Snail Mail Promotion is Not Dead Yet
Do you read all your emails? Not all, I expect.
A typical answer from those who receive tens or hundreds of emails from all kinds of people everyday will be: “I just read those emails from friends, colleagues and networks I’m with and delete the rest.”
Plus, spam filters don’t work all the time. I’m sure you get your fair share of Viagra, penis enlargement, breast enlargement, replica watch offers in your InBox every day. I’m certain you just delete them without reading. And sometimes, even when the title is rather inn0cuous like “A Proposal” or “Staff Recruitment Offers”, you would choose to delete the email because you don’t recognize the name on the email address, yes?
It is not surprising that response rates for email based marketing campaigns are hurting, especially when marketers only have one line of text in the subject field to make an impact. Having said that, email marketing is far from dead. Imaging if you have a 25,000 database and this is a click rate of 10%, you still have 2,500 pairs of eyeballs attracted by your offers.
What I like to say here : Don’t ditch email marketing, however, supplement your campaign with good old direct mail. In recent years, many marketers choose to re-connect with those consumers who don’t read e-advertisements in their InBox, and this has resulted in the resurgences of physical (or snail) mail. A flyer left on the table gets seen several time a day, usually unintentionally, and effortlessly; not the email. Naturally, marketers who have deep pockets and are willing to splurge on creative copy and design and huge print-run stands to gain lots.
In short, snail mail promotion need not slow down just because we have modern communications methods online.
10 Replies to “Snail Mail Promotion is Not Dead Yet”
With the relentless dose of daily spam, i’m surprised to read that email campaigns are still effective.
We mainly use “snail mail” advertising for our gates company. we pay someone every couple of months to go round and put postcard leaflets though the mail boxs. we find this works best as lots of our customers are older people and also people can put it on their notice board for when they need help. which you can’t do with an email.
Hi Susan, I recently used the good old fashion FAX and achieve surprisingly good results. Perhaps you can experiment it in Australia and see if it compliments your postcard leaflets. Thanks for visiting and I look forward to connecting with you again.
Hi – Yes, it still does when you only email to networks that appreciate information you have, and the subject field addresses their primary concern. For a marketer with small budget, every positive return – even if it is only 1% – is good.
E-mail didn’t kill snail mail. If anything it made it into a special, intimate thing. You don’t receive snail mail from anyone anymore, so when you do, you pay attention. This is a great initiative.
I’m stunned that people even have fax machines anymore! I ditched mine a few years ago and I was in real estate then – a heavy paper business. We sent documents as email attachments. Fax degrades the quality so badly that once a document had been faxed a few times it was illegible. But, hey, whatever works for you!
Hi Nida – LOL. Fax quality is not an issue if plain photocopy paper is used. Just FYI, I made a experiment and invested about USD320 on a fax campaign, and the business value returned is more than USD700. It was good enough for me. :)
Yes. I intend to read anything that comes through the snail mailbox. I even leave the vaguely interesting direct mailer lying around on my work desk for days and even weeks. Sometime I do pick up a phone and make an order. Though it kills trees, I do value the beautifully designed and exquisitely printed birthday cards and Christmas cards better. I’m a little old fashion :)
“E-mail didn’t kill snail mail. If anything it made it into a special, intimate thing. You don’t receive snail mail from anyone anymore, so when you do, you pay attention.”
I think snail mail promotion really does differentiate you from others. People are more likely to read it than email as it is more intimate.
Was having a breakfast meeting this morning with a business associate and heard that his best friend – boss of an uniform making factory – relies solely on fax promotion for leads. The average is an inquiry a day. That was simply amazing considering they don’t do fax promotion every week. I won’t ditch my fax machine or conventional direct marketing for new media yet.