You grab all the mail from your mailbox and take a seat somewhere to sort through the pile. You flip quickly through letter after letter, pulling out the bills, the important ones, and skipping over most of the rest. Odds are good that you've skimmed over various advertisements from various companies, and odds are also good that you've thrown away the majority of them.

But I'm betting that you opened at least a few of them. Something caught your eye enough to make you want to keep reading. What was it?

If you plan on using direct mailing with your company to get your commercial printing out to people, you need to be able to answer this question. The envelope is going to be the first thing a person sees when they pick up your advertisement, and if that envelope isn't engaging enough to make them feel like opening it, you can kiss at least one potential customer goodbye.

How then do you get them to open those envelopes?

Unfortunately I can't give a single, tried and true method that will always work, because there simply isn't one. There are two primary forms of outer envelopes, both of which have a history of success, and might work for your direct mailing.

The first is making your outer envelope like a giant billboard. Whatever your message is you want to make sure people can read it in big letters across the front of the envelope. You'll likely want to make the envelope colorful, the words large enough to easily read, and the message straightforward enough to be understood after a second's glance.

The second method is a more restrained, personal looking envelope. Rather than yelling at the person that this is definitely an advertisement, you take the subtler approach, and make your envelopes look professional. They'll open it more out of curiosity without knowing exactly what they're going to get.

Of course, these are not the only two methods people have used, and neither method can really be listed as the best of the two, because each one has its own advantages.

One way of deciding which style will fit you better is by looking at the very commercial printing you planned on sending out to people. If you have a number of brochures you're planning to mail to people to let them know about your business, you might want to go with the more subdued outer envelope. If you have a sale or an upcoming special, the billboard styled outer envelope could serve you better by allowing you to state on the envelope what your sale is and what savings the person has coming their way.

Even the kind of company you run will have an impact. A therapist probably isn't going to want to slap giant letters across the front of an envelope when they're trying to create a professional look, just as a company that has a lot of large sales won't want to look too subdued and boring.

Take a moment to evaluate your company, and try to decide which style will be best suited for you.