Here’s a snippet from Pat Friesen writing for Target Marketing Magazine in November 2007

The 3:33 Rule

Are you familiar with direct mail’s three minute and 33 second (3:33) rule? It’s important when you talk about openability.

The 3:33 rule suggests you have three seconds or less to stand out in the mail and stay out of the trash, then 30 seconds to engage the reader enough to get opened and make the “short stack” for later reading. After the first 33 seconds—if you actually get the reader inside your mail piece—she spends an additional three minutes or less reading it and deciding whether or not to respond.

B2B Direct Marketing and the Importance of the Mailing Pack – the first 3 seconds

Business to Business Direct marketing can be a huge waste of money unless you get it right - so you need to get it right first time. Far too many B2B Direct Marketing campaigns go straight to the bin, often before the envelope has even been opened and therein lays the first problem – envelopes. A flat, plain white envelope with a frank or a PPI holds absolutely no mystery whatsoever. Send your B2B Direct Mail out in a plain white envelope and your campaign is already well on the way to generating a high level of indifference. With that thought firmly in mind, you should give very strong consideration to the type of carrier to use.

The saying goes that you get only one chance to make a first impression and the first impression that your customer has of your promotional mailer is the appearance of the mailing pack. We suggest that your mailer should have a degree of bulk and should be made to look like some sort of gift or “freebie”. This way, the mailer will be opened with eager anticipation rather than total indifference. The argument against this is that the postage costs will increase but believe me, paying postage to send an item that is thrown straight into the bin makes a whole lot less sense.

B2B Direct Marketing & the Importance of Holding Customer’s Attention - the next 30 secs

Once the mailing pack has done its first job in attracting the reader’s attention it then has to entice the reader to open it. We believe that the pack has to be designed in a way that is not too hard to open and leads to the main promotional piece without too much trouble. We say this as the promotional piece itself will take care of the next few minutes – no problem! A B2B promotional mailer needs to capture the imagination of your customer and our products do this because they have an automatic pop-up action. This action carries with it the elements of surprise, fun, interaction and curiosity. Our rubber-band-powered automatic pop-up product easily pass the 30 second test and usually account for the next few minutes during which time your promotional message has been well and truly digested.

B2B Direct Marketing & the Importance of Extending Your Marketing Campaign’s Life Span

There are direct marketing professionals who would be absolutely delighted for their campaign to have ticked the boxes discussed thus far but why stop there? What is there to say that the promotional piece should stop working after it has created such a big impact? To achieve this you don’t need to do much more than to ask us to add a few holes in one surface on the pop-up mailer, thereby creating a pen holder – a product that will stay on your customer’s desk top for months and months.

Pop-Up Mailers as Pen Holders, Pen Pots and Desk Tidies

Some of our most popular automatic pop-up mailers are absolutely ideal for the transformation from mailer to pen holder. The main requirements of the pop-up mailer are that they have the strength, stability and size to hold a certain number of pens whilst still having an attractive appearance on the desk top. The most common characteristic amongst the suitable candidates is that they sit on a sturdy and stable base. Let’s take a look at them individually.

A Square Base gives Stability to a Pen Holder

We have four automatic pop-up products which sit on a square base. Our pop-up cube is the one that I like the best. I like the clean lines and the uniformity but not everyone agrees. The pop-up cubes which are best suited to conversion as pen holders are sized between 85mm to 95mm cubed. If the cubes are made any larger than that and the pens can start to disappear inside the cubes. Start to go smaller and the pens could become top-heavy. The two trapezium-shaped pop-up products, the pop-up castle and the pop-up choc box also make extremely attractive pen holders though my preference if for the castle even though it doesn’t hold as many pens as the choc-box. The fourth candidate that has a square base is our pop-up pyramid. The pyramid is a unique shape for a pen holder and whilst it is unusual to see pen-tops protruding from the pyramid wall that eye-catching effect might be exactly what someone is looking for. I think that it works best if all of the pen holes are on the one side.

Other bases and shapes work equally well as Pen Holders

Of course, the base doesn’t have to be square to supply stability. The rectangular base of a cuboid, for example, provides ample support for pen holder conversion and the pop-up house is not only quite solid, it also offers a very attractive and eye-catching option. Perhaps the most unusual shape for one of our pop-up mailers to act as a pen holder is the pop-up ball but it combines functionality and decoration perfectly.

Automatic Pop-up Pen Pots are another obvious choice for B2B Direct Marketing

Not every automatic pop-up pen holder is a conversion from a standard pop-up mailer. We do carry in our range a fully-automatic pop-up pen pot which we call the Power Pen Pal. Unlike the conversions, this product is a proper pen pot with one big hole at the top which can hold not only pens and pencils but also rulers, scissors and other such items that are regularly found on desk tops. This makes the Power pen Pal into a desk tidy rather than being a receptacle for pens alone.

Every Automatic Pop-Up Pen Holder and Pen Pot comes with its own Mailing Pack

These products have all been designed for use predominantly as promotional B2B direct marketing products and as you might expect, each one is supplied with a specially designed mailing pack. This is not only to satisfy the “3 second rule” but also to protect the pop-up products in the mail. The pressure that the rubber band exerts on the product would be too much for a flimsy envelope to withstand and the product would look a shambles in an envelope and goodness knows in what sort of state it would arrive. The pop-up pen holders and the mailing packs are made from 500micron white lined folding box board and are printed and die-cut from the same sheet. This means that your whole promotion is custom printed exactly as you would have it – the pen holder and the mailing pack.

Pen Pots with Manual Push-up Action provide an alternative to the shock of Auto Pop-ups

Whilst we think that our pop-up pen holders and pen pots are just about perfect for promotional direct mail campaigns we understand that they are not everyone’s cup of tea. We are also aware that not everyone shares our opinions regarding sending B2B direct marketing in an envelope. For these reasons we are happy to include a few less boisterous examples of pen pots in our range. The standard Pen Pals are a perfectly good product and we have made many thousands including many repeat orders, bearing testament to the success of the product as a good direct marketing tool. The simple manual push-up action creates a very sturdy desk tidy which will stay on desk tops for a long time.

Pen Holders, Pen Pots and Desk Tidies also make good Desk-Top Calendars

Whilst we know that the pop-up mailers will stay on desk tops for years when presented as pen holders, many of our customers take an extra step to guarantee the longevity of the promotion by adding calendar print. Each year we print many products from our range of promotional pop-ups as calendars but the most common choices are pen pots – the Pen Pals. We know that it works as the same companies come back for repeat orders every year.