipments are in transit, improves deliverability by making your packages more noticeable when delivered and reinforces your brand so customers are more likely to reorder. This is why retailers that switch to using custom tape rarely change back.

Yet many businesses are still relying on clear unbranded tape.  Before we convince you to start using them, let’s take a closer look at custom shipping tapes. 

## What is a custom packing tape? 

Packing or mailing tape is an essential part of your [product packaging](https://www.stickermule.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-packaging-design). Custom printed packing tapes are also called logo tapes (because you can print your logo on the tape for branding purposes), personalized mailing tapes, and custom package tapes. 

You may think that customers just rip them out but your printed packing tape serves more than one purpose. Visually, the difference between a box using branded packing tape and and a box using unbranded tape is obvious. And you might expect to pay a hefty premium for switching to custom tape. But the cost difference is less than you’d expect.

## Why you should use custom packaging tape? 

Aside from the reasons mentioned above, we have prepared more reasons to convince you to use custom printed tapes.

### Cost per roll of packing tape is not that expensive

You can get a 300 foot roll of [custom packing tape](https://www.stickermule.com/products/packaging-tape) from Sticker Mule for $29.

While a roll of [standard clear packing tape](https://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Shipping-Packaging-Dispenser-142-6/dp/B000J07BRQ/) only costs around $2.25.

That’s a big difference. However, at 300 feet, a roll of Sticker Mule custom packing tape is 4.5 times longer than a standard 800 inch roll of clear packing tape.

That puts the price per foot at:

- Custom packing tape = $0.10
- Standard packing tape = $0.03

### Custom tapes save you from a lot of trouble when packing

When using custom packing tape from Sticker Mule, 1 pass of tape is all you need to securely seal your box. Our tape is water-activated which allows it to quickly create a strong bond to your package once applied.

When using standard clear packing tape, 2 or 3 passes are usually necessary to seal your box. And even with multiple strips of standard packing tape, [boxes are still more susceptible to theft.](https://www.stickermule.com/support/how-is-your-packaging-tape-different-from-other-tape)

For a box that is 12 inches long, you’d want to include an extra 3 inches on each side for both the top and bottom with each strip of tape. That puts the length of tape needed for a 12-inch box at roughly:

- Custom packing tape - 36 inches
- Standard packing tape - 108 inches

If we take our cost per foot numbers from above, we can calculate the cost of tape per package at:

- Custom packing tape = $0.30
- Standard packing tape = $0.27

This means __it only costs $0.03 extra per box__ to create branded packaging.

But there is still one more important factor to consider…

### Branded packing tapes cut down your packing time

Since Sticker Mule’s custom packaging tape is water activated, we include a sponge with every order. If you’re only shipping a few boxes at a time, there won’t be a noticeable difference in the time it takes to seal a box with either type of packaging tape.

But if you’re shipping larger quantities, [a water activated tape dispenser](https://www.stickermule.com/support/what-tape-machine-or-dispenser-do-you-recommend) can cut the time it takes to seal your boxes in half. This does require an upfront investment of around $400 - $1,300, but it quickly pays for itself the more you ship.

And when you are shipping larger quantities, you can order custom packaging tape from Sticker Mule for as little as $19.50 per roll when buying in bulk.

In fact, most companies shipping 100 or more packages per day could actually save money by using Sticker Mule’s custom packaging tape, compared to clear packing tape.

## Where to get branded packing tape?

Are you ready to grow your business with custom printed tapes? If you want to improve your brand exposure and your package deliverability, while saving time and money, try custom packing tape for your packaging.

Upload any image and we'll format it for you, or easily [design your own tape](https://www.stickermule.com/blog/how-to-design-packaging-tape).

![Custom packing tape applied to box](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/6a27e0973a183c8a09fcd68a0e314d02a3c5d5cf "Custom branded packing tape being applied to package")

See for yourself the difference custom packing tape can make for your business.

<ButtonCta text="Try custom tape for $4" size="large" variant="secondary"  align="center" href="https://www.stickermule.com/products/packaging-tape-sample?ref=blog" />

We compared the difference in cost and quality between custom packaging tape and regular unbranded packing tape. 

Branded packing tape vs. regular packing tape: Which should you choose?

The making of our new homepage video 

Our [home page](https://www.stickermule.com/) is the first interaction most visitors and customers have with our brand. Our previous home page video showed the ordering process, but lacked a story that focused on our customers. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at how we created our new homepage video.

