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Another Day, Another Mailer

After rushing to the mail box to retrieve the day’s delivery, I am, yet again, both disappointed and amazed. Disappointed that the fistful of envelopes isn’t brimming with scholarship awards and amazed at the proliferation of mail coming from every university on the planet.

You see, I have in my household what is known as a “rising senior”. Why they call him a rising senior is a mystery since he never rises before noon in our house. But, be that as it may, he is a hot commodity on the college circuit. A high score on his SAT appears to be his ticket in to Yale, Oxford, Harvard and the like. Of course, they don’t bother to talk about tuition payment plans in these introductory mailings!

What strikes me is that there are massive amounts of spending taking place for marketing to prospective students and they are doing it all wrong! First, right on the SAT test form is a spot for students to note their area of interest. (My son’s is computer information technology.) Wouldn’t it make sense for colleges and universities to make note of this area of interest and market to it? Yet we continue to receive expensive mailings from schools that don’t offer a major or minor in computer science or anything even close!

Then there are the schools whose internal data systems are so fouled up they don’t know which end is up. Take Virginia Tech, for example. We visited them months ago but we keep getting letters from the Director of Admissions inviting us for a tour! For a school to impress an incoming freshman interested in Computer Science, shouldn’t their internal data systems work pretty seamlessly?

Then there are those that get everything right. That would be Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Ranked number one by U.S. News and World Report in their 2006 America’s Best Colleges guidebook for their undergraduate engineering program, Rose-Hulman took a humorous approach that appealed to young men. Dubbed Operation Catapult, the illustration-based mailings led high school juniors through the steps of discovering, choosing and applying to the college.

Lest you think I am bashing direct mail, allow me to share some pertinent statistics that reinforce the concept that direct mail, when executed in a targeted, timely fashion, is an extremely successful tactic. Recent research by the U.S. Postal Service® reveals that recipients look forward to receiving and interacting with their mail, which makes the mail a valuable high-touch marketing opportunity. The USPS® survey explored attitudes about mail in the workplace and the home. Key consumer findings include:

• Consumers are eager to see what’s in their mail. More than half the respondents said that receiving mail is a “real pleasure” and that they “look forward” to discovering what’s in their mail: 98 percent bring their mail in on the day it’s delivered and 77 percent sort it immediately.
• Home mail is handled and sorted by the household decision maker. The person who handles the mail is typically the principal grocery shopper (84 percent), the person who pays the household bills (81 percent) and the one who determines what mail to keep and what to toss (90 percent).
• People appreciate commercial messages that arrive in the mail. About 55 percent look forward to discovering what’s in their mail, and 67 percent say mail is more personal than the Internet. They use it to learn about new products or services, to manage the household and to oversee their finances.

As far as business direct mail, key findings include:

• Mail reaches business professionals. Business mail doesn’t get screened as aggressively as e-mail is filtered.
• Businesspeople keep useful mail in a mail “library” — a file or drawer, or on a bulletin board.
• Mail helps people make decisions. When it’s time to make a purchase, find a supplier or attend a professional event or training, professionals may turn to their mail libraries.
• Mail communicates and generates response. It can drive web traffic or allow recipients to respond offline with a Business Reply Mail card.

The point is this—don’t waste time, money and the risk of annoying your recipients on meaningless direct mail. Use a targeted approach, incorporate meaningful content, and make every effort to engage your reader in dialogue. That’s what gets results in direct mail marketing.

Source: Beckwith, Sandra. Deliver Magazine. Dec. 2006.

Related content:

1. Is Direct Mail Dead?
2. Accent direct mail
3. Getting A Good Fit

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