Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Local businesses get noticed in the mailbox by going smaller and stranger, with a thin mailer designed like a billboard, ticket or notice instead of a postcard.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You run a local service business such as plumbing, pest control, tree removal or auto repair and want a cheap way to reach a whole neighborhood.
You are a realtor, insurance agent or financial professional who needs several touches before a prospect responds and you are tired of mailing the same postcard.
You market for local clients and want mail concepts that are funny or useful enough that people keep them.

SKIP IF…

You sell online only and have no geographic area to mail into.
You want a step-by-step tutorial on EDDM postage and printer setup; this video is about concepts and design, with logistics left to the description links.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

The strip mailer is a thin 3.5 by 11 inch EDDM piece that stands out because it is smaller and looks like something other than mail: a notice, a ticket, a pass, a warning label or a handwritten note. Jake Lorraine says to design it like a billboard, with big text and around ten words, and to make it funny, useful or alarming enough to get turned over. Pick a format that resembles tickets or notices, put a QR code or phone number on the back, and rotate strip mailers with regular postcards so recipients do not tire of one look. A few hundred dollars covers a whole neighborhood at about 26 cents postage.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 01:28

01 · EDDM strip mailers

Introduces the thin mailer concept and who it suits: realtors, insurance, home services and churches.

01:28 – 03:04

02 · The Oh Crap mailer

A funny keep-near-the-toilet plumber card, how it arrives with no special markings, and why its small size feels less wasteful.

03:04 – 04:25

03 · Realtor examples and billboard design

Designing like a billboard: big text, about ten words, readable at a glance.

04:25 – 06:01

04 · Eviction notice clickbait

A fake eviction notice that resolves into a pest control pitch, and where to place the indicia.

06:01 – 07:15

05 · Handwritten look and jeweler

Handyman handwritten-style piece and a Valentine's jeweler card that reads as a test.

07:15 – 08:54

06 · Church and official notice

A coffee-themed church invitation and an Official Notice piece with the back left open for any industry.

08:54 – 10:57

07 · Chiropractor and mixing formats

A chiropractor piece, then rotating strip mailers with postcards for long buying cycles.

10:57 – 12:55

08 · Useful keep-this cards

Reference sheets and the lawyer's glove box card.

12:55 – 14:20

09 · Tree removal and home services

Letter-style handwritten strip mailer variants and home service modifications.

14:20 – 14:46

10 · Open house ticket

A neighbor invitation ticket for realtors to generate open house leads.

14:46 – 16:10

11 · Number one rule and restaurants

Do not design as a postcard; design as a ticket, pass or notice. Mystery beer ticket for restaurants.

16:10 – 17:27

12 · Night off pass and lawn care

A babysitter pass for parents, plus lawn care and snow removal ideas using a ruler.

17:27 – 18:19

13 · Final thoughts

Why the format will not get saturated and where to get templates and printing help.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Most mailers get noticed by going bigger. The strip mailer gets noticed by going smaller and weirder.
A giant postcard can look wasteful, while a cheap-looking strip mailer reads as a company that did not overspend, and people respect that.
Design a strip mailer like a billboard: big text, roughly ten words, and the point understood from a distance.
Do not design a strip mailer like a postcard. Design it like the thing its shape resembles: a ticket, pass, label or notice.
Putting the postage indicia on the back forces the recipient to flip the piece over to find the actual message.
A fake eviction or official notice gets attention, and a pest control or rodent control message on the back turns the scare into a joke.
Useful pieces get kept. A reference sheet of emergency numbers or cooking temperatures puts your face on the fridge for months.
A lawyer's keep-in-your-glove-box card gives the recipient a reason to store the mailer exactly where it will be needed.
Long buying cycles like real estate and insurance need several touches, and rotating strip mailers with postcards keeps the brand fresh without repeating one look.
An open house works as a lead source because nosy neighbors show up, so a ticket-style invitation to the neighborhood fits the goal.
Direct mail formats change about once every 10 to 20 years and then work for decades, unlike social content that goes stale in months.
A whole neighborhood of roughly 900 homes can be mailed for a few hundred dollars using every door direct mail postage of about 26 cents.