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## Script
Instead of making a basic “how-to” video, we wanted to make something that was more inspirational and persuasive. To do this, we knew we had to tell a story – one that revolved around our customers. One blessing & curse with our business is that we have all sorts of different customers: big businesses, small businesses, non-profits, hobbyists, do-it-yourselfers, developers, designers... the list goes on. There isn’t just one “target customer” we go after, so we decided to focus our story on three: a startup, a do-it-yourselfer, and a designer.

With our personas selected, we focused on a few key features of Sticker Mule that we wanted to highlight in the script:

### Ease of use
- No file restrictions
- Mobile friendly

### Proofing
- Online proofs within 4 hours
- Unlimited revisions

### Speed
- Quick turnaround
- Free shipping

It was important to highlight the minor differences in how each person used Sticker Mule. For example, if we only showed someone uploading a photo from their phone that might turn away the designer who wants a pixel perfect print. But if we only showed the designer uploading a vector image that might turn away someone who doesn’t have graphic design skills.

After showing the entire ordering process, we focused on how each person used their stickers in real life. Easy ordering and fast shipping are great, but how they plan to use the stickers is the main reason people buy in the first place.

## Storyboard

A storyboard is a scene by scene drawing of how the video will look. We created a storyboard to plan the shoot and fix any potential pitfalls before we shot anything. We kept things simple by limiting the video to 4 different locations: Aaron’s office, Jess’ workspace, Brian’s desk, and a location that would tie in all three of them.

![Storyboard vs finished video](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/2f46e23cb97fb91c553a40b3324fcb9f1df24f76)

## Voiceover
We used the same voiceover pro to remain consistent with our other videos. One big advantage of using a voiceover (as opposed to on-camera dialogue), is that we didn’t have to worry about sound once we began filming. This made shooting and editing much easier and faster.

## Shooting
We shot the entire video in one day. This required a tight schedule for each location and set call-times for the actors. Luckily, each location was relatively close together, and everyone showed up on-time.

We kept the storyboard on hand as a reference to make sure each shot fit what we had envisioned.

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For the final scene, we knew the timing was key. So we played the voiceover through an iPhone, which kept our camera movement and actors all in sync.

## Editing
We used a combination of Premiere Pro and After Effects for all the post production work on this video.

Since the ordering process is a key part of this video, we knew that whatever took place on the screens in the video had to look really good. But shooting a screen isn’t always easy and doesn’t always look as sharp as you would want it to. For this reason, we decided to overlay screencasts on top of the screens shot in the video. For the MacBook and iMac this was relatively easy, but the iPhone took some motion tracking and masking work to have it look realistic.

![Editing Sticker Mule's home page video](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/3e55e77faff205857f231219d199327935598642)

Instead of using straight-up screen capture footage, we recreated each scene and animated it in After Effects. This made all the movement perfectly smooth, and helped us with the next step: translating.

## Translating
Since the whole video was narrated via a voiceover this made translating very straightforward. However the on-screen scenes needed to be updated to have the localized versions of the site in each language. To make this easy, we used the Templater Rig After Effects plugin from Dataclay.

![Homepage video text](https://storage.googleapis.com/sm-content/blog/2f826187fe6b95ad4856ba701df6d7719033742c)

The Templater plugin allowed us to update each layer of text via a Google Sheet. We only had to animate the screencasts once, and we could easily change languages with a click of a button.

If you’re interested in seeing our homepage video in different languages here are the links. Just make sure you switch back to English (bottom right) when you’re done!

[Italian](https://www.stickermule.com/it#video)

[French](https://www.stickermule.com/fr#video)

[Spanish](https://www.stickermule.com/es#video)

[German](https://www.stickermule.com/de#video)

[Dutch](https://www.stickermule.com/nl#video)

[Portuguese](https://www.stickermule.com/br#video)

[Japanese](https://www.stickermule.com/jp#video)

## Conclusion
We’re thankful to have 100,000 customers that trust us to print their custom stickers, magnets, and poly mailers. It’s impossible to capture everyone’s unique story, yet we aimed to capture a representation of many stories in one minute and fifteen seconds.

And if you liked this video, you should [subscribe to our channel on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/user/stickermule?sub_confirmation=1).

A behind the scenes look at how we made the video on our homepage. From script to post-production. 

Posts by Jeremy Wick

Branded packing tape vs. regular packing tape

The making of our new homepage video