Enticing people to take notice of what they just received in the mail is a very basic “marketing 101” tactic, in my opinion. Yet, I don’t really see a lot of enticing envelopes…..hmmm. I really believe that a cool graphic and clear message on the front of an envelope will almost always get someone to open it to see what’s inside….BINGO. I can’t say that they ALWAYS open it…Does anyone know those statistics??? I’m still searching for them. In the meantime, I will continue to scrape a few extra budget dollars and save it for envelope design. I believe it’s important and it is absolutely a piece of my marketing plans for next year.
An inexpensive custom envelope
Here’s an envelope I did many years ago that I still love today. I had created a print campaign for an international pavilion my company was hosting. I had designed a lovely brochure that needed an envelope. We had plain white 9×12 envelopes with our logo on the front….not real exciting. It occurred to me that we also sent a lot of other stuff in this same envelope…there was no differentiation between a membership mailing, a monthly newsletter mailing, or a conference brochure mailing. Chances are, people were assuming it was one thing, and quite possibly never opening it….not good. Not good at all. To at least give my fabulous brochure a fighting chance, I designed an envelope that coordinated with it rather nicely. My two big components: an eye-catching graphic and a clear statement on the front as to what was inside. Simple and cheap to do….We had a huge in-house stock of these general envelopes. I simply counted out a couple hundred and sent them to my printer. They printed the artwork on the face of these envelopes….it cost a couple hundred bucks. SO WORTH IT! I love inexpensive projects that look expensive 🙂
There are lots of different ways you can do custom envelopes, this way is probably the cheapest. The lesson here: use what you’ve already got and paid for, and then just spruce it up! You’ll be very pleased with the results, and the boss will love that it DIDN’T cost an arm and a leg! The super financially savvy graphic designer strikes again!!! (yes, that’s you)
Have you done a really cool envelope that didn’t cost a bundle?? Post it and tell me about it, I’d love to learn from you!
To view more pieces from this campaign, click here!
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