Direct Mail Business Flourishes Distributors who sell direct mail know the market is centered on results and return rates. Therefore, customers constantly test new versions of direct mail packages—even if they have successful mail pieces. One of Print Technologies & Services Inc.'s customers mails glitzy lottery solicitation packages. While the client relies on a tried-and-true control package, it also mails four or five new test packages each month. The packages strive to attract recipients with color and action devices such as scratch-off panels. "There's always a new test package in the works," says Len Mauceli, CEO of the Carol Stream, Ill.-based distributorship. "If we aren't testing continuously, we aren't doing our job for customers." When test packages receive better responses than control packages, they become the reigning "king of the mail." One of Print Technologies & Services' customers is a training company that mailed 4-page letters and fliers in #10 envelopes to businesses and consumers to market its educational seminars. "We were never able to beat that package," says John Sculley, the distributorship's management supervisor. "Then we finally beat it with a self-mailer." In the past year, the training company switched to a trifold mailer on 70# offset paper. The 2-color, 25 3/4 x 11-inch sheet is folded and mailed flat. "Instead of a #10 envelope coming across the recipient's desk, it's an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of mail," Sculley says. The training company mails between 250,000 and 450,000 a month, depending on the number of seminars it offers. Sculley says the self-mailer is more cost-effective, more flexible and allows for more personalization than the former direct mail package.