FOR OPENERS:
OUTER ENVELOPES

The mailbox: that most ruthless of marketing environments. One false move, and your promotion is consigned to the pit of advertising oblivion: the trash can, from whose bourn no order form returns! If you're lucky, your prospect may first reflect on the value of the paper your promotion is printed on -- in which case, your promotion will end up in the recycle bin instead: a consolation, it is true!

In direct mail, you can do everything else right and your outer can STILL sink your promotion. It's your first chance, most likely your ONLY chance, to catch a prospect's attention and convince him that your package is worth his valuable time. And so I spend considerable time figuring out how an outer should look, what it should say AND how it relates to the person who takes it out of the mailbox. In some cases, you bang the gong and break out the bells and whistles. In others, you seek to float quietly in on a raft of discretion and restraint. But you can never, ever forget the simple single over-riding point and purpose of every direct mail envelope which has ever been created: to get opened!

Here are a few of mine. Would you open them?