Direct Mail: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

My mailbox has been a fertile source of blogging inspiration during the last week.

The Good. A small green envelope with vaguely familiar handwriting stood out from the stack of bills when I walked back from getting the mail one morning. It didn’t have a return address and the postage included a 41 cent stamp and a one-cent stamp. Intrigued by the personal look and hefty feel — I could tell there was something substantial inside — I opened it first. Inside, was a page that seemed to have been torn out of a local newspaper, with a yellow sticky note attached. “Joseph,” it read in the same handwriting as on the envelope. “I’ll make you an awesome deal.” It was signed by someone named “Cory.” Only then did I realize this was a carefully crafted direct mail piece sent on behalf of a local car dealership. I haven’t been called “Joseph” since third grade and I don’t know anyone by the name of Cory. The “newspaper” page was actually an ad for the dealership’s Grand Opening Sale. Kudos to whoever designed and executed that piece. It didn’t make me buy a car but it sure made me aware of their sale.

The Bad. The jumbo postcard for a company advertising its trash hauling services was attractive enough. It had all the right elements: it caught my attention, it had a powerful offer and a strong call to action. Only one problem: I live in a community where our trash is collected by the municipality. We don’t get a choice of haulers. If they sent the same postcard to all 2,500 households in the borough, that’s huge waste of money.

The Ugly. A local Realtor sent a postcard touting his success in a tough market. Unfortunately, he cited sales data that was a year old, misidentified a local landmark and had 11 — count ‘em 11 — spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. Didn’t do much to enhance his reputation as a “someone who will pay attention to every detail of your deal.”

The moral? If you’re going to do direct mail, go the extra mile to make it memorable. And if you keep it simple, at least target the right market and use spellcheck!

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