Getting back into the guerrilla marketing game in the offline world has been pretty fun. I really do like the mix of online / offline marketing. I guess that is simply because I have learned so much in the past few years of focusing back on the online marketing game. But, now it is time to plot world domination and that means simply that I have to spend time, money and effort into offline marketing as that is where the big money is at in my current business venture.

One of the items that made my past offline marketing efforts so effective was the #10 window, brown kraft envelope. You may know them as the rugged, dark yellow to orange envelopes that come from banks and other “important” places. Combining these with a real stamp has proven to get my letters opened more than just about any other setup I have tested in the past….and I have sent out tens of thousands of these things, so I have a little experience. The real problem is finding them at an affordable price and from someplace that has a lot in stock when you need them. I guess that is the beauty of the internet. When I lived in San Diego, I used to buy them from a printing shop downtown named Jet Printing. They never liked to part with 5 or 10 thousand of these things without a printing job to go with them, but they charged accordingly. It was fine because we were making plenty of money on them. But, $30+ a thousand was a little steep for blank envelopes.

I could not find anyone in San Francisco who had them so I started to poke around on line and I found Action Envelope. They not only had the best prices, but they seemed to have more than I needed in stock and ready for delivery. The only draw back for me is that they are located in NY, so ground shipping was going to take a week. But, the prices were excellent and my order shipped the same day (and I ordered after noon). That was awesome.

The order showed up yesterday and I was a bit surprised when I found that there were 9 boxes of 500, in two shipping boxes. The box with 4 had some envelopes taken out and used as packing peanuts to keep the boxes from shifting in transit. Well, I picked up the phone and left the customer service department at Action Envelope know what the order number was and what the issue was. When I got on the computer this morning, there was an email from Jamie apologizing for the mistake and also indicating that the 10th box of 500 would be shipped out today. They will certainly get my business again.

tags: direct mail, envelopes, guerrilla marketing, marketing, review