Postal marketing

In 2015, Royal Mail undertook a landmark research project where it tracked what happened to a letter or leaflet after it was delivered through someone’s door.  They set up hidden cameras in people’s homes, interviewed hundreds of families and even scanned people’s brain activity as they opened their post!  The study was called ‘The Private Life of Mail’ and you can still download it from the Royal Mail website.  On average, a piece of advertising printed on paper and posted through someone’s door is kept for 17 days.  That’s three and a half weeks of your message hanging about and getting seen.  21% of advertising mail gets shared around the household.  In comparison, how many people do you think forward your marketing emails?  People spend dedicated time reading something that is posted out to them.  Why?  Because it’s now quite novel to receive something in the post.  We still like tactile.  Digital can generate many emotions but it doesn’t allow us to hold something in our hands.

People are more likely open a letter than an email.  Send someone a package with their name on it and it’s not going into spam.  Put a leaflet through the doors of your local businesses or households and it will get picked up and at least scanned over.  I’ve found myself reading the most banal things that have been stuffed into my postbox.  I’ve read window cleaners’ adverts from front to back waiting for the lift to an apartment, even though I lived in a complex where window cleaning was included.  I’ve read flyers for pre-paid funeral plans for the over 60s whilst waiting for the kettle to boil.  These companies have managed to get my undivided attention whereas their email would have never made it to my conscious mind.  Imagine if it was something I was actually interested in or if I was in their target market – they would have had me!

But that is the problem with offline marketing.  It’s not targeted.  If I take an advert on a billboard then I’m paying for a lot of people to see it – even though the majority of them are not the people I want to talk to.  I can pick a well-to-do area of my local town and put leaflets through the door, but I have no idea who is on the other side.  I don’t know if they even qualify for what I’m selling, never mind if they would even be interested.  This is why it’s called junk mail.  To 90% of the people who receive it it’s irrelevant, it’s junk.

Leafleting still has its place, especially if you are involved in activism or if you have a local business that you know a wide range of people will buy from.  If you are opening a new greengrocers or offering home IT support, then posting as many leaflets as you can (sustainably printed, of course) through local letterboxes will likely generate business.  But what if you could bring the two together?  What if you could take the targeting of digital marketing – where you only pay to talk to those you know are most likely to be interested – and then combine that with someone receiving something in the post?  Well, you can.  And this is where online and offline go hand-in-hand to really capture a customer.  If you are using email marketing software that ranks your contacts by how much they interact with the emails you have sent them, then you already have a list of people to target through other methods.  I have used this brilliantly in the past: MailChimp will tell you which of the people on your mailing list seem the most engaged (ie they opened all your emails and regularly clicked through to read more on your website) so you can take the top 10 every month and send them something in the post.  Maybe you can send them a free sample, or a package, or a brochure about a specific service, or a special discount code or invitation to chat.  You can follow this up with a call to see if they are interested, or email them to see if they received it.  Or why not send them something really fun but which relates to your business, like an inflatable banana?  Tell them to send you a photo of them waving it, and keep connecting your offline and online marketing.

You can also use post to get the attention of someone you have singled out who you really want to work with.  It might be a single high-value customer such as the director of a company, who you know will never answer your emails.  If you can find out their address then you can run a marketing campaign aimed at a single person.  Create a series of leaflets and send them one a week for a month, with the final one being a sample of your product or an invite to talk further about your service.  Get creative.  Photo printing websites let you print your photo on a small wooden slab – instead of a photo get your marketing messages printed on them as a series and send them one-by-one to your target contact so they can keep them on their desk.  Make them cryptic so that the real message only becomes clear when you send the last one.  Or, pick out a number of managers and decision-makers at a single target company (LinkedIn is great for researching this) and send them all something remarkable.  At the very least, when you call or email (or send a LinkedIn request) later they will already be familiar with your brand and more likely to engage with you.  Yes, there’s more of a cost to all this than sending an email, so know when to use it – but it will really get you noticed where an email won’t.