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CopyDoodles Lunch & Learn 12/21 – “Strategies for Using CopyDoodles on Envelopes.”

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Lunch & Learn Transcript:

Hi, everyone. This is Lauren, your CopyDoodles Success Coach, and welcome to today’s CopyDoodles Lunch and Learn where I’ll be talking about Strategies for Using CopyDoodles on Envelopes in Order to Increase Response and Readability.

Next week’s topic I want you to have a really happy holidays. I’ve cancelled next week, just because I know a lot of people might be traveling or they might be away between Hanukah and Christmas and New Years, and all of the holidays that are occurring right now. So, next year we are going to begin with a really great topic, Where to Begin Your CopyDoodles Marketing in 2012. So, we’ll be talking about all different types of things you can do with your CopyDoodles, new and unique things, so in two weeks make sure to join me. Have a super-happy New Year.

Our member-only Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week — winter solstice is on Thursday, Hanukah began yesterday, Christmas is Sunday, so this picture has nothing to do with any of them, but I liked it, so today we have today’s Lunch and Learn Deal of the Week, the Deal of the Week is to check your emails in the upcoming days and the upcoming week because we’re having a really huge year-end sale with CopyDoodles, some of our products, so make sure just to keep an eye out for them because there’s going to be some really great pricing that we’ve never had before. I want to make sure that you get it and that you can pass it on to friends or family, or take advantage of it yourself, because we rarely do this.

Today’s webinar is different ways you can do things with your envelopes and marketing. The replay will be a www.CopyDoodles.com/blog At the end of this I will be posting the video right away at the end of today, so if you want to take a look at it again, or you missed something, make sure to check that out.

I’m just going to jump right into it. So, I want to begin with two envelope strategies. The first envelope strategy that you’re going to want to make sure you use on all of your envelopes is positive recognition. This is when you put your name or your company name, as you can see in the upper left-hand corner there. People know who it’s from, maybe they already know your business, if you’re sending to current customers or you’re sending a newsletter out you want to make sure that you always have your return address or some information that it came from you because people are probably waiting for it, they’re excited to get your information, if they’re current customers, if they follow you. So, they’re going to want to open it right away. This is when you have a relationship with your recipients. And, once you build that relationship this is a really key thing to do with all of your marketing.

Next is curiosity. Like you can see in the example here, in the bottom, tell people that they asked for something. If you’re sending a free offer, let them know, say they opted in to your opt-in box and they asked for a free report and you’re mailing to them you could write, “Your report is enclosed,” or like this example, “Your tickets are enclosed,” if you gave out free tickets or something like that. If you just send a plain envelope without any CopyDoodles or any mention of what’s inside, it might just look like junk mail, and you want to make sure that your envelopes do not look like all the other envelopes people are receiving, because people receive a lot of junk mail. I know people don’t receive a lot of mail anymore, it’s a lot more email, but if you’re spending the money to send out direct mail pieces, make sure you make them standout.

Next, a promise. Maybe on the outside you can mention that the first to register for your conference or your meeting, or your speech, or your webinar, gets a free gift. Show a picture of the gift on the outside of the envelope. You can show actual pictures, you can show a picture of you holding your gift. You can show a picture of your caricature or somebody in your office holding the gift that people are going to get if they open the envelope, because if people see it they’re going to want to open it, even if it doesn’t capture their attention right away — maybe it’s a report or something that they’re not exactly sure if they want it, but if they see that they’re going to get a free gift and you have that promise on the outside of the envelope, whether it’s on the front of the envelope, the back of the envelope, people are definitely going to want to open it.

Also if it looks important they’re definitely going to open it. If it looks like it’s something — maybe you have a see through window and you have a faux check or something, or fake money inside of there and people can see it, it will look important they’ll want to open it.

Tell all. This tells you everything that is inside of the envelope before you open it. So, maybe you list all of the things that you’re going to receive when you open up the envelope, or you talk about the benefits that people will get when they open up the envelope.

I know I skipped one — questions. Put questions on the outside of the envelopes, such as, “Are you ready to read this?” “Are you ready to change your life?” Things like that. Another great thing to put on the outside of an envelope, things that say, “Important.” Stamps that say, “Open now,” “Last Chance,” “Second Notice,” things that people will want to open it, not only because it stands out to them, but because they’re worried if it’s your second notice that you’re sending them, they don’t know if it’s from you, they don’t know if it’s from a bill company, they don’t know if it’s from something that they missed, that they signed up for and that they’re missing out on.

Then one strategy is to have a blind envelope with no return address. This is just for people who may not know you or if you’re putting a lot of other things on the outside of the envelope you may not need a return address. This might be a strategy that you use in your marketing.

