Direct mail

Everyone in the printing business knows how direct mail has resurged as an important marketing channel. However, it's not appearing as it did in your grandfather's mailbox! There’s no “spray and pray” anymore.

“In 2022, we saw marketers starting to shift their digital marketing budgets to direct mail solutions,” Meg Ugenti reported last month in Forbes. “This trend will hold steady as the digital marketing landscape continues to be more crowded and less predictable than traditional offline marketing channels.”

In a recent article from Practical Ecommerce, Eric Bandholz explained how Apple’s iOS 14 privacy change has upended advertising on Facebook. “Merchants accustomed to stellar ROI must now accept modest or less-than-modest performance, he reported, citing the intriguing case of Pig of the Month. The Ohio-based direct-to-consumer seller of barbeque quotes company founder Lea Richards: “With post-iOS 14 ads not working, we’re getting back into direct mail. We’ve found good results, up to six-times return.”

Well, we are certainly living in interesting times. Two years of a global pandemic, followed by conflict in Ukraine, have resulted in labor disruptions, a choked global supply chain, and a shifting marketplace. What’s next is anyone’s guess at this point.

Interesting times certainly bring a host of challenges, but they also bring opportunity. That’s as true for the printing industry, which was living through its own interesting times even before the pandemic, as it is for individuals and society.

In the early 90’s, VDP was the anxiously awaited “next big thing.” The concept was solid. The dream persevered as the industry impatiently awaited fast enough network file transfer speeds and on-demand press output capacity. Undaunted early adopters tested the waters and proved the value. Over time it became a viable option for any printer who wanted to play.

In parallel we experienced the advent of internet publishing and the scramble to figure out how to monetize it. Company resources became focused on figuring out online marketing. Marketing attention to VDP direct mail was sidelined, eclipsed, or incorporated. The same underlying concepts for VDP served as the foundation for the (then) shiny new data-driven web sites, digital marketing, and marketing automation.

Printers are always helping their clients raise awareness for their products and services. They send out marketing postcards or donation requests for them, print door hangers, or create entire marketing campaigns in service of their customers.

In marketing their own services, though, many printers struggle with knowing what to do, where to spend their marketing dollars, and how to find the time to take care of a campaign of their own.

Fortunately, Gimbel & Associates has lots of resources to help you conquer the marketing challenge. Watch this short video, read the corresponding blog article, and download items in the Gimbel Resource Library to get started on the marketing activities essential to your business success.

Print providers face the dilemma of marketing their services with in-house resources or hiring a marketing firm.  It’s a reasonable predicament. Print service providers (PSP’s) offer many services that execute on strategies marketing agencies recommend. These include graphic design, print, and direct mail submission. PSPs are experts in those parts of a marketing program. Would it be much of a stretch to write the marketing plan and manage the digital components? How much time could website design and maintenance, SEO, and social media take?

It boils down to one simple question: “How much of my company’s marketing should I do myself?”

Direct mail is staging a comeback! Instead of concentrating solely on saturated channels such as email and social media, marketers are once again embracing mail’s superior open and conversion rates. To produce the best results requires both creative designs and compliance with postal mail best practices. Designers who have spent little time with direct mail may need to get up to speed on the details that make a direct mail campaign successful.

The volume and complexity of the US Postal Service’s Domestic Mail Manual can be overwhelming, but creative people need to focus on only a few important areas to ensure their designs flow smoothly through the mail. Design missteps that affect mailability can be expensive. Errors discovered at production time increase costs and put deadlines in jeopardy. A bit of knowledge is all it takes to prevent last-minute disasters and get maximum value from direct mail campaigns.

Print service providers don’t always mail what they produce for their clients, but when they do, they must be clear about the rules and regulations administered by the US Postal Service. Generating mailings (or even designing mailings) without considering the mailing requirements can blow the client’s budget, cause delivery delays, or depress campaign results. In severe cases the postal service might even reject the mail. Help clients get the most from their investments in printed and mailed communications and generate worry-free mail by being informed about mailing requirements.

Informed Delivery Is A Win For Print Service Providers

 The USPS Informed Delivery program continues to gain momentum. As of this writing, the program includes around 13 million subscribers. An impressive 65% of email subscribers check their Informed Delivery emails nearly every day. If you’ve ever run email campaigns, you’re probably aware that achieving a 65% open rate is quite a feat.

Mailers are accustomed to postage rate increases in January, and the updates for 2018 followed a familiar pattern. Besides the rate increases, the US Postal Service is updating elements of the postal system. Industry analysts expect more developments soon. Mailers need to stay informed as the mailing business becomes increasingly driven by technology and data. Neglecting to keep up on postal developments can result in missed opportunities and unnecessary costs.

US law mandates the US Postal Service keep rate increases in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for market-dominant products like First Class letters and Marketing Mail. The law allows more pricing flexibility for parcel shipping services where the USPS competes with private carriers.

The CPI price cap keeps rate increases within a definable range, but that doesn’t mean the USPS assigns identical percentage increases across the board. Rate changes for individual classes and presort levels will vary with this latest price adjustment.

In April, 2017 the US Postal Service rolled out a new way for marketers to communicate with their audience. More than five million households subscribe to the free Informed Delivery service and the numbers are growing. With Informed Delivery, consumers receive daily emails containing scanned images of letter-size mail they will receive in their physical mailboxes later in the day.

Campaign effectiveness improves when marketers connect physical and digital channels. Informed Delivery is the easiest way yet to accomplish this feat. The program doubles consumer views of marketing material with no increase in cost or extra preparation. We’re advising print service providers to update their clients about this opportunity to increase direct mail effectiveness.