Give me that old time marketing religion (at least on occasion)
Yes, yes, yes. I’m completely on board with focusing a lot of time and energy on inbound marketing.
But direct mail ain’t dead yet.
Case in point:
The other day, my sister Trish received an in-bound post-card mailing. Now, the fact that it was from a crackpot with a get-rich-quick scheme is beside the point.
The point is that the postcard - professional, in a sort of amateur-ish way, and on nice glossy card stock - was something that Trish actually looked at. (Okay, she did a lot more than that. She brought it to a family event so that we could go on the guy’s website and make fun of his enterprise. We’re about evenly divided on whether it’s an authentic Ponzi scheme or not.)
Would she have looked at a missive from this person if it had come in via e-mail? More than likely, it would have been caught in her spam filter. If not, she wouldn’t have given it a second glance.
As for Trish having found them through inbound marketing? Not a chance. Come on. I just googled ‘get rich quick scheme’ and this guy didn’t even make page 1.
So, the lesson here is that, in this day and age, when people are being bombarded with information in so many ways, an old-fashioned direct mail campaign might actually stand out. And a postcard mailer may be an excellent approach, since the recipient can tell at a glance whether they’re interested, without having to go through the hassle - yes, we’re all that rushed these days - of opening up an envelope.
Just make sure that you don’t waste any direct mail $$$ sending things out to a poorly list. Unlike the fellow who thought Trish would respond to this sort of message. He wasted an awfully cute 28 cent stamp with a polar bear on it. And those 28 cent polar bear stamps sure can add up. (Of course, given the Ponzi, MLM scheme-i-ness of it, there’s the creepy possibility that the card wasn’t sent out by the guru lurking behind the pyramid, but by someone she actually knows. Hope not!)
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I received a direct mail piece in the last couple days that I actually responded to and bought the service. It came right at the time when I was very disappointed in a competing service I was using. What I noticed though was there was no tracking system to the piece. I wonder how they are measuring its success.
Good question. Direct mailers can take care of tracking by providing special URLs, call in numbers, promotional codes. Sort of surprising that your service provider didn’t do so - but a good reminder for those thinking of direct mail.