Is Lumpy Direct Mail dead?

Since the mid-1990s, block mail and other dynamic mail have been an important strategy to break through the direct response to statistical boundaries. There is no doubt that they have worked very effectively. The open rate is higher; the response rate is higher; although the initial investment in packaging and products is extremely high, the return on investment is still high.

Long emails or dynamic emails are especially targeted at B2B emails, where the audience is relatively small but the revenue is high, so a higher investment can be easier to prove.

Blocky favorites are a lot. Many of them sound like direct responses to the richest elements of the 1950s sales repertoire:

* The Round Tuit - "I know you didn't reply to my call because you didn't get Round Tuit, so I thought I would send you one."

* A pack of cinnamon sugar, introduced a "red hot" offer.

* Band assistance shows that, unlike competitors, I am not a "band-aid" solution.

* A little aspirin pack, because this proposal will "end your worst mind!"

However, they have been working hard. What drives the response? Nostalgia? Do you need to laugh during the pressurized working day? Despite the obvious success, the questions people have raised about these plans come from several sources:

* Resources used. The response rate may be higher, but does it prove the environmental cost of the thrown transport box and the Round Tits is damaged?

* Change the impact of postal regulations. When these strategies take off, standard envelopes and package sizes do not benefit from lower postal rates. The cost of delivering block and dynamic mail is now much higher, which has an impact on ROI. Pittsburgh's MSP provides a smart, lightweight plan for pre-meeting mail: they provide a signature cocktail napkin to the preferred contact, providing us with a "beverage". The contact person who came to the booth [many!] has bottled water.

* It is difficult to select an insert that can actively focus on the overall information. Not every business owner can present inserts that represent their company. These inserts are both memorable and good. Boxtopia has done a wonderful event for an IT company that wants to reach a handful of C-level executives in the construction sector: each package contains a limited edition limited edition of watercolors specially commissioned for the event. The return on investment is very high. Professor Rob Anspach's marketing staff captured the "big fish", which included a Swedish fish candy with a letter and wrote on the envelope: "Have you seen my fish?" For him, it bought a lot Sales.

After the problem and the post office barrier, direct mail is still the problem we want to solve. The challenge is not a new challenge: what kind of letter, in what packaging, what specific people will respond to what [if any]? We are increasingly able to pinpoint our mail, which allows us to focus these relatively expensive large software packages on the people or businesses we most reasonably expect to achieve.

Clever use of block mail can still bring great returns. Our job is to use it wisely.

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