A Mail Piece in Hand

Self-mailers rise from the economic rubble

EASY-TO-READ, inexpensive self-mailers have re-emerged as a refreshing alternative to costly promotions in these tough economic times.

“For many years, self-mailers were looked on as the dogs of direct mail — they just didn’t work,” says Emily Soell, vice president and chief creative officer at DraftWorldwide. “Now nearly all our clients are using them.”

They require little effort to read and can cost up to 20% less than letter mail. And they perform as well as, if not better than, traditional mailings.

One company banking on this premise is cable TV, telephone and Internet services marketer RCN Corp. In July, the Princeton, NJ-based firm began sending out a quarterly 800,000-piece prospect mailing aimed at improving response by capturing a 30% penetration rate in its service areas. RCN operates in Philadelphia, San Francisco, eastern Pennsylvania, Los Angeles, New York and other areas with high population densities, says Renee Haber, senior vice president at RCN’s agency Laughlin/Constable in Chicago.

“We found that self-mailers really stand apart from the traditional envelope and they can provide a lot of information,” she adds.

The effort focuses on the advantages of RCN’s ResiLink bundled service. “In some markets, we’re thought of as a cable company, in others as an Internet provider,” she said. “We want to be known for all our services.”

The multimillion-dollar campaign includes billboard, bus shelter, transit and local newspaper ads as well as inserts in targeted publications.

Day-Timers Inc., the East Texas, PA direct marketer of time-management and planning products, embraced the medium after its control package began to fatigue and three tests of a new self-mailer showed a substantial return on investment.

The firm sent out 1.8 million pieces from May to June this year after last summer’s testing drew response rates as high as 23%, a figure in line with the best of Day-Timers’ other packages. “It kicked butt,” says senior sales representative John Rossiter.

And it was cheaper — an important factor after the company’s director of advertising set a mandate last year to reduce costs while maintaining both response rates and the free-gift-in-the-mail concept.

The self-mailer cost 20% less to produce than the former control. And the lower postage rate brought the package to within 60% of the expense reduction requirement, says Robin Sturm, creative director for RRD Direct, the agency charged with developing the new approach.

To continue the free-gift-in-the-mail model, the usual pens and mailing labels were replaced with a tear-off ruler, stickers to use with a Day-Timers planner, and a bookmark. When prospects tear out the ruler, they’re left with the company’s business reply envelope in their hands.

“We were able to eliminate all of the insertion at the lettershop,” says Sturm. “It came off the printing machine ready to mail,” shaving five days off the previous package’s 15-day turnaround time.

The self-mailer went through RRD Direct’s presses twice. The first run applied the ink, the perforations and a special varnish, which gives the mailer’s cover the leather “feel” of a Day-Timers planner. The perforations allow it to open onto a sample page.

A second run adds the address and personalization throughout the package. The next project for both RCN Corp. and Day-Timers is designing follow-up efforts. While Day-Timers reports retention rates topping 80%, Maria Woytek, the firm’s director of advertising, acknowledges that the first year is critical.

“Under our contact strategy, the customer gets touched several times a year,” she says. “Once a customer gets rooted in using [the planner], we enjoy the customer for life.”

According to New York list broker Paradysz Matera, which tracks mailing trends, the use of self-mailers is indeed rising. For example, the number of DMers using self-mailers at least once in a 12-month period rose from 17.6% between July 1999 and June 2000 to 20.6% for the same period a year later.

“There’s a real movement toward self-mailers,” agrees RRD Direct president Susan Henricks. “[The process] also allows for personalizing and targeting. What we are seeing is much more targeting and versioning across the span of our client base.”

Michael Krzyston, president of Grey Marketing & Data Services, has seen self-mailers catch on among banks and insurance firms over the past year as well as among the online units of established retailers.

Overall, he says, self-mailers are cheaper than conventional mailing pieces because they can qualify for postcard rates and draw responses in line with the industry average of 2%.

He says self-mailers work well as a follow-up to an initial mailing. But response tends to lag when the mailers have an exposed business reply card which dilutes the impact of the piece.