Seth Godin makes a good point how a seemingly small difference in the return address of an envelope can alter your perception of the piece. I didn’t throw away my Google check the first time it arrived in one of those non-descript ‘Buffalo NY’ envelopes, but I remember opening it over the wastebasket, assuming it was another credit card offer.

What made me open it a little more carefully was the fact that it wasn’t standard (‘bulk’) mail. A standard piece that tries to look like a confidential communication (i.e. no company or agency name in the return address, plain formatting), is an ad for sure, and likely to get tossed unopened. The same envelope sent first class is pretty likely to be either good news or bad news- either way you gotta open it.

The other piece in Seth’s picture actually is first class, but it’s just a higher level ad- the phony endorsement gives it away- “Business Mail- Penalty for Tampering”. (So personal letters are fair game for ‘tampering’? And even if there were, would anyone mistake this for a personal letter?)

The return address

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 at 8:30 pm and is filed under ad mail, Direct Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.