What Email Marketing Can Teach us About Custom Envelopes

E-Mail marketing isn't a perfect facsimile for direct mail marketing (direct mail has a better ROI, after all) but much of what we learn from digital can be applied in the real world. Specifically, custom envelopes, which are an integral part of direct mail marketing. But whether you're using envelopes as part of a marketing campaign or simply for sending out your day to day mail, here's 5 tips from the digital world that can help improve your custom envelopes:


Setting the Right Tone: You need to make sure the tone is in line with your business. Whether you're looking for something young and edgy, or knowledgeable and professional, this tone should come across in your custom envelopes. Luckily, printed envelopes allow for a great deal of flexibility, which allows you to think beyond simply placing a return address and logo in the left corner.

Subject Lines: A subject line is to an email what an envelope is to direct mail. It's your first and only chance to grab the recipients attention. Think back to what kind of emails you actually open. Usually the subject line is something interesting or unexpected. This same approach should be taken when creating your envelope.

Scrutinize Your List: You might have a few thousand people on your email list, and you're probably very proud of that number. But be honest- How many of them are legit? Are you checking the bounced emails to see if some of them are spelled in correctly? Or if some of the accounts have been closed? You should be regularly cleaning house with your email list. You should do the same with your direct mail list because unlike email, you pay per piece you send out.

Don't Stop at 1 but Don't be a Spammer: This is the line that all marketers must walk. You need to remain relevant to the recipient without being obnoxious but you also can't annoy them either. The problem with some business owners who attempt to do their own marketing is they'll send out one email, get a sub par response, then assume email doesn't work and they never try it again. Email and directly mail will generally need multiple touches in order to be as effective as possible. Be sure to set up a plan to reach out to the recipients at least 3 times, and be sure not to be annoying!

Have Something Important to Say: No matter what you're doing, you need to make sure your message is worthwhile. There's two ways you can do this: Make sure that the people who are receiving your message are likely to respond to it and make sure that you've got something interesting to say. Whether it be a big sale of the opening of a new location, make sure your content is something that's actually worthy of being mailed.