There are two school’s of thought with envelopes, the ’teaser’ and the ‘blind.’  We’ll talk about the teaser first.  The teaser envelope means that there is “teaser copy” on the outside of the envelope.  This could be a message about what’s inside, testimonials, a quote, etc.  You’re essentially revealing that the contents are an advertisement. 

As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to use the ‘teaser’ with a group of people who already know you and are interested in what you offer.  Your in-house list of buyers or prospects would be great for this.

Also, you want to be sure that if you use teaser copy, you really use it.  There’s no sense in putting just one thing on there, you’ve already revealed it’s an ad, so go all out, and use every inch of that envelope.  Remember, it’s another sales opportunity

The second way is the ‘blind’ approach.  This is best when for a list of people who don’t already know you.  There are no labels, and is typically address by hand or a very good handwritten font.

However, this isn’t always the case.  Here’s a true story.  For many years we used the Million Dollar Bill with great success in our business, and we always addressed the envelopes by hand.  However, we finally tested a regular courier (type-writer) font, and guess what??  While our
response dropped a tiny bit, our return on investment actually we UP since we were no longer paying for the extra time to handwrite every envelope.  So, while the general rule is to use a handwritten font, be sure you test!

However, we always followed these rules to a ‘T.’  We never used any labels for the prospects address or our address, there was no company name in the return address, just our address, there was no teaser copy, and we always used a live, 1st class stamp, and usually a commemorative stamp.