In the August issue of Deliver Magazine, the editors make a case for Direct Mail’s future.
Direct mail is entering a new age. Long an effective marketing device, mail is now being linked with new technologies in astounding ways that improve its effectiveness and bring a new engagement. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Emerging technologies were expected to take what direct had done, and do it better, faster and cheaper. Consider the irony then that far from killing it off, digital is helping usher in this new era of direct mail.
Of course direct mail and digital have always been buddies. Mail was the primary way most of us learned about the Internet. (Remember those ubiquitous disks from a major online company?)
Catalogers have always known that mail can drive additional sales and online visits, and many digital entrepreneurs have turned to the mailbox to drive people to the inbox. The difference today is that marketers are now finding methods for combining digital technology with mail to increase the power of the message. Mail is no longer the carrier, the device you use to drive someone online. It’s the beginning of a conversation that carries on once the customer logs on.
Clearly, the efficiencies of mail — its laser-like ability to target customers, paired with a way to expand that message — is making marketers rethink their opinion of what many regarded as an “old” advertising vehicle.
It’s about the convergence of traditional and digital, yes, but that’s just the start. What we’re witnessing is a revolution that will launch mail into the next generation and beyond. It’s another lesson in the amazing adaptability of mail.
Marketers would be smart to take full advantage of this flexibility. And smart marketers do.
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