5 Ways Marketers Are Taking Advantage of a Lighter Mail Stream

While the general shift of marketing budgets from print to digital media and the resulting effect on the U.S. Postal Service is largely a troubling situation for marketers that still use the direct mail channel, the short-term reality is less mail in circulation also produces an opportunity.

"The decline in First Class mail, combined with the decline in Standard mail ... is an opportunity for those with some marketing dollars and a story to tell. There's just less clutter in the mailbox, which means that any mail gets more attention. I'm seeing some life in control packages that have softened in the last two years, just because the clients haven't mailed them in a while," notes Stefanie Pont, managing partner of Pont Media Direct.

Based on the feedback of some leading direct mail specialists, marketers are seeing results in the following five areas:

Offers
Logically, marketers looking for performance should start with the main element that makes a direct mail effort "direct": the offer. And according to Sandra Blum, president of Blum & Company, "Consumers are still looking for and appreciate promotional offers and bargains in their mail. Coupons, discount certificates, special offers to take into the retailer or use online pay off."

Formats
The creative approach also benefits from regular experimentation. At the present, a variety of creative tacks are working. Alan Rosenspan, president of Alan Rosenspan & Associates is seeing surveys, unusual envelopes (like those made of vellum) and longer letters get results.

For Blum, it's large-size postcards and self-mailers, especially for the B-to-B market. Also in the B-to-B sector, she says, series of mailings in different formats are being used to nurture leads. And marketers in the conference/training course business have begun to add letter-size magalog brochure formats back into the mix.

Strategy
Freelance copywriter and consultant Mark Everett Johnson urges marketers to tighten up their execution for the best return. "Be relevant, get to the point, keep it simple, make an offer. My favorite example: GEICO. They have a clearly defined benefit ('save hundreds of dollars'), a clearly defined offer ('one 15-minute phone call') and they've turned it into a simple mantra that they repeat over and over. The gecko and the caveman are clever and creative, but they never get in the way of the message.

"GEICO also knows when to give their most creative approaches a rest; they've been using the same direct mail letter for at least five years, and it doesn't include either of their clever characters."

Targeting
"Marketers today have a better opportunity than ever to improve their direct mail and e-mail response rates through using personalization, segmentation and relevance," emphasizes Laurie Beasley, president of Beasley Direct Marketing. "In fact," she continues, "the CMO Council reports up to 39 percent of CMOs feel adding personalization increases loyalty, heightens response and close rates and ROI, and is a better expenditure of marketing dollars." Lack of relevance might drive people to opt out of e-mail marketing, but the same is true of why people ignore direct mail efforts, says Beasley.

Need more reasons why you should be leveraging data to target your direct mail campaigns? "According to the Print on Demand Institute, adding personalization, segmentation and relevance can increase response rates over static campaigns from 100 percent to 300 percent," Beasley shares. "We have seen plenty of evidence for this in our own agency experience. We've run tests of campaigns that included static versus highly personalized e-mail, direct mail and landing pages. We have seen response and conversion increase as much as 1,000 percent with well-thought-through B-to-B campaigns that included personalization and dynamic switching of content based on [the target's] job function and company size.

"For B-to-B, we've also seen dimensional direct mail packages improving response rates by 200 percent to 300 percent, and add on personalization and telemarketing to increase the overall campaign metrics by another 200 percent to 300 percent. For B-to-C prospect campaigns, we've seen response rates and conversions increase as much as 130 percent over a static campaign for the same offer, just by integrating the prospect's name and a photo of a resort property they might like (dynamically rendering) on the direct mail, e-mail and landing page based on income and location."

That's pretty compelling support for targeting, and also hints at the fifth way marketers are driving results in the mail channel.

Integration
Given the debate about whether direct marketing should change its name to integrated marketing or some other such moniker, it's clear multichannel campaigns are the standard going forward. Direct mail is proving to be valuable in the mix.

"My B-to-B clients found the decreasing volume of mail to be a big opportunity to reach their customers and prospects and prove value—especially in a downturn. They use direct mail integrated with e-mail, portal marketing and advertising plus their websites to both sell product and support the sales force," says Blum, adding that "a couple found modeling techniques to find greater numbers of prospect names at existing customer sites to be very productive in their quest to mail more efficiently."

Blum also notes that her clients in the publishing sector have been faring well with direct mail followed by e-mail reminders. "In fact, I see that combo working for almost all clients, small businesses to large," she notes.

Rosenspan's general take on direct mail's role at the present is that solid execution in this channel continues to work quite well, aside from any immediate format or offer trends.

"Direct mail is rarely the whole answer—but it is a vital part of every direct marketing program. Or it should be," he concludes.

• MORE ON
• DIRECT MAIL & POSTAL