Takeaway

Design for the glance, not the postcard

WHAT TO LEARN

A mailer wins attention by resembling something people already pay attention to, then rewarding the flip with humor or usefulness.

Format signals what a piece is. A thin strip reads as a ticket, notice or label, so borrow those looks instead of imitating a postcard.
Write for a glance. About ten words in large type should communicate the whole idea before the recipient decides to keep or toss it.
Funny or alarming fronts work when the back resolves the joke with a clear offer, such as a fake eviction notice that turns out to be pest control.
Useful content earns storage. Emergency numbers, cooking temperatures or what to do after an accident keep your name in the house for months.
Match the item to where it will live. A card for the toilet, glove box or fridge is kept in exactly the place the need arises.
Rotate formats. Alternating strip mailers, standard postcards and an occasional oversized piece avoids the fatigue of seeing one card every month.
For slow buying decisions like selling a home, a series of low-pressure pieces with a simple call to action and a landing page captures interested owners.
Direct mail formats age slowly, so a new one can work for years, while digital creative often goes stale in months.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

EDDM: Every Door Direct Mail, a USPS service that lets a business mail to every address on selected carrier routes at a low flat postage rate without needing names.
Strip mailer: A thin EDDM-compatible mailer, about 3.5 by 11 inches, made to look like a ticket, notice, pass or label instead of a postcard.
Indicia: The printed postage permit marking on a mailer that replaces a stamp. Its placement decides which side the recipient sees first.
Carrier route: The set of addresses one mail carrier delivers to, used as the unit for choosing which neighborhoods an EDDM campaign covers.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

17:50productPrinting For Super Cheap ↗

17:50channelHigh Response Marketing ↗

06:45productCanva strip mailer template package

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

01:10

“You get noticed by going smaller instead of bigger. You go smaller and weirder.”

Clean contrarian one-liner→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

14:46

“Here's the key to strip mailers. Do not design them as if they were a postcard.”

Single rule, no setup needed→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

The Script

Word for word.

Read-along

Don't just watch it. Burn it in.

See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.

Today I'm going to show you the EDDM strip mailer, which is a brand new way of marketing. People have never seen this before. If you have a brick and mortar or local business, this is so perfect because no one else is doing it.

I'm going to show you a bunch of these and how you can use these, whether you're a realtor, insurance, all home services, a church, anything local business. These things are just incredible. My name is Jake Lorraine.

I own highresponsemarketing .com and printingforsupercheap .com and all I do is direct mail. If you're a small business owner today, you know for sure how hard it is to stand out.

Typically, the way that you get noticed in the mail is to go bigger. Instead of doing your typical small postcard that can get lost in the mail, the strip mailer, which is my new creation of postcards, is totally different in the sense that you get noticed by going smaller instead of bigger. You go smaller and weirder.

This doesn't even look like mail. What the heck can I do with this? This is really interesting.

So here's all the really cool stuff that you can do. The oh crap, keep this card near your toilet in case of toilet apocalypse. Mystery indoor swimming pool.

Shower that won't shower. Faucet possessed by demons. Honey, come look at this.

So this is a perfect example of how useful this could be. And look at the back. I just have the post, the EDDM and Disha on here.

I can show you how to put these on here. I have so many resources are in the description below. Don't worry about that stuff.

This is how it arrives. There's no barcoding. There's no marking.

It literally just arrived. The mailman puts this in there or the mail woman puts this in the mail and it looks just like this. Literally looks like something like, oh, this is hilarious.

Plumbing emergency pass. And it's got the QR code or your plumber's information. It's like, keep this by the toilet.

I love that this can be so funny. You know, this is hilarious. People pass it around.

They're like, oh my God, this is so funny. And they will literally put it by the toilet. This size is easily storable.

I hate this thing because I talk about postcards being storable all the time. And they are. You can put them in a drawer and stuff.

This is like. Really storable. This is three and a half by 11.

I really like this size or 12. I can't remember three and a half by 11 or 12. Super storable.

It's like easily storable. It also looks like the person didn't waste much. When you send a big giant postcard to capture attention, this is wasteful.

I think there's a good place for things like this, but it does look wasteful. It's like, why did this company spend all this? They wasted all this money to get my attention.

And it can aggravate some people. The, oh crap, keep this car near your toilet doesn't look wasteful. It's almost like the company just spent as little as they could.

