Drab envelopes? Plain stationery? Surely your direct mail isn’t going out in public looking like that? And thanks to Doodle-opes,^® a series of attention-grabbing stationery and software products created by Baltimore-based PDA Marketing, it doesn’t have to.

Promoted as a direct mail solution, Doodle-opes’ preprinted stationery, funky handwritten fonts and dingbat-styled scribbles promise to jazz up any direct mail piece. The Doodle-opes software loads onto your computer, and you drag and drop the elements onto your desktop publisher. The company offers its flagship “Andrea Font” separately, while PDA’s “Mega Pack” bundles the font with various doodles and letterhead/envelope software.

Despite the informal, freewheeling appearance of her graphics, Doodle-opes creator Andrea Ratajczak says her designs are for even the most strait-laced businesses seeking to give their mail a competitive edge. “I’ve seen real estate agents, insurance brokers, car dealerships, veterinarians and dentists use it,” Ratajczak says. “It works because it’s not what people expect.”

Doodle-opes allows users to select parts of copy and add hand-scrawled circles, check-pluses, underlines, eyeballs and phrases like “Check this out!” or “This is amazing!”

Best of all, says Ratajczak, marketers can create customized, personalized, intimate-looking mail without having to recruit a potentially costly graphic designer. “So many people need a solution that is inexpensive,” she says. “This gives them the ability to sit down at their computer and do something that’s really cool and unique.”