How do you put an ultrasound machine into an envelope?

GE HealthCare was bringing the Voluson SWIFT to the German market — the entry point into the Voluson class. What was needed was a mailing to practices that would not just raise awareness but produce enquiries.

A gynaecology practice gets post every day, and most of it is paper about equipment. An ultrasound system is large, expensive and needs explaining — exactly the thing an envelope carries worst. And if you want an answer, you have to make answering easy: a recipient who first has to find a website and fill in a form does not reply.

• The machine stands up. The cross-fold leaflet carries a die-cut pop-up of the Voluson SWIFT that rises as the leaflet opens — cut, creased and glued into every single copy by hand. Seven and a half thousand times.
• Three ultrasound images as cards of their own, 130 × 110 mm, with spot UV varnish. The varnish is not decoration: it makes the image glow the way it does on a monitor. In the hand it reads like a scan, not like a brochure.
• The price is printed on the mailing. In medical technology that is unusual — and it turns a brochure into an offer somebody can talk about.
• A reply card with a tick box, a fax number, an email address and a phone number. Yes, a fax number, in 2024. Because the audience faxes — if you want answers, you offer the channel the recipient uses, not the one you find more elegant.
• The envelope designed in its own right and addressed individually, rather than cutting a window into a plain white C5. The first impression happens in the letterbox, not when it is torn open.
• The whole chain organised: print, die-cutting, creasing, folding, inserting, enveloping — delivered post-ready to a distribution centre in Germany.

7,500 packs containing 22,500 ultrasound cards, a ten-page leaflet on 300 gsm stock and a pop-up seated by hand in every copy. Around 21 working days from approval to post-ready goods.

How many cards came back, we do not know — which is why no number appears here. The replies went by fax, email and phone straight to GE, not through us. What we can say: three more mailings followed for the same client in the same year — an enveloped mailing for the LOGIQ Totus, a postcard mailing for Austria and Switzerland, and an introduction mailing for Austria. Nobody commissions four if nothing comes back.