A Missed Opportunity

There are two aspects of this membership mailing from the Foundation for the National Archives worth noting.

First, it is a very well branded piece that uses a red, white and blue color scheme to accentuate copy throughout the mailing, but most effectively on the outer envelope and reply device. This repeated, bold color scheme pulls all of the mailing’s elements together in a very strong way.

This branding also comes through powerfully on the 3.5-inch-by-8.5-inch double-sided glossy insert. It features background colors of red and blue, images of the National Archives building, the Declaration of Independence and a colonial American soldier playing a whistle, and the organization’s name. Above these images, copy announces that the topic of the insert is the membership benefits.

The other side of the insert features the headline, “The National Archives Belongs to You” and lists the member benefits by each level of membership, e.g., patron ($50), family ($75), advocate ($125).

This is a great addition to the mailing. It includes the organization’s name, brands it well and communicates the benefits of membership more fully than any of the other elements. It would be an excellent piece for recipients to hang on to, if only it included contact information — even just the URL for the organization’s Web site. Why create such a great element that gives recipients every reason why they’d want to be a member of the Foundation for the National Archives, but no direction for how they can do this if, say, this element somehow gets separated from the reply device?

It’s a missed opportunity to make the organization’s call to action as powerful as possible and give this insert some shelf life.

THIS MAILING is available in digital form at the special price of $24.95. To order it, click on the package to be directed to our order form that contains other special offers on Archive mailings.