OK it is not exactly hot news but this finding in a study commissioned by Hewlett Packard certainly got my attention and adds a certain interest to the health debate. The study goes on to talk about the spread of ‘Info-mania’, claiming that 62% of UK adults are addicted to their email inboxes. All the more reason to see email as the most effective tool available?
Well, it might then surprise you to know that my subject is direct mail. Surely, with a little help from the Royal Mail and their unions, the Snail Mail is dead and its future has never looked more grim?
There is no doubt that email marketing is a great tool for B2B marketers. It is cost-effective, easily personalised, easily integrated with other marketing channels, easy to set up and manage and clearly measurable. Even the rise of social marketing has not hindered the growth of email marketing. The inherent quality of viralability – the potential for an email message to be spread beyond the initial mailing list and to snowball through social networking communities like Twitter or Facebook has confirmed email’s place in the hierarchy of demand generation methods. It has the potential to become an even more powerful tool in future.
So does direct mail still deserve a place in the B2B marketing toolbox? I think so. Consider the disadvantages of email and you can begin to see why. Email is very dependant upon the subject line. Most recipients will not have their Outlook set up to enable them to see much beyond the Subject. Unlike printed mailers it is not easy to entice the reader to delve further. There’s just no time to draw them in. Add to that the increasing use of mobile devices to access email and the ever more efficient blocks placed on images and gaps begin to appear in the email armoury. In many markets, characterised by ‘me-too’ products and even ‘me-too’ value-adds, (white papers, implementation guides etc etc) great creative ideas can help to distinguish your brand from the competition. Here email begins to struggle. With its dependency on the subject line and without the space either to develop ideas or use the juxtaposition of copy and image to create interest and engagement, the effectiveness of email can be limited. Its very popularity can be limiting too. The sheer number of emails received by technology decision makers has led to a drop-off in response rates. In contrast the quantity of print mail has dropped dramatically so it is eaier to get your message through.
That’s why forward thinking technology marketeers are dusting off the direct mail skills that they learned years ago and having another look at direct mail as a tool. It is not so much that direct mail is suddenly poised to make a comeback at the expense of email, but use it in new innovative ways combined with email and direct mail can be a great complementary discipline. Develop a genuinely creative approach to your campaigns, personalise your mailings with variable print technology, combine with emails and personal URL landing pages and the chances are that you will begin to see the sort of significant increases in ROI that we have experienced with our clients in recent times. Depending upon the size of your target market and the prevalence of gatekeepers, a 3D mailer might even be the right option. We have found response rates to be as high as double those of 2D mailers. If it is worth telemarketing and sending an expensive salesman out to a prospect in an expensed car with perhaps a decent lunch thrown in, you may well find the metrics make good sense.
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Royal Mail’s recent 3D campaign developed by Proximity makes interesting reading. And whilst of course, they would say that, as the old saying goes, Anthony Miller, the media development manager at the Royal Mail says that his campaign was about demonstrating value for money: “In these difficult times...marketers have to justify every pound they spend.’ And he should know.