[Sean Cash]

I'm no expert when it comes to mailers. I've never designed a mailer or ran a mailer campaign. However, a year or two ago this ISO was telling me about this awesome mailer campaign they were initiating and they gave me a copy of the flyer they were sending out to keep. I thought it was awesome because it was so professional and expensive looking. I brought it home to show my wife what people in the industry were doing and before I could say a word, she grabbed it out of my hand and threw it in the trash.

Apparently she thought I had brought it in from our mailbox and she instinctively believed it to be junk mail that I was handing her to throw away. I had to take it out of the garbage bin just to show her how good it was, but it didn't matter, the proof of how effective the campaign was going to be had already revealed itself.

I shred 99% of my mail without opening it. I guess there's no moral of my story other than the content of your message is irrelevant if it's not even looked at to begin with. Engaging the merchant to actually pay attention has got to be more than half the battle.

[JayBallentine]

I'm no expert when it comes to mailers. I've never designed a mailer or ran a mailer campaign. However, a year or two ago this ISO was telling me about this awesome mailer campaign they were initiating and they gave me a copy of the flyer they were sending out to keep. I thought it was awesome because it was so professional and expensive looking. I brought it home to show my wife what people in the industry were doing and before I could say a word, she grabbed it out of my hand and threw it in the trash.

I bolded one sentence because that's what causes folks to STOP reading. We will use licked stamps, invitation sized envelopes, legal sized paper, and hand written addresses.

We all open mail over the trash can. But when we receive something that looks and feels like a gift or invitation (on the envelope) we're opening that so fast heads roll. Then you have about 10 words before they decide if they want to give you the next 20 words, and 20 to buy the next 40 words of attention, and so on.