This isn't your father's envelope market. Gone are the days of selling generic, white envelopes at reasonable profit margins. "The problem with those products is that people still use them--but there's little profit in them," says Marvin Makofsky, 36-year industry veteran and president of Conformer Expansion Products Inc., Great Neck, N.Y. "A lot of these print orders became more transactional, as opposed to the delivery of new ideas." If your customers view envelopes as a commodity, it's time to change their attitudes.
Envelope distributors increasingly have been creating extra value for their products, adding such features as plastic stock, expandability, colorful printing and unusual windows. And they're thrilling their clients. "There is a fairly large need for envelopes," says Jim Nightingale, vice president of sales and marketing at TBF Graphics, based in Saginaw, Mich. Envelopes account for 10 percent of the distributorship's business. "Marketing strategies today have become quite creative and sophisticated," he says. "On occasion, we will become involved with very unique and interesting projects." Nightingale says recent telemarketing restrictions help the envelope market, as more companies promote themselves through direct mail.
A Healthy Size
A leading health care provider faced cumbersome tasks when it distributed policy information to its members. The company used a Bell+Howell inserter to place specific members' policy information into envelopes with gussets, then manually inserted doctor provider books of varying thickness. The gusseted envelopes, not intended for automatic insertion, frequently jammed in the automated equipment. The health care provider sought a more efficient machine-insertable envelope and an enhanced marketing image.
Seal Deals with Envelopes
Technology, savvy sales techniques and demand for promotional pieces help distributors profit in the envelope market.
BY RITA TIEFERT
WCBS/E.H. Bickett & Co., Palm Desert, Calif., sells a variety of attractive envelopes to travel agencies. The distributorship's owner, Bryna Blum, touts them as integral parts of overall marketing strategies.
10 Ways to Sell More Envelopes
1. Target hot markets. According to printing pros interviewed for this article, these industries provide excellent opportunities for envelope sales: travel, hospitality, meetings, insurance, financial, legal, health care and pharmaceutical.
2. Partner wisely. Jim Nightingale, vice president of sales and marketing at distributorship TBF Graphics, based in Saginaw, Mich., attributes his ability to bring clients creative envelopes to his partnership with manufacturer Envelope Mart USA, based in Toledo, Ohio. "We struggled with being competitive in the marketplace until we put this strategic partnership in place," he says. "Ever since then, our envelope volume has taken off. We can take just about any paper stock imaginable and convert it into whatever configuration the client may need. Especially if we're dealing with ad agencies that are a little more sophisticated in their design elements, we feel comfortable that we can provide them with their special-request products."
3. Tour a plant. Learn how envelopes suit--or don't suit--various machines. "We have to be careful that envelopes are machine-insertable," Nightingale says. "Unfortunately, we've learned a few lessons the hard way: We've burned midnight oil hand-stuffing pieces. Before we take on any type of project, we definitely try to understand exactly what's involved."
4. Show samples. "I carried a portfolio with me," Bryna Blum says of her years in outside sales. "The travel companies were very curious what their colleagues or competitors were doing. It became a game of one-upmanship, which was wonderful for us." Blum owns distributorship WCBS/E.H. Bickett & Co., Palm Desert, Calif.
5. Remind end users about express shipping packages. "One of the most important things we discovered is people think you have to use the FedEx or UPS envelope," says Marvin Makofsky, president of Conformer Expansion Products Inc., Great Neck, N.Y. Show clients it's wiser to use eye-catching envelopes that promote and distinguish their businesses. "Make the envelope more of a marketing utility piece than a product used to ship another product from one location to another," he says.
6. Position yourself as an idea provider. "One of the last frontiers [in the printing industry] is to break this logjam of commodity-based products," Makofsky says. "How do you do that? You have to take the time to present the new ideas and products."
7. Stress image packaging. "We ultimately would pull in ticket jackets, luggage tags and everything else to give them complete packaging," Blum says. "Image packaging is something we have stressed almost from day one." She makes sure envelopes are as attractive as what's inside them. "Even if my client says, 'My logo is just a font,' we try to enhance it as much as we can," she says. "People get a lot of junk mail, and unless it's something special, it will wind up in the trash."
8. Offer fulfillment. "Our forte is document management," Nightingale says. He takes a consultative approach to sales, investigating why and how end users incorporate their paper-based products. Often, his solutions involve creativity in envelope design or efficiency in envelope ordering, printing and delivery. For example, a law firm was "flying by the seat of its pants" and purchasing expensive envelopes as needed. TBF Graphics now produces, warehouses and distributes its envelopes annually.
9. Provide value while limiting cost. "Capitalizing on see-through materials, clients can put colorful marketing materials into a translucent poly envelope, allowing the branding message to show through the envelope," Makofsky says. "Surprisingly, this distinctive look often costs less than a 4-color paper envelope." Show clients why bulk buying, using color creatively and other tactics can limit cost while adding value.
10. Match the right sealant with the application. Blum says she will never forget seeing a vat of sealant at an envelope manufacturing plant. The plant manager said, "Do you know what's in that vat?" Since then, she has felt averse to promoting lick-and-seal envelopes, and she encourages her clients to feel likewise. Many opt for peel-and-seal envelopes for daily applications; others spend extra for elastic loops or Velcro clasps for upscale packaging or special projects.