Then, what I want to really quickly show you is how to access all of the EnvelopeDoodles in the CopyDoodles Access Club. So, let me just open up the CopyDoodles Access Club. I’m going to log in. We do have a section in the CopyDoodles Access Club specifically for CopyDoodles that are for the outside of envelopes. This is a really great area to check out, just to get ideas. If you highlight over CopyDoodles and scroll down to Volume 14 under EnvelopeDoodles there are a ton of different phrases and wording, and things you can find in here that will be really great for all of your envelopes. As you can see we have 118 of these in here. I’m sure there are a lot of other ones that you can come up with and create. We also have a whole section, if you go under CopyDoodles for StampDoodles, which is Volume 7, so you might even want to check that out too. That would probably be really great for any envelopes. But, as you can see these will just give you some really great ideas, even scrolling through this, if you want to do a direct mail piece.

Just looking at these might give you some ideas of what to write in your sales letter, if you’re not exactly sure. Maybe you read mystery gift, and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I should include a really cool gift. I could write a whole story about this mystery and the gift that people can receive.” Maybe it’s just a really neat report that you’ve styled up to look mysterious and different. And people will want to take advantage of that when they receive your envelope.

Moving on, another really great thing to do when you’re sending out any direct mail piece, and this does not cost anymore than it would to send out any of your mail pieces, is to use fun stamps. I just pulled these stamps really quickly off of the USPS website. All of these are forever stamps, so if you purchase a lot of them and you don’t end up using them all, then at least you don’t have to go back and get those one cent, two cent stamps, if the cost goes up. As you can see the forever stamps don’t have to have that Liberty Bell on them, the plain images — eagles, and flags, and things like that for the United States. They can have fun things on them. Maybe you are a company that is doing a lot of green movements, maybe even your direct mail pieces are green, you’re using recycled paper, use these stamps here on the right. Those are fun. “Celebrate” would be great stamps to send out for a New Year’s Campaign, or a holiday campaign, things like that.

Make sure to think about these tiny little details because when you receive an envelope with a regular first class stamp, or a normal forever stamp, things like that, you think that it’s just from a normal bill collector, or a company sending junk mail, or something like that. But, if you receive a personal stamp like this, it seems like it’s more from a friend, somebody took the time out to pick out the stamp and send it out to you.

Also a really great idea, you’re already paying for the direct mail piece, you’re already paying for the envelopes, you’re already paying for everything that you’re sending in it, print on both sides, don’t forget to put things on both sides of paper. You can save paper that way, you can get more information out there that way. It’s more eye-catching that way. Something that we like to do, which is really helpful, and let me just skip forward, is we actually put testimonials on the back envelopes, Post-It notes on the back of envelopes, because the back is what people flip over to before the open the envelope. So, people might read the front when they first receive it, and they might read their name, who it’s coming to, who it’s coming from, but then they’re always going to flip it over right before they open it. Something could pause them, you never know, people might get distracted, but they might see this testimonial and they might see whatever you have on the back, and that might cause them to want to open your envelope even more and read what’s inside.

So, make sure to include things on the back, or like on this one, which I just showed you, “Important information enclosed. Just make sure to read everything immediately and contact us because we’re going to close forever. Final Notice.”

Also, make sure to check out the FunDoodles section of the site. I think a lot of people use these on their sales letters, but I think people might forget to use these on their envelopes and other marketing pieces that they’re sending out. This is a really great way just to capture more attention. Obviously if you’re using the coffee stains here you want to make sure that you’re telling some sort of story with the coffee stain, once people open up the envelope or on the outside here, you’ve been working around the clock on a way to make you famous. So, obviously somebody has been working around the clock, they’ve been drinking coffee all day, all week, so the coffee stains on there, it just kind of ties it in with the story.

Make sure to check those out. You can use the highlighters that are in there, maybe the paperclips would work. Like, I showed you for these, you can you pull any of the Post-It notes or the pieces of paper, stick those on the back of the envelopes, in the front of the envelopes, it’s just a really great idea.

Next, use colored and different sized envelopes. Most people send a normal size 10 envelope, stick their sales letter in it and send it out, but what if a normal size 10 envelope was red, or orange, or blue, or purple, or any color, it’s definitely going to stand out in the mail, it’s going to seem a lot more personalized. When you use a handwritten font, like on this envelope, the handwritten font just makes it seem more personal. Look, they’re even just using a normal forever stamp, but because of the color and because of the handwritten font and the smiley face on there and the size envelope that they’re using, it’s normally a greeting card size, maybe you get a Hallmark card in something like this, greeting card, a holiday card, people are going to want to open it. They could open it and maybe it is a card or a postcard from you and from your company promoting your products and promoting your services.

