Today’s post is going to highlight a potential problem with fugitive glue that you should be aware of.
First off, fugitive glue are drops of glue that are placed on a self-mailer to keep it closed. So for example, if you’re mailing a double postcard, you could apply fugitive glue to keep the 2 postcard panels closed in the mail stream.
The alternative are wafer seals — the circular pieces of “tape” that get folded over the panels you want to close — but they are more expensive and more visible on the mail piece.
The potential problem with fugitive glue is this: depending on the design of your self-mailer, you might have to apply the drops of glue on a reply card that is hopefully returned back to you. If the recipient sends back the reply card without rubbing off the drops of glue, there’s the potential issue of the reply card sticking to other mail and never reaching it’s final destination.
This all said, we don’t think this is a huge issue to worry about because a reply card sticking to another piece of mail is pretty obvious and would be corrected by the USPS And furthermore, I assume most people would rub the glue off before sending back the reply card.
If your self-mailer design is forcing you to use fugitive glue on your reply card and you’re worried about the above, you have 2 options:
Use wafer seals instead.
Speak to your lettershop vendor because there are different types of fugitive glue you can use that vary in size and intensity.
We would love to hear about your experiences or comments on this topic. Please comment below if you’re interested.
On March 29th, 2009 the new USPS addressing requirements for flats went into affect. Flats are defined as direct mail measuring 11.5″ (w) x 6.125″ (h) up to a maximum size of 15″ (w) x 12″ (h).
To make things simple, we’re going to recap the new requirements and then point you to a couple of PDFs that contain additional information. This recap comes straight from the PDFs linked to below.
3 New Requirements for Standard & First-Class Mail:
1./ Mailers must address each piece using a minimum of 8-point type. Each character must be at least 0.080 inch high.
2./ If the mailpiece bears a POSTNET or Intelligent Mail barcode with a delivery point routing code, mailers may use 6-point type in all capital letters. Each character must be at least 0.065 inch high.
3./ On all automation pieces, the characters in the address must not overlap, the address lines must not touch or overlap, and each address element may be separated by no more than five blank character spaces. (A blank character space can equal the width of the widest letter used in the type.)
1 Additional Requirement For Standard Mail Only:
1./ Mailers must place the delivery address in the “top half” of the mailpiece (at the time of this writing, every piece of USPS literature we have says this is NOT a requirement for First-Class flat mail).
For more detailed addressing information, click below on the class of flat direct mail you send out.
Today’s post is going to highlight a potential problem with fugitive glue that you should be aware of.
