Does Direct Mail Advertising = Spam?

I hate junk mail.

I pay all my bills online, and no one ever sends me hand-written mail. I don’t even know my postal code. I check my mailbox about once per month, at which time, it is just about bursting at the seams with circulars, fliers, and other promotional stuff I can’t be bothered to look at. All of that wasted paper, that’s all marketing content, and it’s called direct mail advertising. Most people despise it. I do.

In the online world, a similar beast exists, and it’s also called junk mail, or spam. Some estimates say that as much as 85% of the e-mail sent on a daily basis is spam. As a result, modern e-mail softwares and servers have developed sophisticated spam filtering. My e-mail inbox used to look like my physical mailbox, but on a bad day, only one or two messages will trickle through the filters.

If most people are like me, and they simply toss out a month’s worth of fliers and circulars, and have decent spam filters set up in their e-mail, why would any marketer go to the trouble of direct mail? The simple answer is because it works. The equation with direct mail has always been simple. You don’t convert many people into customers, but the incremental cost of getting more people the message is minimal, so you still end up with a decent return on investment. In the world of e-mail marketing, the incremental cost of sending more e-mails is zero, so even if you have a terrible conversion rate, you’ll probably still see a return on investment.

So, what’s an honest businessperson to do? On the one hand, you know what it feels like to be inundated with junk, on the other hand, you’ve heard that this marketing method works?

The answer is to create targeted direct mail advertising. The reason direct mail converts so poorly, and is so annoying, is because there is no targeting. It’s carpet bombing people with paper. With just a little more creativity and effort, most direct mail campaigns, especially electronic ones, can be made to convert far better, be less annoying, and have the added advantage of creating not only a customer, but a loyal fan.

The first step is to pick your audience. I live in an apartment building. Why do I get fliers for landscapers? I also get mail for things I don’t want, don’t need, or don’t like. If you can exclude from your direct mail campaign people who don’t want, don’t need, or don’t like what you have to offer, then you will finally be targeting an audience that cares about what you have to say.

Once you’ve found your target audience, the next thing to do with your direct mail is to be useful. A tagline and a phone number, or an e-mail address is not useful. A promotion can definitely be useful, but it can also be boring. Do something interesting with your promotional material to get people’s attention. Run a contest, provide valuable content, do a give-away, entertain or just plain do something different. Alternatively, provide something useful. I’ve never used a real estate agent, and yet I know the names of a few of them, because I often write on complimentary pads they’ve sent me.

Finally, don’t send anything out unless you’ve received some form of sign that the person wants to receive it. This is the basis of permission marketing. The person may explicitly give permission by opting-in to a mailing list, or they may give it implicitly by purchasing something and giving additional contact information (note: whenever you deal with implicit permission, make sure opting-out is VERY easy).

Not all direct mail marketing needs to be spam. When direct mail marketing is done right, it is a cheap marketing method, that provides excellent returns, and creates loyal fans. Think about that before licking the next stamp, or hitting send on your next e-mail blast.