Special windows and eye-catching graphics on envelopes help to raise direct mail response rates. Courtesy of Envelope Mart USA, Toledo, Ohio
Distributorship Pama Enterprises Inc., which is affiliated with Conformer Expansion Inc., told the end user about Conformer® Expansion Envelopes. The envelope appears similar to a traditional one, but its patented score and glue design expands to fit variable content up to 1 1/2 inch thick. (For details, see the Print Solutions Web Exclusives.) After a consultation, the end user selected one measuring 9 3/4 x 12 5/8 inches with more than 1-inch expansion. This flat envelope performed well on a machine inserter and displayed a 3-color design. Following machine insertion, the envelope expanded to accommodate the thickness of hand-inserted materials, providing greater efficiency and a more professional look, Makofsky says. Also, the envelopes cost considerably less than the original gusseted envelopes. "As a result of manufacturing efficiencies and its enhanced marketing appearance, these products are setting new standards in the mail fulfillment arena," he says.
That's the Ticket
Forget about setting new standards--Bryna Blum has created a class all her own. "We've been known as 'The Travel Agents' General Store,'" she says, describing her distributorship, WCBS/ E.H. Bickett & Co., Palm Desert, Calif. "It started as a joke, and it stuck."
Customers are sticking with the distributorship--Blum has kept many clients for decades. She doesn't begin a sales pitch by discussing envelopes. "No client has ever called us and asked, 'Do you do envelopes?'" she says. Instead, she touts them as integral parts of overall marketing strategies.
Travel agencies are an ideal market for promotional envelopes, Blum says. The industry has become more consolidated, competitive, specialized, cost-conscious and computer-savvy in the past few years. "Even smaller companies have picked up whole new images and names," she says. "You really need to know your product, and you need to sell it better than anyone else. From the first piece of paper and marketing material that your clients see, it has to be obvious that you're different." For example, one of her clients made zebra stripes part of its brand image, so she created a #10 envelope with a short window and zebra stripes printed down the left side of the envelope face.
Another travel agency specializes in travel arrangements for attorneys. Named one of the top 50 travel companies in the country, it wanted a new image to enhance its competitive position. The company changed its name and sought Blum for marketing materials. Originally, the company's ticket jackets were dark-green ink on text-weight, natural-white paper. For its new design (dark blue with a swirl pattern), Blum and a graphic designer agreed that changing the paper to cover-weight, white gloss and printing the new logo in blue ink would be "just the ticket."
The travel agency's previous envelope included a stub on which travel managers could staple tickets. Its new envelope has a 6 x 2 3/4-inch window that reveals the client's mailing and distribution fields. The company's new logo is a whimsical paper airplane in varying shades of blue. "The graphics are gorgeous with lots of movement and energy," she says. "It's 1-color, but there are so many screens on there that it looks multicolored." This high-end envelope can catch even a wealthy attorney's eye. "You don't last in this business unless you can deliver way more than product," Blum says.
The Clear Advantage
Flexx Inc., a San Diego distributorship, has been doing just that, thanks in part to manufacturer Crawford Industries, Fishers, Ind. The manufacturer introduced Flexx to Conformer Expansion Envelopes made of polypropylene. Earl Guinter, marketing director at Crawford, praises the product's translucence and expandability. These two aspects opened up a potentially wide array of direct mail and marketing applications, Guinter says. "We do a lot in clear material. That allows us to produce this envelope without any decoration on it," he says. "Whatever contents [the end user] is stuffing in that envelope can be seen through the material. Those two were the major factors for us in taking on that line. It gives the customer a multiple use for the product. It may be intended for one particular thing, but then you can say, 'Oh, I can shove a bunch of material in it and use it for something else.'"
Kevin Spawn, an account executive at Flexx, pitched these concepts to a pharmaceutical company, successfully positioning the distributorship as a solutions provider rather than commodity dealer. The end user was trying to convince the pharmaceutical firm's decision-makers about the viability of launching a new product, and it needed to project a sophisticated, stable image. To create that classic image, Crawford printed the company's logo in black ink on a 20-gauge polypropylene Conformer Expansion Envelope with a frosted translucence. "Even though it's frosted, when the material lays up against it, you still get good contact clarity," Guinter says. According to Spawn, the client appreciated the envelopes' translucent look.
Jump In--The Water's Fine
TBF Graphics' envelope sales consists primarily of #10 window envelopes, but "that's only scratching the surface" of the market, Nightingale says. With materials and features ranging from Tyvek to specially cut windows, "the spectrum begins to broaden considerably--the sky is the limit," he says. TBF Graphics concentrates on offering creative fulfillment.
A long-time customer specializing in pool supply sales to three states came to Nightingale for help with its 400-page catalog. The company published the catalogs annually and had worn out its staff by handling distribution in house. It wanted TBF Graphics to take the chore out of its hands and make it more efficient. "We looked at doing a custom-printed Tyvek we could have dressed up and printed with a promotional tagline on the front," Nightingale says. "But they decided to go for the generic Tyvek piece, since their clients were already lined up, waiting for the catalog." The distributorship created a program that enabled placement of an oversized label on the front, showing the recipient's address. In the upper-right corner of the label, TBF Graphics placed preprinted indicia. "It's a different twist from what we normally do," Nightingale says. The white Tyvek expansion envelope measured 10 x 13 x 1 1/2 inches, and the labels were laser printed on 8 1/2 x 11-in., 14-lb. stock.
The run included fewer than 1,000 pieces, but Nightingale says the client appreciated TBF Graphics' work, cementing its view of the distributorship as a solutions provider. "What they enjoyed the most was it didn't tie their people up for a couple days trying to handle a product they're unfamiliar with," he says.
Thanks to manufacturer Envelope Mart USA, Toledo, Ohio, for assistance.
