This page contains an archive of all entries with the category direct mail. Oldest entries appear first.
Over the years, I've built up a collection of select VDP applications, both good and bad. One of the worst VDP applications that I've ever received was a direct mail postcard from a VDP vendor promoting their software.
The DM postcard was sent by Datalogics promoting their DL Formatter VDP product (now Printable FusionPro). I received mailer in 2004, shortly before Datalogics sold their assets and technologies in DL Formatter to Printable.
Continue reading "VDP Hall of Shame" »
Posted on Tuesday, 30 October 2007 at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Business news site MarketWatch published a story this month on how junk mail is spurring printer sales. I'm not sure how helpful the classification 'junk mail' is, I assume the author referring to personalised direct mail, rather than unaddressed mail.
The article identifies that DM is the only offline media today which can reach the consumer effectively. Other channels, including e-mail, TV and telephone, are blocked either through filtering technology or regulations (i.e. Do Not Call register).
The article goes on to provide some interesting figures, stating that DM is the fastest-growing form of advertising off the Internet, and is projected to drive sales growth by 5.3% a year from between now and 2012. By comparison, television ads are seen driving sales growth by 5%, newspapers by 0.9%, magazines by 3% and radio by 3% over the same period of time. Altogether, the U.S. direct mail printing business is a $62.2 billion market that's expected to grow around 6%, or 7 billion pages a year. That's a lot of paper. And rainforests.
Read the full story on MarketWatch »
Posted on Monday, 17 December 2007 at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I'm continually surprised when I receive direct mail pieces, usually in letter format, set in Courier. Why choose Courier? There are a tonne of other, more attractive and legible typefaces available. Marketing organisations surely can't select Courier based on its readability; Courier is anything but readable; I'd rather read a pleasant Serif typeface any day. However, Courier correspondence continues to trickle through my letterbox each week.
Continue reading "What the Font?" »
Posted on Sunday, 9 March 2008 at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
I picked up a story today on the eco-warrior US organisation, ForestEthics, who are running a 'Do Not Mail' campaign to stop so-called junk mail. The campaign is really just a petition, which currently lists "nearly 20,000" petitioners. ForestEthics explain that unwanted mail is making a significant impact on our environment, citing the number of trees used to produce the 100 billion mail pieces across the US and other eco-stats.
Now, I'm certainly no eco-warrior, but I do care for the environment. Having said that, I don't agree with ForestEthics approach to what is, apparently a propaganda-style campaign, intended to pour guilt on un-informed consumers. For example, ForestEthics state that "the Canadian Boreal Forest is logged at a rate of two acres a minute to produce paper products". However, they conveniently fail to mention that Canada is a global leader in sustainable forest management and has a deforestation rate of zero.
Continue reading "Do Not Mail Petition" »
Posted on Wednesday, 12 March 2008 at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Many challenges are plaguing direct mail today; high postage costs, diminished consumer response rates and increased mailbox "clutter" are all impacting campaign ROI. The solution? Look at optimising the postal process. That's the finding of a new white paper released today by Winterberry Group.
The white paper, titled 'A Strategy for Savings: Postal Optimization and the Future of Direct Mail', explores opportunities now emerging around the development of comprehensive postal optimisation strategies, which integrate multiple cost-saving direct mail production techniques like commingling, copalletisation and drop-shipping, in a manner that drives unique incremental value for all mailing sizes.
Continue reading "Postal Optimisation" »
Posted on Tuesday, 25 March 2008 at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
A report published by Target Marketing this month assessing media usage in 2008, indicates that direct mail is still the media channel of choice for customer acquisition and comes a close second for customer retention.
Continue reading "Media Usage in 2008" »
Posted on Thursday, 27 March 2008 at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
This week, I heard from Mike and Nate at Junk Mail Galaxy. The duo publish regular video podcasts, which focus on direct mail. Based in South Jersey (in the US, not my home island in the Channel Islands), they have 30 years of experience in direct mail between them.
In their regular podcasts, Mike and Nate explore the world of direct mail, looking at DM news, sharing their views and squeezing in a few jokes along the way. They only launched their Web site in January this year, but are quickly building up a library of podcasts. Each podcast episode features a supporting blog entry, so you can read what's in the episode before playing it, which is a good idea as each m4v file is around 50MB (which takes forever to download on my cheap-o broadband service). Yes, the videos aren't for faint hearted broadband connections, but if you're on a shoestring Australian broadband connection like mine, then look out for the 'embedable player' link, which takes you to a smaller, online streaming version.
Continue reading "Junk Mail Galaxy" »
Posted on Friday, 11 April 2008 at 6:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
PODi are hosting a webinar titled 'Making money by mailing at the moment when it makes the most sense' on Wednesday 23rd April at 11am and 7pm EDT (Thursday 24th April 1am and 9am, Sydney time). The webinar, presented by Tom McDermott from AmazingMail, is aimed at print providers and provides advice on how to make direct mail both relevant and successful. Its free for PODi members and US$125 for others.
» Sign up for the PODi Webinar
Posted on Friday, 18 April 2008 at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Alan Rosenspan runs a direct marketing services company in the US and has won many awards for direct marketing creativity and results. Among several published titles, Alan has published a popular and highly recommended booklet titled '101 Ways to Improve Your Response'. The booklet features tried and tested tips to ensure DM success.
Across his list of 101 tips, the repeating theme in this booklet appears to be 'one-to-one communication'. Alan explains that "a letter should be a one-to-one communication from one individual to another" and the best method to enable this level of communication is to incorporate personalisation. Among Alan's 101 list, I've pulled the following personalisation tips:
Continue reading "Personalisation Works" »
Posted on Sunday, 20 April 2008 at 8:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
QR (Quick Response) Codes are gaining a lot of interest in Australia. For those who aren't familar with these little marks, a QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code that can be used in convenience-oriented applications for mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). Using an encoded URL, a QR Code can incorporated in outdoor and print media advertising, including signs, buses, newspapers. A mobile phone user can use the integrated camera in their phone to capture the QR Code, then use reader software on the phone to decode the barcode into the URL and view the Web page in a browser.
Posted on Wednesday, 13 August 2008 at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)