Like all businesses, Results Communications and Research must regularly engage in diverse, but integrated, marketing and business development activities to develop new and grow existing client relationships. Asking for referrals from current or former clients or other business connections — particularly, former co-workers who have witnessed first-hand the quality of our work — far exceeds other activities in generating new work for our marketing consulting firm/agency. Nonetheless, we can’t rely solely on our connections to keep our work plate full. Most organizations can’t. So, what better time than the start of a new year to implement a new marketing campaign that employs and centers around direct mail — a marketing vehicle much less used in the past 10 years, but one that is regaining popularity because of its demonstrated effectiveness.

A key reason behind our very recently “dropping” a direct mail piece (in this case, an over-sized postcard) to a targeted list of New England organizations was to witness first-hand how effective at generating inquiries and discussions about our services this “traditional” marketing activity would be in this digital era — when supported by follow-up activities, such as phone calls and e-mails, of course. While our Principal has significant experience with implementing, managing, and analyzing direct mail campaigns from past corporate roles in the 1990’s and early 2000’s, the majority of the prospecting campaigns we’ve run for our own and client businesses in the past few years has had one or a series of e-mail blasts as their focal point vs. a printed piece delivered by U.S. mail.

Why We Tested Direct Mail, A Traditional Marketing Activity

Other motivators for testing and revisiting the direct mail waters were:

• We personally welcome receiving “snail mail” vs. e-mail for the following reasons:
  • It’s a nice break from viewing everything on the computer screen for our eyes
  • Holding a sturdy postcard or direct mailer in our hands brings back fond memories of the old and simpler way of doing business
  • We can file this printed piece in a relevant tangible vs. virtual folder and easily retrieve it. Sure, you can file an HTML e-newsletter/e-blast in an appropriate in-box folder, but when it’s particularly busy, most people don’t have the time to do that, and in this fast-pace world, it always seems to be particularly busy.
• We’ve read/heard that others like to receive snail mail for the same reasons we do.
• Direct mail won’t get relegated to a spam or junk folder by your intended recipients’ e-mail services’ filtering mechanism.
• Individuals receive far less postal mail these days, so, unlike e-newsletters and e-blasts, a direct mail piece is not one of a hundred (or much more!) communication pieces received each day competing for attention in the e-mail sea.

We look forward to sharing our experience with testing this new, old marketing vehicle with you in 2Q2017! May you have the opportunity to pilot both brand new and old new forms of marketing and development activities in the new year to determine what is most effective in generating new customers and clients for the particular products and services your organization offers.