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Unraveling the Mailer Mystique
Form Magazine, August 1989Versatile, profitable, yet complicated, mailers are gaining more acceptance among end users.
By Katherine Leupold and Paul E. Van Heuklom
Mailer design can be crucial. Just ask the advertising department of a newspaper that received the return envelope of a two-way mailer stitched up tight by a sewing machine, along with a nasty note expressing the customer's frustration. To avoid losing revenue, the newspaper needed a better design. Enter a young forms distributor who had never sold a mailer. The newspaper gave the distributor (who asked not to be identified) two or three forms, including the troublesome mailer, to redesign and produce. It also tested a non-independent rep who was given another mailer to redesign. The independent distributor successfully redesigned the mailer and won the account. Today, she says the newspaper, now a forms management client, is one of her better accounts.
"I'm the personality type to take on something I've never done before," she says. Armed with stock mailers, she matched existing construction to the newspaper's software program. The distributor was immediately popular with the newspaper because the mailer was the most often-used form. She has since sold and designed mailers for several clients, but she points out that designing mailers is not easy. "Mailers are real hard. They're a lot of work, and I don't know a lot of distributors doing them."
Larry McChesney, vice president and national sales manager for Service Business Forms, Inc., Wichita, Kan., would agree: "Distributors have got to get samples in their offices and become experts on mailers so they can educate customers." Many manufacturers offer training seminars at trade shows and on an as-needed basis, as well as audio and video tapes. Mailer design construction kits, information on postal regulations and help from in-house designers are available from mailer manufacturers too. "But ultimately the distributor must become self-taught," says McChesney.
Solving Problems
Some distributors take this advice to heart. "I like the challenge and the promblem-solving end of selling mailers," says Nick Nesci, CFC, president of Nesci Business Forms, Inc., in Wethersfield, Conn. "I can go to a client as a professional rather than a supplier." Nesci believes a wave of distributors with an "I can sell it for less" attitude has flooded the market.Mailers help separate the professionals from the order takers, he says. Those who want to sell mailers for less lack a degree of professionalism and commitment to the product. Without knowledge, he explains, they will be unable to analyze existing mailers, suggest improvements and satisfy customers.
Chris Miget, marketing manager for Forms Resource, Inc., a St. Louis distributorship agrees. He says he also began selling mailers as a way to separate himself from everyone else. It is necessary "to assume some risk," he adds, "because the benefits are so great." Risks include botching an expensive job or designing a form that doesn't meet a customer's needs. Most problems can be avoided, however, according to Miget, by understanding more about the manufacturing process. Most manufacturers now, he adds, provide easily mastered mailer design kits, virtually eliminating potential problems.
Bruce Bendel, another forms distributor who designs mailers, entered the market four or five years ago because "that's where the growth is." Gene Crawford, CFC, president and CEO of Data Papers, Inc., a Muncy, Pa., manufacturer and a member of NBFA's Board of Directors, says the mailer market is growing at 8-10 percent per year, according to industry analysts, and may be growing as fast as 12 percent. The forms industry as a whole, however, is growing at about 4 or 5 percent per year.
Advantages to End Users
Distributors fearful of selling mailers may be losing out on profits as the product gains greater public acceptance. An entire generation has grown up with mailers, says Miget, and is no longer afraid of them.When converting a customer to a mailer, distributors need convincing arguments. Mailers save time and money by eliminating inserting and other mailroom activities. If a two-way mailer is used, recipients may pay their bills faster. If recipients forget to enclose a remittance copy, the accounting office has the necessary processing information on the fly sheet. Or, to prevent extra work, the inside of return envelopes can be carbonized with relevant information.
Mailers also can ensure accuracy and security. Bills, checks or other confidential information cannot be stuffed in the wrong envelope. In addition, there is no opportunity for anyone other than the recipient to read these documents. Mailers are ideal for payroll checks, earnings statements, ATM cards and personal identification numbers. Some school systems use mailers for report cards since many get "lost" between school and home.
No Postage Necessary
Six years ago, Nesci designed a continuous 9½ x 4-inch mailer as an inventory reporting form never intended to be sent through the mail. Instead, inventory teams use the mailer to count products in a warehouse. Basic product descriptions are computer-generated, and the forms are affixed to product cartons with a transfer tape on the stub. Team 1 counts the product, records the amount on part one and tears off its copy of the form. Spot carbon transfers the total to part three, while blockouts hide the total on part two.A second inventory team counts the product again and records its total on part two without knowing the first team's count. Afterwards, a review team opens the mailer to reveal both team tallies on part three.
If there is a discrepancy, the review team recounts. The confirmed total is transferred to part four, the auditor's copy, which remains attached to the carton. "A mailer offers security," says Nesci. "If the two teams had written on a tally sheet next to each other, the second team probably would not have gone through and counted." Before Nesci designed the mailer, two separate sets of computer-generated cards were used. The mailer saves time, since the cards do not have to be matched.
