What to do with the Envelope

It’s the first thing your prospect or client is going to see, so you better make it count and certainly don’t leave it up to somebody else to decide what to do with it.  Essentially the ‘rules’ are the same when using 3D Mail as they are with regular mail.

When prospecting cold clients with 3D Mail, for my money, the ‘blind’ or ‘semi-blind’ is the approach I would take.  In a true ‘blind’ approach there’s no return address, no name, no teaser copy, no nothing.  Just the prospect’s address.  In ‘semi-blind’ (usually my preferred choice with prospecting), there is a return address, perhaps a person’s name, but no business name, and certainly no Suite numbers or PO Boxes, which screams “SOLICITATION.”  I’ve gone as far to encourage clients to use their home address as the return if a suite number or PO Box is used for the business.  We used this same formula extremely successfully for 15 years.

The flip side is using ‘teaser copy’ on the outside of the envelope (see sample below, originally a 6 x 9 envelope).  With this your goal is to ‘sell’ the prospect that they need to open and read the letter inside.  You may also hear me and others call it, “Junking up” the envelope.  As a general rule (admittedly a rule I break all too often), if you’re going to use teaser copy, use it.  Use every inch that envelope has.  Once the cat’s out of the bag there’s no getting him back in, so if you’re going to go, go all the way.

The outside of the envelope is a great place to use your bullet points, testimonials, your biggest and strongest benefits.  If you’re giving away premiums with purchase, appointment, etc. the envelope is a great place to tell them and put a picture of the freebies.

You can also use the “official looking” type mailing envelopes that are made to resemble Fed Ex and USPS Express envelopes.  There are a ton of options at our website.

So what do you do when you’re mailing to current clients?  Again, another big, general rule of thumb is to use your name and business.  After all, they’ve done business with you and should have some level of name recognition and trust.  So, as with my teaser copy rule above, if you’re going to disclose that it’s “business” mail, you might as well go all out and use every last inch of that envelope.