Hey, we get it! Times have changed. We’re in the 2020’s now! Killing trees and burning dead dinosaurs to deliver colorful pieces of paper to unsuspecting companies just for them to immediately toss them into the recycle bin to start the whole process over is sooooo 1987. Electronic communication is where it’s at, baby! You gotta hit ‘em with sponsored search results, social media posts, paid online ads, and spam emails. We all click on those Google ads, right? Everyone opens those strange emails, right? They totally do! Right?

 

In marketing, nothing is more important than getting noticed. That’s kind of the whole point of marketing – combining compelling messaging with eye-catching design in an effective communication vehicle to create awareness for a product or service. And while companies work hard to ensure their messaging and aesthetics resonate with their target audiences, how to get in front of those eyeballs has always been a challenge. Luckily, companies have more ways to reach potential customers than ever before with many of those ways being cheap or even free. It costs nothing to post to a social media account. And, let’s face it, there’s little mystery to where people’s eyeballs are these days. They’re pointed at a screen. So, companies would be remiss if they didn’t try to carve out a small piece of that screen real estate in hopes of enticing a curious click. But just because it’s there, doesn’t mean it’s getting seen.

 

“Rising above the noise” would be a buzzy phrase if not for the fact that it’s been hanging around marketing and business circles forever. It really does eloquently describe the challenge, though. When every company out there is competing for views, likes, and – ultimately – clicks, being just another post, ad, or email in the feed…well, that’s just more noise. And instead of spending a lot of time and effort trying to rise above that noise, companies might have better luck exploring marketing channels that are less noisy.

 

Remember “The Road Not Taken,” that Robert Frost poem we all read back in junior high school? In the poem, Frost’s narrator, when confronted with two diverging paths, describes choosing the one that appeared less traveled. In the last 20 years or so, printed communications have taken a backseat to electronic communications. In most cases, rightly so. But in that paradigm shift, businesses have created marketing channels that are less traveled. Direct mail is a perfect example. Information packs, postcards, and letters once did the heavy lifting when it came to marketing message delivery. And while direct mailers are still a thing with everybody sifting through some amount of junk mail on a semi-daily basis, they’ve largely fallen out of favor with company marketing departments.

 

Direct mail is still a powerful tool in any marketing professional’s toolbox. Admittingly, it’s not the MOST powerful tool anymore, but when used as part of a multi-channel marketing campaign that includes email, social posts, and online ads, it could be the difference between getting noticed or not. Why? Because that road less traveled is also less noisy. A person might see a hundred online marketing posts today, but only a few direct mail pieces. In fact people today are getting less mail overall, so a marketing mailer will likely be in a pretty short stack. And people will leaf through that stack one by one. They have to. Nobody wants to risk throwing away something important. So, a direct marketing piece will command a captive audience for at least a few seconds and, if it’s a highly targeted piece, might even get spared from the recycle bin.

 

Direct mail does have its drawbacks. It can be fairly expensive when you factor in printing costs and postage. Also, you only get one shot and, once you’ve shot that shot, it’s shot. A social media post, on the other hand, is not only cheap to produce, it can be used over and over again, shared across multiple accounts, reused on different platforms, posted as a story, and boosted or turned into an ad. But, that one shot you get with direct mail? It’s a quality shot. The most basic measurement of an online ad or post is an “impression.” That's just the number of times it’s displayed – not read, clicked, or interacted with – just the number of times it appears on a screen. So shown, but not necessarily seen. With a direct mailer, you can argue that every time it’s shown, it’s definitely seen – even if just to make sure it’s safe to throw away.

 

So to better be seen and heard amongst the vast sea of online ads and social media posts, companies and marketing departments should dust off their direct mail machines. And if they really want to get sneaky, and who doesn’t, they might want to consider stuffing their pieces in some plain white envelopes. Absolutely NOBODY wants to take a chance on tossing an envelope without knowing what’s inside!