by Newby » Thu Jun 11, 2009 5:14 am
It was the people who process the mailers. Here's what happened.
1. Had my first drop for a full color two sided survey with business reply envelope went perfect. It looked great and got great sales from it.
2. MSPM calls me and asked if they can move the addressing from the front to the back so they can process them easier. I say fine if it still looks basically the same. They were going straight to print to keep my momentum going.
3. 2nd drop goes out, completely looks like crap, has 3-mis-spelled words right in the opening paragraph and they removed the border that made it look nice. I call them and tell them they have to go back to the 1st style.
4. 3rd drop goes out- back to the 1st style- but I only get 3-replies, and they are ALL in hand addressed envelopes with a stamp on them. I call MSPM and tell them they MUST have dropped my mailer with no business reply envelopes and they said "that's impossible. Lots of times people just reply in their own envelope." I don't buy it and after a few days and one more return they agree that they screwed up. They agree to redrop that one at the end of the campaign.
5. 4th drop goes and again with the no reply envelope. I call MSPM and they can't believe it. They are hugely apologetic and will redrop that one too.
6. 5th drop goes fine, but now it is December 2008 and the whole economy is crashing and replies and sales are slim.
7. 6th drop- again with no reply envelopes.
8. end of campaign - MSPM makes good on redropping the 3-screwed up ones
9. I get a phone call from an advertising agency out of Indianapolis. He has just done a huge fund raising mailer for Purdue University. Guess who's business reply envelopes got placed in his mailer? He was completely freaked out. There must have been 10,000 of them dropped that way. By the way, I got zero donations but several hate mails from his campaign.
After all this, I still use and recommend MSPM for standard card mailers. But I won't ever do any custom mailers with them again.