Nobody likes to fail. But when it comes to direct-mail efforts, lessons that arise from stunning failures often can lead to stunning success

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

After consulting with the client, we decided to overprint the outer envelope word “Priority” with black ink. Although we still had the challenge of outsorting the contents of the mailing in order to edit the carriers, our cost to correct the error was cut in half — to $15,000 — with a delay in mailing of just one week. The next time we mailed in October of 2000, the teaser was changed to read “Urgent Gram — Please Rush.”