These are all just really great ideas that I’m sharing today that if you’re not doing any direct mail yet, or if you are doing some and you want to get more out there in the new year, this is a really great time to do it because everybody is going online and there’s a lot less junk mail in people’s mailboxes. I mean I sign up for everything and really I only receive junk mail from Comcast, so this is a really great time to send out your mail and if you use these cool techniques your mail won’t be seen as junk mail, it will be seen as valuable mail that people want to open.

Also think about newsletters. If you’re sending out any newsletters or any products, maybe you have info products you’re mailing, anything like that, use envelopes similar to the ones that GKIC sends out. They have a little window so you can kind of see what’s inside there. You know there’s a CD inside, they write on the front, they write on the back, they have CopyDoodles on there. It’s really engaging, you feel like you’ve already gotten some content and some information from their newsletter before you even open it. So, once you open it you already know you’re going to receive. Like I was talking about before, how you should mention everything that is enclosed on your envelope, this is exactly how you want to do it.

This is a really cool technique that you can use. How to use CopyDoodles and CopyComics on your envelopes — so what this person did, all they did was downloaded the CopyComic blank. They downloaded the thought bubble blank, and then they used MailMerge in order to put MailMerge in the caption of the CopyBubble. I think a lot of people don’t use CopyBubbles, and this is a really great way to take advantage of it, because you can just pull everything completely out of the CopyDoodles Access Club, you don’t need to have your own caricature, you don’t need to have any pictures of yourself that you want to put on the outside of an envelope. You can just use these two combined and it will look really cool.

So, I actually am going to show you how to do this in Word. Then somebody asked me if there is a MailMerge for Mac, or using Mail on Mac. If you’re using Microsoft Word you should be able to do MailMerge, whether you’re using a Mac or a PC, depending on the version of Word that you have, and this will matter for PC or for Mac, depending on the version MailMerge might work differently. So, when you first open a document you’ll come to the home page and then you’ll want to head over to ‘mailings,’ and you’re going to start your MailMerge. This is how I start all of my envelopes, whether I go forward with the MailMerge, this is just how I choose a blank envelope in order to start.

So, I’m going to choose ‘envelopes’, I’m going to choose what size envelope I want to use. I’m just going to use size 11, just to do something a little different. Then it will automatically put my envelope here. I can put my return address here. Then next I’m going actually going to put my address here. There’s always a space for that too.

If you were to go forward with the MailMerge you would just go back to ‘Start MailMerge’ and you would choose ‘Step by Step MailMerge Wizard.’ For those of you who actually want to find out how to do MailMerge it’s a pretty long process. It’s very simple, though, if you follow this step-by-step document. You do need an Excel sheet with your customers’ names and information. And, if you do want to find out how to do that just head over to www.CopyDoodles.com/blog, go to ‘Previous Lunch and Learns’, and scroll down until my Lunch and Learn right here on 11/23, Using the CopyGenerators: Part 1. I show you exactly how to use the MailMerge. I show you how to do it whether you’re putting CopyDoodles on it on or not. I show you how to use the CopyDoodles MailMerge in a caption for a CopyComic. You do it the exact same way for everything else. So, make sure to check that one out, because I don’t have time today to cover the MailMerge feature. If you have any questions feel free to reach me on live chat.

So next what I would do is I would download my blank CopyComic and I would download my blank CopyBubble. So, go over to the CopyComic section and I would just choose really quickly a CopyComic that I want to download. If you want to download this blank without the caption, you’re just going to click to customize the CopyComic and then you’re just going to choose ‘Generate’. You’re going to download that and it will download completely blank, there will be no caption on it at all. Then if you want to download the bubble blank you’ll go over the CopyGenerator, you’ll choose CopyBubble. You’ll just click on any of the bubbles that you want, choose which one you’re going to use that will match up with your image, and download it. Don’t put any text in here, don’t do anything, just download it and it will end up blank.

So, next what you’re going to want to do is choose ‘insert’, and insert these pictures, your CopyComic and your CopyBubble, the exact same way as you insert any other image, or any CopyDoodle in here. So, I’m just going to choose my CopyComic. Obviously it’s too large, so it’s gone onto the next envelope, so I’m just going to scale this really quickly. What I’m going to want to do is the exact same thing that I do with CopyDoodles, and I want to make sure this is in front of my text so I can move it around. I’m going to increase the size so you can see it. So, if I wanted to put a caption underneath this I would just go to the ‘insert’ feature in Word, and I would insert a text box and I would choose to draw my own text box, which I’m going to do. I would insert my text here.