His client has used the mailer for almost six years, and he is pleased with its success. Says Nesci, "I measure success by whether a product endures the test of time."
Postal Regulations
If you plan to send your mailer through the mail, compliance with U.S. Postal Service regulations presents important design consideration. Nesci says some distributors have designed mailers and had them printed, only to have them rejected by the post office.Nesci recommends studying postal regulations, which change often. The post office's publication number 25, "A Guide to Business Mail Preparation," spells out everything from address location to the use of upper and lower case letters. The post office also publishes several brief pamphlets on other aspects of mailing such as zip + 4® codes and the placement of bar codes on envelopes.
Distributors can save time and avoid embarrassment by taking dummy mailers to the customer's local post office. Customers should guide you to the correct post office, says Nesci, which is often the place where they applied for a mailing permit.
Distributors must design mailers that meet requirements relating to the ratio of length to height. This number, called an aspect ratio, is arrived at by dividing length by height. It must range from 1.3-2.5. Any piece of mail smaller than 3½ inches high and five inches long cannot be mailed.
James Pumphre, a mailing requirements clerk with the Merrifield, Va., post office, warns of other requirements. Mail also must be 6 1/8 inches x 11 ½ inches that meets the other requirements is assessed a surcharge.
If you are designing two-way mailers, you should understand the postal requirements governing the zip + 4 bar codes and the facing identification marks (FIM). Many envelopes contain a bar code for the nine-digit zip code to speed mail sorting. This bar code is not yet required on return envelopes, but the Postal Service strongly suggests its use. If it is used on business reply return envelopes, clients may qualify for additional postal discount.
The FIM pattern, a series of vertical full bars printed in the upper middle portion of a piece of mail, just to the left of the indicia, is required on all business reply mail letters and cards. However, many return envelopes in mailers would not be postage-paid, according to David Maser, CFC, regional sales manager for Transkrit Corporation, a Brewster, N.Y., manufacturer. Distributors designing product or service solicitations requiring a business reply envelope, such as a subscription renewal form, would need to incorporate the FIM pattern on return envelopes, he says.
Good news on the postal front should help alleviate problems with some mailers that in the past were damaged by automated processing machines. The International Business Forms Industries Ad Hoc Mailer Manufacturers Committee met with postal reps in April to discuss the damage, and postal reps agreed to modify the multi-line mail processing machines being used. Modifications were expected to take 60-90 days.
A Product You can Patent
Bendel, president of Performance Dataforms Co., in Lake Forest, Ill., enjoys selling mailers because they are associated with proprietary patents. "It is harder for someone to copy what you've done," he says. "Mailers are the only challenge left in the forms industry."Bendel has no interest in learning about bar coding because so many distributors and manufacturers can design and produce effective bar code systems. "Bar coding is not proprietary," he says. "There is nothing else like mailers on the market. You must go the extra mile to design them. They are more work and effort," he says, "but the volumes and profits are big."
Bendel hopes to benefit from this challenge. He is waiting to hear from the U.S. Patent Office on his design for a two-way insert mailer with a maximum size of 11½ x 18 inches. The mailer folds down to a smaller size to meet the first class, one ounce, postal regulations. The mailer, for impact printers only, allows clients to use software without format changes to print a full-page invoice. He named the patent pending mailer ComPro™, short for "communication promotion," since the entire reverse side of the return envelope and part of the front can display a four-color ad on coated paper.
He designed the mailer early last year for a newspaper advertising department that needed a large invoice to match its new billing software. The client had used mailers before and did not want to return to stuffing envelopes. With help from an independent manufacturer, Bendel designed and put together a sample for his client last spring and realized it had applications in other industries.
Bendel hopes 8/8/88, the day he filed his patent, will turn out to have been his lucky day. Last April, the patent office indicated that the mailer's return envelope construction might qualify for a patent, but he is awaiting a final decision. After a 10-month search, he found an equipment manufacturer with a folder that can fold and seal the mailer at the rate of 8,000-12,000 per hour. If all goes as planned, Bendel will market the mailer to distributors and manufacturers in the U.S. and Canada in 18 months.
Bendel already plans to submit another mailer patent for approval this year. The new mailer could be designed with or without a return envelope and would be available in sheet or continuous format. It can accommodate continuous inserts, say Bendel, and would work on impact or non-impact printers. All the inserts would be originals.
Transkrit recently introduced InfoSeal®, a one-part mailer that is folded and sealed on InfoSealer®, a Pitney Bowes machine. Unlike traditional mailers, InfoSeal can be used with non-impact printers, says Maser. The product has been used for almost a year as a turnkey system, but the InfoSealer will not be available until later this year. Applications include notices, checks, certificates and coupons. "InfoSeal is not designed to replace the mailer," says Maser. "It is designed to fill in gaps where the traditional mailer can't go."
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