Much has been discussed about the death of the paper in direct marketing. The “Web 2.0” generation says online is the way to make marketing profit, but there are some doubts about it.
Paper (or offline) direct mail is more alive than ever, but this is not necessarily a “healthy fact”. A good chunk of what is sent by regular mail to individuals is what people commonly call “junk mail”. Can you imagine 4 million tons of paper in one year? This is just what the US produces every 365 days. Do a simple calculation and you will find each citizen there receives 13 kg of paper in average. You can easily assume 95% or more is useless, go straight to the garbage or do not receive any attention from the recipient. And yet, it is worthy.
Junk mail is the offline spam, the dinosaur marketing practice that survived the agility and omnipotence of internet and its features. But please do not confuse direct marketing with junk mail. They’re not necessarily the same and I can tell you that (already worked with both, direct marketing and junk mail). The possibilities and the challenge of dealing with offline direct marketing (and consequently junk mail) are enormous.
Younger marketers might think sending a misleading piece of paper with poor design is something out of fashion and one shouldn’t expect to sell. Wrong. I know lots of companies acting in countries from Japan to the UK always looking for new ways to bring new customers. And they do buy in. Amazingly, these people purchase the most varied types of offer, from being a heir of Leonardo da Vinci to a pre-approved lottery by a certain Prize Settlement Headquarters.
Branding is something quite unique about offline spammers (or junk mail senders). Some companies opt to use different names every time they mail. So you can receive lots of correspondences from the same company, but you will never know it’s the same because the name is absolutely different. This frequent variation also reminds me of a very known word in the world of direct marketing: the “P” word.
Pummel, the “P word”, is a very extensive definition in junk mail concept. Marketers working with this type of market believe that individuals can be won by restlessness. In practice it means “the more one approaches these people, the more chances one has to convert them into customers”. Fair enough, it’s a strategy. But the same theory can be used on the opposite way. More and more people are turning to “preference services”, like the British TPS (in this case it’s specific for telemarketing). Here, customers or prospects may show all their rage against marketing approaches and ask to be removed from the mailer’s list so they won’t be bothered again.
Apparently mailers do not care that much about it. I’ve already seen strategies where people would be pummeled up to 15 times in a single month in case they purchase something. Another consequence of this massive bombardment of mail boxes is a very short lifetime. Customers do not buy in very frequently and usually mailers tend to ignore existing customers to go after fresh names. There’s your enormous challenge in the junk mail industry. How to be profitable trusting very little in people who already relied on you (customers) and offering the world to someone that has never loved you yet (prospect)?
Paper (or offline) direct mail is more alive than ever, but this is not necessarily a “healthy fact”. A good chunk of what is sent by regular mail to individuals is what people commonly call “junk mail”. Can you imagine 4 million tons of paper in one year? This is just what the US produces every 365 days. Do a simple calculation and you will find each citizen there receives 13 kg of paper in average. You can easily assume 95% or more is useless, go straight to the garbage or do not receive any attention from the recipient. And yet, it is worthy.
Junk mail is the offline spam, the dinosaur marketing practice that survived the agility and omnipotence of internet and its features. But please do not confuse direct marketing with junk mail. They’re not necessarily the same and I can tell you that (already worked with both, direct marketing and junk mail). The possibilities and the challenge of dealing with offline direct marketing (and consequently junk mail) are enormous.
Younger marketers might think sending a misleading piece of paper with poor design is something out of fashion and one shouldn’t expect to sell. Wrong. I know lots of companies acting in countries from Japan to the UK always looking for new ways to bring new customers. And they do buy in. Amazingly, these people purchase the most varied types of offer, from being a heir of Leonardo da Vinci to a pre-approved lottery by a certain Prize Settlement Headquarters.
Branding is something quite unique about offline spammers (or junk mail senders). Some companies opt to use different names every time they mail. So you can receive lots of correspondences from the same company, but you will never know it’s the same because the name is absolutely different. This frequent variation also reminds me of a very known word in the world of direct marketing: the “P” word.
Pummel, the “P word”, is a very extensive definition in junk mail concept. Marketers working with this type of market believe that individuals can be won by restlessness. In practice it means “the more one approaches these people, the more chances one has to convert them into customers”. Fair enough, it’s a strategy. But the same theory can be used on the opposite way. More and more people are turning to “preference services”, like the British TPS (in this case it’s specific for telemarketing). Here, customers or prospects may show all their rage against marketing approaches and ask to be removed from the mailer’s list so they won’t be bothered again.
Apparently mailers do not care that much about it. I’ve already seen strategies where people would be pummeled up to 15 times in a single month in case they purchase something. Another consequence of this massive bombardment of mail boxes is a very short lifetime. Customers do not buy in very frequently and usually mailers tend to ignore existing customers to go after fresh names. There’s your enormous challenge in the junk mail industry. How to be profitable trusting very little in people who already relied on you (customers) and offering the world to someone that has never loved you yet (prospect)?
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