And people will respect that. This could be modified to so many different home services too. Let's do realtors.

This, perfect for a realtor. I know a lot of you that watch here are realtors or you're marketers that are helping realtors. This is amazing.

Look at this. Your house might be worth more than you think. You're designing this as if it was a billboard.

Love that concept when I'm making these is to think of a billboard when you not in the sense of a bill. We talk about postcards being like billboards in the mailbox because they're big, not in that sense. But what makes a bill design of a billboard unique?

You don't design it like a postcard, a billboard you're seeing from a distance while you're traveling at whatever speed. It's sometimes out of the corner of your eye. It has to capture your attention immediately.

Big text, not many words, maybe 10 words or so in a graphic. Clever, funny, useful. You have to be able to...

get the gist of it right away and that's how you should be designing these that's how they can be really really useful if you design them like a billboard the little space allows you to kind of freeze your you don't have to think of making these giant postcards with all these walls of texas because you're so limited to the space i like this one keep this until something starts making a sound that it shouldn't And it's got your auto mechanic for an auto mechanic.

Or you could modify that for an auto detailer. Like these are relatively inexpensive to print. I have a great, probably the best printing pricing you can find in the entire nation.

That information is below two. And you're using every door direct mail, which is cheap postage. 26 cents in postage.

Like whole neighborhood, whole swath of neighborhood for a few hundred dollars. It's perfect. Eviction notice.

For the marketers out there, I mean, if you can probably think of a million things to like, this is a clickbaity one. The first thing that I thought was, I had first thought, like, okay, we can scare the heck out of someone, especially if it's in a rental neighborhood.

I don't know whether if I got that, I would still be freaked out, even though I'm a homeowner. But what the heck is this? Eviction?

Notice I'm being evicted? And you could have on the back, like, pest control. Like, you could have the bugs and stuff.

All your pests need to be out by whatever date. Get rid of these spiders. You could use so many funny ways to deliver something this and just capture the...

And I personally, I think psychologically, it's clickbaity, but it's hilarious. Like people get to say, oh, they got me. This is really funny.

This is something totally... This is clever. It's not in your normal postcard size, which is just a whole different psychological thing.

If you look here, you might say, well, Jake, you talk about putting the indicia on one side. I do think that... putting the indicia on the back that the indicia here this is the mailing markings that you have to have to get it delivered putting it like this the mail is going to arrive like this and that forces someone to turn it over and then get the funny thing but you could also do it here if you want them to really see this side first and you can just make it small can you see that up here i don't know if you can see that yeah See how I just put the indicia there?

It's really small, but from a distance, you don't really see that. You get it in the mail. It comes in the mail and they get this.

Who the heck is evicting me? I'm getting evicted on my own house. And then you find out it's for the pest control.

Need a handyman. This is excellent. You could apply this to so many different home services, but need a handyman.

And it looks, it's written in. uh easy of handwritten font type thing it can look like someone just dropped this in the mail by the way i have templates of all of these i have created all of these from scratch they are all in canva i have a template package i have a free blank template if you just need the sizing and i have a super reasonably priced template package of all these if you want to pick them up and just modify them to your liking skill level one one out of ten this is a funny one I like this too.

I have spent ages coming up with these different models of creating these. So I hope you're enjoying this. This is a like question and then answer format.

She said, I don't need anything. That was a test. You could send this around.

What's that holiday? What's that freaking holiday? You got to spend so much money.

Valentine's Day. And then it's the jeweler. It's a jeweler.

She said, I don't need anything. That was a test. And you had the jeweler on there.

Going on the warning label. Wasn't that clever? There's so many things you could do with that.

This is a good one. Yes, we have coffee. Everyone loves coffee, right?

Yes, we have coffee. So you see this and you're like, what the heck? Okay, who has coffee?

Is this a new coffee shop or whatever? And I have this specifically the indicia on this side so that it arrives face up like that. Then they turn it over and this is for a church.

Also music, community, kids programs, and hopefully something you needed to hear and has a QR code for booking a visit. This would be great for a church. This would be stellar for a church.

Here's a really good one. Crazy clickbaity. And I know the marketers out there can probably think of a million things to use this for.

