AMiable Solution #27: Envelope Mailings

In the quest to have their envelope mailings stand out from other mail--bills, letters, and other business marketing--marketers take creative measures, using clever text, colored stock, and unusual add-ons or inserts to pique a recipient's interest and get him/her to open the envelope.


Unfortunately, sometimes when creativity flows, practical considerations get tossed to the wind, causing surprise, frustration, and additional expense when the post office refuses to process the marketer's mailpiece.

Although we wouldn't want to stand in the way of anyone's creative process or innovative ideas (we love seeing all the different ways our customers find to stand out from the crowd), we would like to help you maximize your investment and minimize your postage expenses and headaches. Therefore, we present to you three key mailpiece design restrictions, courtesy of the USPS Domestic Mail Manual:

• Automated letters must be flexible. Heavy stock certainly does look better and lasts longer, but save your really heavy stock flyers and brochures for conventions and order inserts. According to the USPS (DMM 3.12.1), "a mailpiece and its contents must bend easily when subjected to a transport belt tension of 40 pounds around an 11-inch diameter drum." In other words, keep your stock under ???? pounds. If you're not sure if your piece meets the flexibility requirement, ask your printer for at least five sample pieces of your chosen stock--cut and folded to your final specs--and submit the samples and a written request to your local postmaster for a flexibility test at least six weeks before your mailing date.

• Keep inserts small or flexible. Have you ever found a penny in your mail? According to the USPS Domestic Mail Manual, "odd-shaped" items like coins and tokens are permissible in automated letters as long as they are "firmly affixed to and wrapped within the contents of the mailpiece and envelope to streamline the shape of the mailpiece for automated processing" (DMM 3.10). Credit cards get the green light, too, for their flexibility. But don't expect the post office to process envelope mailings with pencils or keys in them: such rigid items are strictly prohibited.

• Leave the envelope alone. Yes, sending your promotion in an inter-office-inspired envelope would catch your customers' attention, and yes, marketing your high-end perfume in an envelope with a fancy closure would be something, but you'd have to hide them both in a traditional envelope or box because such gimmicks just don't work in automation mailing. According to DMM 3.8, "an automation-compatible mailpiece may not be polywrapped, polybagged, or shrinkwrapped; have clasps, strings, buttons, or similar closure devices; or have protrusions that might impede or damage the mail or mail processing equipment."

Not sure where that leaves you? With the same tools that have inspired donations, purchases, and memberships for years and years: a little paper, a little postage, and a load of benefits-heavy copy.