Today’s Marketing Monday is a Lesson Learned all at the same time. From time to time I’ll use different styles of envelopes for either testing or because I run out of my normal ‘lopes (just made that up LOL) and steal some from my wife. Her stash is usually full of nice invitation and thank you type stationary she gets from places other then the dollar store or Staples. You know those stationary stores where it costs $30 for 8 greeting cards and envelopes?
Well about a month ago I ran out of my envelopes and was a bit peeved so I went scrummaging through the closet. I found a stack of about 60 invitation envelopes that my wife had left over from a shower she had planned for her best friend. Finder’s Keepers right???
These ‘lopes were oriented such that the flap was on the short edge like shown to the left. As I was setting up my word template to print the envelope addresses a question came to mind….
“Which direction should I print? Along the long side like I do with normal envelopes or short side with the flap?”
I didn’t think it mattered and I wanted to try and be different so I chose the short side, with the flap. Printed everything up, stuffed, stamped and sent out.
About 5 days later I got a huge pile of mail back from the post office. Guess what? Every single mail piece i sent out came back with the message “Invalid address”. So I double checked all the address and they were correct, so WTF!?!
Turns out that the post office does not like this addressing format. Their machines look for the destination address along the long side of the envelope and thus couldn’t read my addresses and kicked them back. What a waste of about $25!
For anyone who has a question regarding the proper address procedure take a look here…Proper Addressing tips from the post office.
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Comments 5
Wow Scott, I had no idea the way the envelopes were printed/addressed even mattered! Good to know. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Author
I had no idea either and I say they should allow you to reuse your stamps again!!
Wow, I am surprised about that too, was this with a First-Class stamp? Did you bring it to the post office and argue?
Author
I had 4 stamps on the letters totaling 45c so I’m not sure if that is equivalent to a First-Class Stamp. I did not complain to the post office though, can you even do that??
$25 … if they won’t let you reuse your stamps, they should at least buy you a burger and a few beers!