How does mail work with blogging? How do you make an ad last 20 years? Rory Sutherland explores the non-traditional strengths of a traditional medium.
1. Testing and measurement
New? Hasn’t this always been the most trumpeted virtue of mail as a medium? Yes. The only problem was that a traditional obsession with response rates has long hobbled the mail medium with small-time metrics and an obsession with immediate transactional response. In a multi-channel age, where people don’t necessarily respond to mail in easily trackable ways, this had become dangerous: mere coupon-counting can both fail to record many immediate responses while neglecting to record long-term effects at all.
But it needn’t be that way. If you have a customer database or a loyalty programme you now can track long-term customer behaviour and value – one customer at a time. That means you now see the longer term pay-off of any addressable communication. The effects of this can be startling.
In one test, loyalty card data showed us that the actual return on a mailing was eight times higher than previously thought. Why? Recipients to the mailing were buying the products without bothering to redeem the vouchers.
With mail you know who has received your message and – just as important – who hasn’t. By and large, it's then easy to compare the behaviour of the two groups, giving the hard-pressed marketing man true accountability.
But be careful not to use 20th-century measures to appraise 21st-century marketing. 'Not everything that counts can be counted; not everything that can be counted counts.'
Measurement is how you know your mail is working. But testing is how you discover what works, or what could work better. The freedom mail gives you to work with small, discrete test cells is liberating, as it gives you permission to be far braver.
2. Money and information
Every customer has two things of value: money and information. If they don’t want to give you any of the first, ask for some of the second. When you use mail, market research is already included in the price.
3. The chance to transact – and to be personal
You can sell things from mail and catalogues with an efficiency not even online channels can match…
But, just as important, you can use mail not to sell things. You can say thank you or sorry. You can say goodbye or welcome back. It’s called a relationship. Maybe you even value your customers as human beings, not as wallets on legs. Wonders will never cease.
4. Timeliness
Perhaps your target audience isn’t a 'who' at all. Maybe it’s a 'when'. Maybe you have a target moment instead. Mail lets you target individual timelines, not just collective ones – birthdays as well as Christmas. People who have just bought a house. People whose insurance is up for renewal. People who are getting married – or divorcing.
People also have a moment in the day – or week – which they reserve for 'dealing with stuff'. Paying bills, answering queries, organising their holidays. Miraculously your mail advertising reaches them at precisely this moment.
5. Personalisation
With digital print, it’s perfectly possible to have as many creative variations in a mailing as there are people reading it. Microsoft recently wrote to people showing an aerial photograph of their business.
6. Flexible and creative messaging
Do you want a 30-second mailing or a 30-minute mailing? The space and time constraints of other media don’t apply to mail. Need to show a range not a single product? Or need to talk about the intricacies of a financial product? No problem – you can be as detailed, precise, expansive, loquacious, articulate or circumlocutory as you want.
Or as brief.
7. Attention-grabbing
High attention processing (HAP) means people pay attention to the post. Sure, they chuck some of it away – we don’t deny it. But when they open it they look at it. Mail is unusual like that. You can’t read your post while surfing the web or driving a car. Even if just for a minute, you do gain someone’s undivided attention.
8. Keepability, tangibility and texture
Most ads last 30-seconds. Send someone something they want to keep and you have an ad which lasts 20 years. In a virtual world it’s nice to experience a little reality. Something you can touch, feel and even smell.
And pass on to someone else.
9. It’s cost-effective - whether cheap or expensive
The simple doordrop is still the least expensive way to reach every household in the country. On the other hand, you can send elaborate mail which looks a million dollars and costs a little less. Why? Well, it shows you care.
And it gets talked about. One US agency routinely produces mailings costing $100 or more per head. The target audience? Bloggers. Mail one person nowadays and a million people may get to hear about it.
10. It translates intentions into action
On a final, serious, note, most charities in the UK depend on mail for their existence. That’s not because other media can’t do a great job persuading people to save the whale or the planet. It’s because no medium can match mail for translating soft opinions into hard action.