If you want to use the same font that we use for our CopyDoodles CopyComics you would just choose the BeetleFont. It’s probably not installed on your computer, but if you head over to www.CopyDoodles.com/blog you will find the Beetle Font directly there.

So, I’m just going delete this quickly because I actually want to show you how to insert a bubble next. Next I want to insert the bubble so it looks like it’s coming out of Santa’s head here. Again, I need to bring this to the front, wrap this in front of my text, and then I want to rescale this and stick it right here. Now, this is where I would insert my text box. I would insert text box and I would draw a text box directly in here. If I was using MailMerge I would put the person’s name in here, but since I’m not using the MailMerge feature right now I’m just going to write, “Hi, here is my caption.” I could change this to the BeetleFont also if I wanted so it looks like a comic. I could increase the size if I wanted. I could center this if I wanted. I would just move this around until it was in the middle of the box. And, if you’re drawing a text box when you print this out the box should not actually have the border around it and that should go away once you print it out.

So, as you can see I have my caption here. I personalized my bubble. If you want to personalize this with a CopyFont you can do that too. You can do that directly in the CopyGenerator section. But, I like to do them on my own because I like to center them. I like to change the scale of my font, and you can’t do that with the generators. So, I just like to play around with them here. As you can see it looks exactly very similar to the envelope that I showed you in the PowerPoint. So, this is exactly how you do it. It’s super simple, and you could do this with really anything.

Moving on, like I said you can also put people’s first names, or their first and last name, or any other information in the tagline using MailMerge. So, make sure to head over to my CopyGenerators Lunch and Learn, Part 1, which I did in November and you’ll find out exactly how to add somebody’s name in the caption of your CopyComics.

Next make sure to use CopyStamps. Like I said, we have a whole stamp section in the CopyDoodles Access Club site. You can put these anywhere on your envelopes, and it looks so realistic, why not? It looks like you actually stamped the outside.

Also you can use photos like I said earlier, you can use photos that show your face, they show the product, or the free gift that you might be giving away and it just kind of talks a little bit about it. Using your own face is really valuable too, because it shows you exactly who is sending the sales letter, or the promotion, or the postcard to you, so people can actually see you and they can connect with you before they even open the piece. If people have come into your store, maybe you have a brick and mortar store and they’ve come in, maybe they will recognize you, even if they don’t recognize your address, or your business name, they’ll recognize seeing you and they’ll think, “I know that person, where do I know them from?” And they’ll want to open your letter and see what’s inside.

Another great idea is to use a picture of yourself holding a big box of fake money and then have a caption underneath that says something like, “To find out how to get this money open the envelope.”

Also CopyDoodles don’t always have to be in color if you’re putting them on the outside of envelopes. I know a lot of the examples that I show and a lot of the examples that people send on envelopes and everything that I show you, sales letters, websites, they’re a lot of times in color, but you don’t have to do everything in color. As you can see somebody sent this over to me and it’s actually in the CopyDoodles Swipe File book, this is completely in black and white. It looks exactly like somebody just wrote everything on here. The only thing that I would suggest is maybe that they put the person’s name and address in a handwritten font, in a CopyDoodles font because that would kind of tie in a little bit more with what they have here. They could put “Mr. Wallace” in the handwritten font, but this really captures your attention even though it’s only in black and white.

Some things you should avoid, no personalization. Think about what the junk mail you receive looks like, it looks exactly like this. So, if you send something out like this no one is going to open it. It doesn’t have a fun stamp. It might have your return address, but you don’t know if people know your return address. It has their name typed up on a regular 10 envelope. It’s boring. I receive a ton of these, like I said from Comcast, and I throw them right in the trash because they’re boring. I know that I don’t want to receive information from them. There’s probably nothing in there that I want to read and I don’t even bother opening it.

Again, the deal of the week is to check your emails because we have a really great end of special that’s going to be coming up. Today’s webinar will also be on www.copydoodles.com. I’m going to post this up. Make sure to check out the previous blogs too to find out about MailMerge. I have a ton of questions in the questions and answers here asking about MailMerge. So, make sure to check it out there.

Next year’s topic is Where to Begin Your CopyDoodles Marketing in 2012. Since you’re on this webinar right now you’re already signed up. And, I want to wish everybody, I don’t have any questions, but I want to wish everybody a happy, happy New Year. I’ll be in New York City celebrating, watching the ball drop, not from the streets, because I’m not that crazy, but I’ll be there watching it. So, I hope you enjoy. I hope you have a really fabulous holiday and a fabulous rest of 2011. I will see you guys in 2012.

Thank you!