Business-to-business direct mail marketers have learned through
testing that a letter in an envelope will usually generate more
sales and pull more inquiries than a self-mailer will.
Why is that? And on what occasions are you wise to use a
self-mailer instead of a letter?
A self-mailer, of course, is any flat piece of mail that arrives
at its destination without an envelope. It mails "by itself,"
and so has no need of an envelope. Postcards, strictly speaking,
are self-mailers, but the kind of self-mailers I am talking
about here are the ones that have a fold in them.
A classic self-mailer is a sheet of card stock, 8 ½ X 11 inches
in dimension, folded in half to make four panels, and sealed at
the edges for mailing. On the two outside panels, the ones you
see when the piece arrives at your office, are the mailing
address, return address and stamp on one side and (usually) a
promotional message or teaser on the other.
ADVANTAGES OF SELF-MAILERS
1. Cost: The primary advantage of self-mailers is their lower
cost. Because they mail on their own, they are cheaper to print,
are easier to assemble (no need to match addressee on letter
with envelope with reply card), and require less handling (no
envelope and lettershop inserting costs).
2. Simplicity: Self-mailers are usually easier to design. A
graphic artist does not have to design a mailing envelope,
letter and brochure, but instead designs one sheet of paper
front and back.
3. Space: Self-mailers are a cost-effective way to present a lot
of product photos, graphs, charts and other images.
4. Flexibility: Self-mailers can be as simple as a sheet of
stock folded in half or as complicated as a large sheet of stock
folded in ingenious ways, with tear off coupon, order form and
pre-formed business reply envelope all in one.
DISADVANTAGES OF SELF-MAILERS
1. Performance: The main disadvantage of self-mailers in
business-to-business direct mail is that they hardly ever
outpull the same information enclosed in an envelope.
2. Appearance: Self-mailers also yell "promotional message
inside." They are, by their very function, promotional. No one
sends a personal message to friends in a self-mailer.
3. Tone: That brings up the third disadvantage. Self-mailers
look less personal than envelopes do. And when you are writing
to businesspeople, you want your correspondence to be
peer-to-peer, not vendor-to-customer.
These are some of the reasons that self-mailers perform poorly
compared with envelope mailings. Particularly in
business-to-business lead generation, you want your direct mail
piece to be perceived as professional and personal. If you are
mailing to prospects in the C-suite (chief executive officer,
chief financial officer), a letter in an envelope is the method
that has proven most effective over the years.
WHEN TO USE A SELF-MAILER
Self-mailers are still effective at selling products and
services and generating leads, though. Business-to-business
direct marketers have found self-mailers to be effective in the
following cases:
* seminar invitations
* event announcements
* trade show booth traffic generation
* software upgrade offers
* mailings to prospects who do not have a mailroom screen their
mail (barbershops and factory foremen, for example; my thanks to
Dick Hodgson for this tip)
* mailings where you want the prospect to pass along the mailing
to colleagues
So how do you decide if a self-mailer is better than a letter
and an envelope? You test. Create a cost-efficient format, find
a good printer, and test the self-mailer against a standard
envelope mailing. If you are doing a first-time mailing for a
new product or service, I'd go with an envelope, letter,
brochure and reply card first. Then test a self-mailer against
it later.
-- © 2005 Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this article online
and in print provided the links remain live and the content
remains unaltered (including the "About the author" message).
|
Categories 
