Is Direct Mail Dying? Not With Integrated Direct Mail

The ways in which we market to consumers, and absorb information as consumers, have rapidly changed. Here we introduce the first of many blog posts in our series dedicated to helping you achieve marketing success through integrated direct mail.

Remember those “good ol’ days” when a phone was just a phone – a method of voice communication? Those days when we buried our noses in paperback books and printed magazines. Those days we spent with our families watching “Friends” and “Seinfeld.” When we would impatiently await the mailman’s arrival because he was the bearer of all things good. We’ve since come a long way in terms of our lifestyle, business methods, technology, and communication. Before laptops, tablets, mobile phones, apps, and high-speed internet, we mass-marketed via direct mail. It wasn’t anything fancy. It usually consisted of a flyer screaming out a limited time special suggesting you act now or lose out. We could easily replace the mailing address with someone else’s and no one would ever know. It didn’t speak to us as an individual consumer; therefore, it usually ended up in the recycling bin. Now, it’s time to ditch the old-school ways and go a step above and beyond – to integrated direct mail.

Integrated direct mail embraces inbound marketing. Say good-bye to soliciting to strangers circa 1995. Consumers are real people with individual needs, and the companies that can fulfill these needs will wind up on top. Having gained wide-spread popularity among the nation’s leading brands, this method of marketing has proven to solve consumers’ and marketers’ challenges as it combines old and new marketing tools. Prior to today’s cutting-edge technology, what happened when we mailed out 100,000 advertisements? How did we track our consumer’s purchasing behavior? How did we measure ROI on that one specific campaign? Depending on the flyer’s call-to-action, companies relied on consumers physically returning the flyer to them. In the next few upcoming posts, we’re going to delve deeper into the benefits of implementing a strategic integrated direct mail campaign which utilizes PURLs (personalized URLs), internet analytics, and social media. Stay tuned.