I was reading “The Direct Mail Envelope Quandry” at Direct Creative and if I had a nickel for every time I’ve had this argument with someone… Well, I’d probably have a whole lot of nickles.
The problem I have is that it seems all charities want to (or can only afford to) mail are white #10 envelopes – and ‘lets slap some sort of tagline on it’.
I know I’ve said it before – be appropriate. If you have something inside that will be of some use to your donor, tell them, unless it’s something lumpy – then you don’t need to – they’ll open it any way.
Nothing says “I’m junk mail” more than a #10 with a boring tagline on it.
If you can only mail out a #10 – do something interesting with it. Use a different colour stock, use a first class stamp, use a label, make it closed faced, use some handwriting on it, use 2 windows, don’t (gasp) put anything on it… Some of these ideas will work better in prospecting than with your house file or vicea-versa…
As they say over and over – test it. And then test something else.
I don’t know if the envelope should be plain or if it should be bold, but as I’ve said before, if everyone else is letting their donors eat vanilla – send them chocolate.
Speaking of chocolate, I received this envelope the other day – talk about standing out. I had no idea what the American Power Conversion was but I was definitely going to open this thing.
And I promise this will be the last post about #10’s I do for a while!
Next week:
I have a special mid week blog planned. I was invited to be a part of a special Post2Post Book Tour hosted by Idea Sandbox. I will be interviewing the authour of “Jack’s Notebook”, Gregg Fraley.
The tour will be as follows:
Site: Education Innovation by Rob Jacobs – Monday, July 14
The Naked Idea by John Lepp (that’s me!) Tuesday, July 15
Marketing Fresh Peel by Chris Wilson Wednesday, July 16
Innoblog Thursday, July 17
The Brand Chef by Andrew Clark Friday, July 18
Hope you will join me for that.
I once worked at an international disaster relief NGO that tried to increase it’s direct mail response by doing it’s drop from Kenya. Despite a losing a bunch of pieces, the response rate was through the roof. I think it had to do with the fact that most of their donors had never received mail from Africa before or seen a Kenyan stamp. Who would have known?
I suspect that in this day and age an email appeal sent from an African country wouldn’t make it past many spam filters. Sign of the times I guess.
Great blog John, keep it up. Patrick