Like many things marketers and sales executives move on to the next marketing tool and forget about the tools that made them successful. Personalized mail, along with smaller, more targeted lists continue to have a big impact on response rates.
There's no doubt that email marketing is inexpensive, and search engine marketing offers a very targeted approach, but targeted mail offers an experience that many executives have forgotten. Receiving personalized printed materials with a name, industry information and maybe even other demographic information garnered from a good list tells that person you know them.
Mail stands out.
Today's "snail mail" inbox is much less cluttered than your online inbox. Getting noticed is the first problem.
Mail is much more experiential.
You can add folds, leverage papers, and even smells to have an experiential impact on your client or customer. Folds help turn a typical communication into a story to be discovered. Paper texture can emphasize a value your organization brings. Our latest newsletter is made of a paper that is so smooth, it feels like powder between your fingers. The touch alone makes it stand out.
Smell has a lasting impression on memory. To this day I remember the movie Polyester because of the scratch and sniff card that was handed out for the movie. A number popped up on the screen and you were to scratch and sniff that number. The whole audience would groan (don't ask) or laugh - it was an experience forever embedded in my memory.
Mail lasts.
While it's easy to save a digital file and bookmark it, there's no doubt that our electronic libraries are becoming much like the storage facilities we use to hold all our extra "stuff" in our lives. We keep it, but it becomes digital clutter. A personalized and well designed mail piece will be displayed, shown to other and held onto. To this day I have a baseball card sized box full of cards full of ideas an agency mailed me when I was a marketing executive. It is smart, creative, and had good ideas. The ability to store the ideas in a box they sent have enabled me to hold onto it for over a decade.
I can't say the same for any electronic piece of information I've received.
If you want to have an impact look to combine your mail and your electronic efforts. Just think beyond the typical mailing and push your provider to think outside of the box. One thing I emphasize to my staff is to provide ideas that will have a bigger impact than what the client initially envisions. Instead of that generic postcard, what if a personalized, self-mailer that tells a story was used. Maybe it has a QR code (yes, they still work) draws them to an online page to download a case study.
No matter what medium you choose to use leverage the power of that medium to it's fullest. Push your vendor for ideas to increase the response rate, create engagement and increase sales.