Nah, all the gurus sell the ‘magic’ formula for letter opening, but the true trick is making it stand out from the pack …the second, third, and fourth times around.
Frankly, a cheap, business envelope with a typed name on the front and a return address with your name will get opened.
What won’t get opened is something with a pre-printed stamp on the envelope, no return address, and a faux-handwritten addressee and a bar code. If it looks like junk mail, it ‘is’ junk mail.
Ask yourself; “Have I ever failed to open a white, business envelope, with my name printed on the front (or the name of my dead aunt), with a first class stamp attached, and someone’s name I don’t know on the return address?”
The answer is, “You open that sucker, to see who in the crap is sending you a plain, white, business envelope, with a first class stamp on it.”
Everyone else is bombarding these folks with one, cutesy, yellow letter, pink letter, Mary letter, in one, gift-card-sized envelope after another …that is barely distinguishable from a mass-mailed, birthday card sent by their insurance carrier, etc.
What happens when yours looks non-cutesy? It gets opened. Why, again?
Because there’s no ‘tells’ giving it away as junk mail.
In fact it sort of looks like correspondence from an attorney, or a service statement. People will open those envelopes …at least once.
Of course what happens if we’re sending the same, plain envelope every month? Prospects will catch on to our scheme of ‘plain-ness.’
What then?
That’s when we make sure that what’s inside each letter makes them want to open the next one, and the next one …until the moment they convert into the ripe fruit that falls directly into our net.
So, if we’re not baiting them with something they’re looking forward to seeing (even if they’re not interested in our offers), our junk mail will end up in the round file.
Meantime, the lady who called you about misspelling dead aunt Edna’s last name, and failing to seal the envelope in a way that respects the dead; will soften up over time.
As the family comes to the conclusion that aunt Edna’s old house actually stunk like a wad of used toilet paper, and the residual odor isn’t going anywhere soon, they soften up; forgive you for your misspellings; and insensitivity; and call to sell Edna’s malodorous hell hole to you …without considering anyone else, who’s been mailing them junk mail for the last nine months straight.
Which brings me back to something I’ve said quite a few times elsewhere, and that is to make people want to open your mail “twice,” and to mail consistently.
“Twice” here meaning over and over, and “consistently,” as in catching the falling fruit as it ripens.
Forget the sealed flap controversy. Seal it. Don’t seal it. Staple it shut (no actually, don’t do that). Tape it. Use red wax. It makes no difference after the prospect’s seen it once. Then it’s about the contents, not the packaging.
BTW, a mistaken assumption that the gurus fail to clear up is that we can rarely maintain a critical mass of conversion with just one mailing, or even three. People will call the marketers that cultivate a familiarity with the prospects.
The ones that do one-off mailings and cross their fingers and hope to die, are the same ones depending on gimmicks to get their mail opened. Why?
Because they aren’t sending regularly, and so everything depends on this one, do-or-die, opportunity.
This only creates panic, if not a scarcity mentality, when there isn’t an avalanche of conversions.