Context Collapse: ✉️Yes, Direct Mail Still Matters.
Physical media = awesome: Context Collapse #240
In this issue: Why everyone makes fun of direct mail / Why direct mail actually works / Advertisers are snobs / People still open their mail / Direct mail doesn’t have to suck / IRL not digital.
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
Fun fact: If you want to make a creative director at a high-powered advertising agency in New York, Chicago or London cringe, you talk about direct mail.
Direct mail—the catalogs, circulars and envelopes with everything from credit card applications to solicitations from charities—are unloved and déclassé in the higher echelons of the advertising and marketing worlds. They don’t win Cannes Lions, they make for crappy slides in pitch decks, and they’re a lot less interesting to work on than television commercials, longform digital videos or even OOH billboards. They’re (and this is arguably true, but we care about results and efficacy, not about clogged mailboxes) environmentally unfriendly and “junk mail.”
But… direct mail also works. The 2023 Direct Mail Advertising Global Market Report finds an average response rate to direct mail of 2.7%-4.4%, compared to ~0.6% for marketing emails. That’s a stat that parallels my own experiences. Which brings us to…
People Still Open Their Mail
In order for direct mail to be effective in reaching eyeballs, three things have to be work:
The mail has to arrive at the right address.
The recipient has to take their mail out of the mailbox regularly.
The mail has to be of interest to the recipient.
If you’re targeting an audience of office workers living in cities who are in their mid-20s, odds are good that they are renters who may move every year or two.
Conversely, if you’re sending direct mail medical discount information to an audience of retirees who are already receiving outpatient treatment, a decent percentage of them may have mobility issues that prevent them from getting their mail regularly (that is to say, they’ll see your mail, but will be so overwhelmed with everything in the box that it goes by the wayside).
On the other hand, you might have digital-first recipients who live by their email inboxes and only check their physical mail once a week.
But, in between, there’s a massive chunk of customers to reach. And you can reach them—and close the sale—by making direct mail that’s interesting and worthwhile for them to open.
Direct Mail Doesn’t Have To Suck
With higher open rates for direct mail than email, there are many different ways to make direct mail work for your organization.
You can do high-quality catalogs like Zingerman’s or Amazon’s annual toy mailer.
You can use graphic design chops and targeted copy for compelling postcards.
Imitate your competitors if what they do works. Or go for your own approach.
Start with the visuals and design of your direct mail and go backwards from there. If your campaign looks like crap, you will get crap results. Make sure your direct mail ties into a digital campaign or has a digital component. I can’t stress this enough. Use this to steer recipients to a QR code or a short URL, link to a digital campaign that offers customers further discounts in exchange for giving additional info like email address/phone number, set up a long-term strategy so you can get them to buy a year from now if they can’t buy today.
Use copy that matches your audience. Make sure that the paper stock is good, that the physical product is attractive—noone wants to respond to a shitty, badly designed flier on cheap paper, that the direct mail is what it pretends to be (there’s a special circle of hell for direct mail advertising that masquerades as bills or government notices) and that you have clear internal considerations of what the direct mail campaign is designed to do.
IRL Not Digital
Direct mail’s superpower is that its physical. A well-designed catalog can sit on a coffee table for weeks and a supermarket circular with coupons will be on a refrigerator magnet all week.
That never happens with digital advertising, which is ephemeral by nature.
Digital advertising and digital marketing gobbled up market share because it is easier to create, ideate and distribute than physical advertising methods. But sometimes there is a strong, strong value proposition for direct mail.
Create awesome direct mail marketing and advertising. Tie it to your digital campaigns. Use it to create something you couldn’t do with code. Go go go.
Feedback from Matt Gross: One thing to note re direct mail: It requires up-front investment—paper, design, post—and the revenue it generates may take a while (like, months) to come in. If cash flow is tight, companies may hesitate to get in on it. But if you can get it going cyclically—regular direct mail, not one-shot campaigns—then it makes for a good revenue strategy.