Sure, Now You Want Me

Some marketers are so smug. They insist that there are better and more efficient methods of reaching consumers than direct mail. They derisively call it "snail mail," "junk mail" and other less than loving descriptions of that medium I am so fond of.

But then ... the need to quickly and discretely communicate information to customers and all of a sudden ... my phone rings.

Mass communications has its charms. But speed and discretion are not among them. With the recent sale of certain divisions of my employer we needed to try to renew certain segments of our customer file. But pesky price fixing issues did not allow us to take advantage of channels such as radio, print and TV.

What we are able to do is to segment the list and make offers by line of business that stay within the limits of the law.

The same can be said of direct mail's sexier, younger sister, email marketing. Unfortunately, however, she is a fickle friend. While we have 100% of postal addresses in our database, a meager 40% have email addresses. And with click through and open rates dropping faster than George Dubbah's approval ratings, even that isn't a panacea. (But it's free, right? Tell THAT to my over-taxed web marketing team.)

But you marketing traditionalists, never fear. We have continued with some mass media. This includes SEM (search engine marketing) -- but without the ability to name price our CTRs are about 50% of last year's more robust results. And print ads now feature three separate calls to action (yeah, that will work!).

So you direct mail marketers who often feel left behind, keep the faith. To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of our death are greatly exaggerated.

And just wait for that phone to ring.