NP Times / Direct Mail: Outer Envelopes

NP Times / Direct Mail: Outer Envelopes: "May 15 , 2005
Direct Mail: Outer Envelopes

By Robert Ford
What�s working, what�s new?
One prevailing theory of the direct response envelope is that if you hand write it, or at least make it appear that you did, donor prospects will open it. And whether the envelope is hand-written, in color, with graphics or without, many theories of what works crowd the landscape.
In theory, there are three types of direct response m ail, the A-pile, the B-pile and the C-pile. According to Tom Gaffny, executive vice president of Burlington, Mass.-based Epsilon, a database direct response marketing company, the A-pile is the one that �you know you just have to read,� the B-pile, is the one �you might read while standing over the garbage can� and the C-pile is the one that gets thrown unopened into the garbage can. "