In Busier Holiday Mail Season, Get Creative to Stand Out

With the mailbox distractions of the election finally past, retail mailers can now focus on the challenge of grabbing recipient attention in a holiday direct mail season that is projected to be even busier than last year's. The U.S. Postal Service just announced that it expects to deliver roughly 15.5 billion cards, letters, flats and packages for the holiday period, with around 600 million packages delivered just between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, representing a 10.5% annual increase. The more successful mail efforts are likely to be those that stand out in the flood of promotions, so if you haven't already come up with something more creative for this year, take some inspiration from Target Marketing magazine's Summer Gould. Her recent article offered four ideas for spiking your creative's holiday punch. First, use direct mail's unique tactile advantages for more interactivity, she suggests, citing endless folds, scratch-and-sniff or coatings as fun options. While it's standard now to urge combining mobile with mail, Gould urges going beyond the standard QR code inclusion this year to augmented reality, a la Pokémon Go. She also pushes the envelope, so to speak, by advising consideration of a video direct mailer. This less-used idea is certainly a way to stand out--as long as you can figure out how to make the video both entertaining and promotionally effective. Finally, she supports holiday-inspired die cuts, a proven boon to postcard response but also a way to create more interactive, complex dimensional mailers. "We have even seen mail take on a whole new shape with each unfolded panel as you open it. This is fun for recipients and draws them into the mailer," she notes. To read her article, go to http://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/direct-mail-fun-for-the-holidays/

How Direct Mail Joins in Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is a strategy that sometimes has more buzz than sting, embraced by 88% of B2B marketers but with only 30% saying they are effective at it, per a 2016 MarketingProfs/Content Marketing Institute survey. But more than half of B2B marketers are planning to increase their budgets for content marketing, with a focus on digital delivery for social media content, case studies, blogs, e-letters, website articles, videos, white paper downloads, infographics, webinars, etc. Direct mail is notable by its absence. Yet we think it's a mistake to assume that mail can't fit into a content-oriented pull strategy to build leads and sales. The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as "a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience--with the objective of driving profitable customer action." That certainly works with direct mail, too. In fact, a recent business2community.com post by Yvonne Lyons, Right Source vice president of content marketing, cited five reasons to include direct mail as a content marketing tactic: 1) the unique ability of print to engage via design, dimension, and sensual appeal (color, texture, and even sound and scent); 2) targeting with mailing list selection and segmentation that is unmatched digitally; 3) trackable response devices; 4) integration with digital content via PURLs, QR and AR; 5) and high response rates--3.7% for a house list and 1% for a prospect list, compared to 0.62% for all digital channels combined. More specifically, Paul Bobnak, director of Who's Mailing What!, offers some great examples of mailers delivering content marketing's "valuable and relevant content for the defined audience," such as Williams-Sonoma and Trade Joe's. See his presentation at http://www.piworld.com/xchange/dm-spotlight/content-marketing-direct-mail/

When Mail Budgets Hold Steady, Innovators Spur Ahead

In a marketing landscape of digital growth, direct mail spending is holding its own, with 69% of marketers planning to increase or hold steady 2016 direct mail budgets, according to Target Marketing magazine's annual "Media Usage Survey." But direct mail success isn't guaranteed by simply staying the course, and marketers who want to break away from the pack can look for inspiration from a recent post by Tech.Co, a media company and events organization for startups, entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts, which suggests five innovative ways to use direct mail in 2016, including some real-life examples. Tech.Co's five areas for mail innovation: 1) use Augmented Reality (AR) apps to give 3D reality to products via videos and demos (or consider other mobile-enabled options like QR codes and Near Field Communication); 2) leverage free incentives and sampling opportunities, with eye-catching examples from the www.cloribus.com archives; 3) wow with great copy, as showcased by the D&AD agency's decade of award-winning examples; 4) grab mailbox attention with innovative design, going beyond No. 10 envelopes and postcards to oversized, dimensional or interactive mailers, as illustrated by a recent World Water Day piece only readable when wet; 5) finally, and most important in a digital-dominated marketing world, integrate direct mail into multichannel campaigns, avoiding the tendency to silo by channel. For the post and its examples, go to http://tech.co/innovative-ways-use-direct-mail-marketing-2016-01