You really want to get someone going when they see this in the mail. This one.

Imagine getting this thing in the mail. How do I get it to focus right there? You get this thing in the mail.

In their mailbox, they go in there and they see this. Official notice. I mean, this looks legit.

Like something is wrong. Am I getting sued? Am I getting even worse than evicted?

What, the divorce paper's coming? You can do, so I've left this blank because you can think of whatever you could put on there. One thing I thought of is a...

Pest control is rodent control. Your gutters have been designated a wildlife habitat, and you have a picture of the critter in the gutter. That would be perfect.

You could do that on the back. There's so many things. You could scare the living bejesus out of someone for a realtor.

More. You could send a series of these. Always do these five things before selling your home.

Some bold statement that drives them to the landing page, which then captures their information, gets their home's value. They enter their address in there. Now you know, okay, this person is interested.

Why did they enter their information to get a free report or get a home value page? They are thinking probably of selling at some point. You should market to them more.

Put them on your radar. Here's one for a chiropractor. If you make a noise, how do I get this to focus?

Man, my camera is so good, it still wants to focus on me. If you make a noise when you stand up, this is for you. And then you have the chiropractor on the back.

Keep this until, I think we did this one, until something starts making a sound it shouldn't. Another realtor, five ways I can sell your home faster than anyone. That's a great idea.

If you're a realtor or anyone that's doing... That has a long buying process. You have to send multiple mailers out to get someone to reach their top of mind.

That could be insurance, realtors, financial professionals. You can do a series of these things that aren't intrusive, that have an interesting statement, a simple call to action to take that next step where you can then capture their information and take them where you need to be. Then you can cycle it through a postcard.

When I say that, I mean one month, do this. Another month, do a regular postcard. Another month, do another one of these.

Another month, do a bigger postcard. Maybe one time out of the year, you do a giant one. You keep the brand awareness there, but it keeps it fresh.

Instead of sending the exact same card and the exact same size postcard every time where they get fatigued of seeing that every month, this keeps things fresh. For a realtor, you guys will love this. Actual useful reference sheets like this.

where it could be recipes, but it could be these emergency numbers, what to do, where's the water located if there's a water shutoff. So you have useful things. You can also do seasonal.

It's spring. Here's the cooking temperatures for every type of meat around Memorial Day or Labor Day. Here's the things that you should do in the fall.

Get that furnace checked out. Close the water valves. Useful things, and having it at this size.

It's just so portable. It's so storable. You just store it.

Oh, this is useful. It has emergency numbers, what I should do, cooking temperatures. They see it a million times.

They see your face a bazillion times. It's actually useful. Speaking of useful, lawyers.

Doing something like this. Keep this in your glove box. If pulled over, ticketed, or in an accident, see the other side.

You could have what to do. Don't talk to the cops and call me. You could have useful information that could go in your glove box.

I think, did I write it? Glove box? Yeah, I did.

That was the big headline. Keep this in your glove box. And you literally can just put it in the glove box.

You can experiment with, like I had done for that jeweler. I had done a dark on what you could do white on. dark text on a white background or vice versa you can experiment with that here's a tree and a lot of you guys are tree it's a good point to bring up too like the letter the tree letter thing which it was a major thing in in direct mail that has been working really well is this letter that looks like a handwritten letter you can modify that too you can do something funny like this right but you can also do something like this where it's this size So you still get that strip mailer size, but it looks like a handwritten, same kind of message, different look, totally different look.

This is in my template package too, if that interests you. You can modify this for anything, for any kind of home services, anything that you want to make it look like someone just wrote a handwritten thing and stuck it in your mailbox. Your mailbox, this is so weird.

It's so different and so personal that you will get people probably complaining to the post office here and there and saying, someone put this in the mailbox and they weren't supposed to put it in the mailbox. And then the joke's on them because the postmaster will say, oh no, this has the postage on it. This actually was a mailer.

Here's just another idea of the realtor thing. I can get more for your home, sell it faster, make it painless. These type of, what you would put on a billboard to capture someone's attention.

here's what homes are selling for right now the official notice so many things that you could put on the other side oh yeah this one is a good one too oh this one is cool oh i forgot about this one too a few more because this resembles a pass or ticket can resemble tickets If you're doing an open house, do it like a ticket.

