The inclusion of an order form in your advertised offer, like the reply envelope considered below, is less an inducement than its absence is a disincentive. Without it, the customer must find some paper to write on, work out how to say what he wants, and make sure he writes it down clearly and unambiguously. For most people, these are not among the most challenging tasks in the world, but for some they are. And for everyone, an order form that may need no more than the writing in of one’s name and address definitely simplifies the ordering procedure. All the customer needs is a pen. He may be able to complete the form immediately he has read the ad. No need to go in search of other materials, risking being sidetracked by a demanding cat, a chatty child or by any of the other siren voices that seduce prospective customers from the straight and narrow path that leads to your order book.

Envelope

You can provide an envelope for your customer in a number of ways, and all of them offer at least a marginal advantage in cost and convenience to him. Equally, they all add to your own costs, and, as with so much else in mail order, the balance of advantage in any particular case is only to be ascertained by testing.

Printed unstamped envelope. This is the simplest and cheapest offering you can make. The customer will still have to find a stamp, but he is saved the chore of finding an envelope and writing out the address.

Printed stamped envelope. This is the next simplest but by far the most expensive of the offerings you can make. By putting a postage stamp on the reply envelope you enclose with your advertising, you exert a slight moral pressure on the customer, possibly making him feel that it is ‘only fair’ to send you a reply since you have gone to the trouble of sending him a stamp for the purpose. But if that moral pressure is resisted, you have done nothing but push up your advertising costs by 13p a prospect. It may still be worth your while if you’re selling an expensive product with a substantial profit margin, but probably not otherwise.

Business Reply envelope. For a licence fee a year the Post Office will accept your pre-printed envelopes — subject to their design requirements — without requiring the sender to pay any postage. You pay the full postage plus 0.5p for each Business Reply item you receive. This is significantly cheaper for you than pre-stamping reply envelopes as you only have to pay postage on items that actually get posted to you.

You can opt for either the first- or the second-class post for your Business Reply envelopes, but whichever you choose, your post will normally come in the second rather than the first post of the day.

Freepost envelope. The annual fee and the per item cost are exactly the same for the Freepost service as for the Business Reply service. The Freepost service, however, is more flexible. While you can, if you wish, provide your customers with your own printed envelopes — as with the Business Reply service — you can also quote your Freepost address in your advertising so that the customer can use it when writing to you on his own stationery. This means, for example, that you can use a Freepost address in your classified advertising.

There is a slight risk in a Freepost address in that it is available for anybody who wishes to write to you on any matter, even if they are doing so just as a joke or to make a nuisance of themselves, and you have an open-ended commitment to pay for all replies. With the Business Reply service, on the other hand, the only people who can use your stationery are those to whom you have deliberately chosen to supply it.

Customer‘s stamped addressed envelope. In two-stage advertising, you may wish to consider asking the customer to supply you with a stamped and self-addressed envelope (SAE) for your reply. Such a request would hardly be an inducement for people to write in for further details — indeed it would be a positive discouragement for them to do so. But there are times when a negative inducement of this kind does serve your purpose.

As always, it comes down to arithmetic. The cost to you of sending replies to enquirers will sometimes be a significant part of your total advertising bill. It may be that if the customer pays the reply postage, an unprofitable advertising campaign can be turned into a profitable one. This is most likely to be the case if your product is very low-priced, and you find that the number of enquirers who go on to make a purchase is rather low. It could be that the first stage of your two-stage advertising is attracting too many frivolous enquirers, people not seriously in the market for your product who send off for details out of idle curiosity and because it costs them so little to do so. Requiring them to send an SAE for details may be just enough to put them off, and so improve the overall quality of your enquirers and therefore the percentage who go on to make a purchase. Thus, asking for an SAE may in some cases help you to target your advertising more effectively.