[By: Lisa J. Lehr]

With postal rates up, shipping costs rising along with fuel prices, and consumers being more careful with their discretionary spending, most mailers are tightening their belts as well. If your business does any kind of offline marketing, you want to make sure your packages have the greatest possible chance of getting opened.

Here are a few ways to do that:

• Creativity. Mail something eye-catching, such as an unusual color, shape, or texture. It'll stand out in a pile of ordinary-looking mail.
  
• Lumpiness. Put something in your envelope (the traditional imprinted pen, for example), and it's likely to get opened out of curiosity.
  
• Stickiness. Enclose items that people will keep because of their usefulness, like the above-mentioned pen.

But before investing time and money in brainstorming, ordering, and mailing anything, take the following steps:

• Check with your mailing house and the Post Office to make sure your idea is feasible, practical, and within your budget. Items with odd shapes or surface textures may need special packaging to keep them from being caught in the machinery, which will add to the cost of the mailing.
  
• Consider the weight of the item you're mailing. A paperweight with your company logo and contact information on it may be similar in usefulness to a stack of sticky notes, but is much heavier and more costly to mail.
  
• Anticipate what your recipient will do with it. You may come up with something very cute or clever (e.g. a Frisbee with your company logo on it)...that your prospect's child or pet claims ownership of. This will be somewhat self-defeating. Think in terms of things your prospects will want on their desks, so that your name stays in front of them.

While other mailers are cutting back on their mailing efforts, those who get creative instead of giving up will capture the lion's share of the market. But be sure your mailers don't just get opened--make sure they get read. The way to do that is to use persuasive words, because words are what really sell your product or service.