Make it a ticket. You're invited. You know, you actually want the people around the open house to, they're curious, they want to see inside their neighbor's houses and stuff.

I mean, I think the point of having open houses is often not to sell the thing, but to just get leads. Nosy neighbors will come in there and then the realtor is, they're exposed to the realtor and you talk to the people and they're like, oh, I'm thinking about maybe selling my house. I want to see what.

this would sell for you know they get nosy this gives them a pass you're invited and you do it as a ticket and you have your information in there and it's a pass a neighbor invitation to stop by and say hello all are welcome here's the key to strip mailers do not design them as if they were a postcard That is like a number one rule.

Don't try to make these into a postcard. So you have to make them in the thing that they resemble. Okay.

What do strip mailers resemble? It doesn't look like a postcard. So don't make it like a postcard.

What do these, this size resemble? Event tickets, passes, labels, warning labels. It's like, it's a note, a notice.

You could do so many. You could do super. clickbaity things like this, where you have this going to whatever.

So you can just clickbait people into putting it in. A beer, mystery beer ticket. If you have any kind of restaurant or cafe or anything, you do these tickets.

You can make the ticket even look like a stag party ticket or something you can cut out. Another huge advantage of strip mailers is they're easily cut out. You can put coupons.

You don't have to dig around a postcard and cut around awkwardly. You can just slice them out really, really easy. But this would be a ticket, like a mystery ticket, and they have to go in and maybe have a chance to spin a wheel or randomly pick.

They might win $10 off or a free appetizer. I almost said appetizer. I think I did say appetizer.

Free cocktail, possibly free dinner, a mystery ticket. I think this is really, really nice. And it looks, again, not like a postcard.

Get out of cooking, free pass, right? You could have the local restaurant on there. If you're a marketer, And you're talking to businesses, to clients about this.

You're going to look like a genius. They're going to be like, you are the biggest genius ever. Like, just look at the family talking.

It's so funny. I've got people sharing this on social media. I thought of this, too.

This is the last one. parent night off pass. A babysitter could do that or like a daycare or something, but just think of a babysitter.

Maybe you have to invest, if you're a parent maybe, maybe you invest a couple hundred dollars. Send this to the entire neighborhood. You can have 900 people in the whole neighborhood.

That's a lot of people, a whole carrier out. Spend a few hundred dollars, get this out for your kid, and then have their information Red Cross certified or something. Hi, I'm...

Josie and I am great with kids or something and I live in the area. If they land it at $20, $18, $20 an hour, whatever your going rate is, they can make that money up in no time. I mean, if you sent that out to a good neighborhood, you'd probably, this babysitter person would probably have business booked out through their entire college.

Like a few hundred dollars investment would turn into thousands and thousands of dollars. And it's funny. This is also really good for landscapers, lawn care.

snow removal is this if your grass gets this high call me and actually have a a thing you know if the snow gets to this point call me how many things you could like you could put a ruler on there or a certain measurement and have so many things apply to that i'm really interested in those of you watching this that have any funny ideas or clever ideas that i haven't thought of They're like, oh, my God, this would work great for this industry or this.

These things are the future, and they're not going to get saturated. Some of you might say, well, this is going to get saturated, and everyone's going to be doing it. 10 years ago, these letter formats came out.

Someone came up with this for EDM. And this thing is still going strong like crazy. It's nowhere near saturated.

I mean, look at social media feeds where there's bazillions of ads coming at you. And the way you make content today is different. It's outdated in six months.

Direct mail isn't like that. You don't have to keep up these drastic changes. and new things happen like once every 10 to 20 years, and they work for decades.

This is something that absolutely will not get saturated, and you should be the first one in your neighborhood to do this. If you need any help, ideas, print pricing, hit me up. My email's in the description below.

It's jake at printingforsupercheap .com. You can text me. You can even call me.

I don't care. Me and my minions, 24 -7, always answering calls, helping people, any small business. Watch my next video and download that template pack.

I can't wait. to see what your guys' ideas with these strip mailers.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

Direct mail printer Jake Lorraine argues that the way to get noticed in a mailbox full of oversized postcards is to shrink the piece and disguise it as something else. He holds up a stack of samples to show how.

Frameworks