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Right On Target
Measurable, tightly controlled,
and producing results, direct
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in a world gone digital
DIRECT MAIL
One key reason to
consider direct mail:
69.8 million people
in the U.S. will use
an ad blocker in 2016
M
cCann CEO Harris Diamond told
members of the mailing industry about
a typical day for most Americans during
the National Postal Forum in March.
“You come home from work, mail in one hand, cellphone in your pocket, and you sit down to go through
the mail. It’s an important moment in people’s lives and
one that presents great marketing opportunities,” he
explained. “McCann has identified a balance between
high-tech and high-touch. Vinyl record sales are up,
postcards are popular again, and companies are marketing portable printers to hook to your cellphones. There’s
hardly a trend that doesn’t work to mail’s advantage.”
Contrary to popular belief, direct mail is alive and
kicking. And kicking some more.
Millennials may be attached to their smartphone, but
they also love direct mail. Perhaps it’s digital overload,
perhaps it’s seeing their name splattered all over the
printed piece, or perhaps it’s the tactile sensation hold-
ing a physical object brings. Whatever the reason, direct
mail resonates with the cohort. The Direct Marketing
Association found that 22- to 24-year-olds are the most
likely to respond to a direct mail campaign.
Marketers love direct mail as well. For one thing, it
works. Direct mail is a tightly controlled message, delivered right into the hands of a target market. It isn’t
competing with website links or pop-up ads.
Meanwhile, 90% of emails you receive pretty much
look the same, but not so with direct mail. Today’s crop
of digital printers allows customized pieces to be produced in a myriad of shapes and sizes, made relevant to
the individual with variable images and text.
Direct mail is also highly measurable, touted as a
driver that activates other elements of an omnichannel
marketing campaign, such as email.
In this eBook, we explore how direct mail is being
used to great effect by modern marketers willing to
look outside the box — or perhaps by using that box.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CEO: Direct
3 McCann
Mail’s Moment Has
Come Again
Term Care
5 Long
Associates Gives Its
Direct Mail Program
a Digital Boost
Advancement
7 The
of Ad Blockers
Canyon
8 Anderson
Hits 200-Time
ROI Through
Direct Mail Video
Programmatic
9 Will
Direct Mail Be
the New Growth
Channel?
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 2
DIRECT MAIL
McCann CEO: Direct Mail’s
Moment Has Come Again
Harris Diamond may be biased about the merits of direct mail,
but he insists it’s approaching a renaissance
T
he opening of McCann
CEO Harris Diamond’s
remarks to members of
the mailing industry in
March at the National Postal Forum seemed to presage
a downer of a talk. He put up a slide
of a quote that read, “It’s a regrettable fact there is today a great waste in
this brand of advertising, which, when
well done, is so effective.” The quote,
referring to catalogs, was pulled from a
McCann brochure — from 1915.
There exists an “expanded territory” for direct mail, Diamond added,
“something we haven’t seen in years.”
But the point he wanted to make was
that demands for more effectiveness
from direct mail — hardly the cheapest way to engage with customers —
was not something new, just something
more complicated.
“Today’s media events are more
complex than they were 100 years ago.
There are many more hurdles due to
fragmentation,” he told the Nashville
gathering. “But in a world in which
people are endlessly bombarded with
electronic messages, direct mail is now
the most welcomed houseguest.”
As head of the U.S. Postal Service’s
AOR, Diamond gets paid to push the
positives of mail. But he presented research from his firm to help illustrate
direct mail’s enduring marketing value.
A McCann study, he noted, found
the average American spends 25 minutes a day with mail, something he has
dubbed the mail moment.
“You come home from work, mail
in one hand, cellphone in your pocket, and you sit down to go through the
mail. It’s an important moment in people’s lives and one that presents great
In a world in which people are
endlessly bombarded with electronic
messages, direct mail is now the
most welcome house guest
— Harris Diamond, McCann
marketing opportunities,” Diamond
said. “McCann has identified a balance
between high-tech and high-touch.
Vinyl record sales are up, postcards
are popular again, and companies are
marketing portable printers to hook to
your cellphones. There’s hardly a trend
that doesn’t work to mail’s advantage.”
The man who watches over a $7.5
billion a year agency then shared five
creative principles McCann follows
for effective marketing campaigns.
Future engineers who put it together,
turned it on, and tuned in to a dedicated station were offered commissions in
the Air Force.
Go where customers are
Reinventing the medium
See the world as customers see it. Don’t
be bound by traditional approaches.
“Look at Pope Francis. He went
out in street clothes at night to spend
time with the homeless, took selfies with young people in crowds,”
Diamond explained. “Now he wasn’t
marketing, but these acts served to
make sure the changes he was making were understood.”
Maximize your opportunities
to engage with consumers
Explore the many ways mail can engage with consumers that digital can’t.
Diamond pointed to the Australian
Air Force and a recruitment mailer it
sent to engineering students. It was
a box that consisted of the parts of a
radio, but no assembly instructions.
Use new technology to enhance
engagement and brand value
Diamond was bullish on the prospects
for mail and augmented reality.
“It’s a case of digital and paper
working together to enhance the experience,” he noted.
“Technology gives us so many opportunities to reach people, to require
them to take action. The time people
spend in the mail moment is an enormous opportunity to use technology
creatively,” Diamond said.
Focus on your relationship
with consumers in a digital age
There are limits to how much information consumers want to give marketers.
“When we send material to people,
we have to know they’re interested in
it,” he explained. “What the U.S. Postal
Service is doing (with data) is really going to increase the ability to reach people in the ways they want to be reached.
“From what we’re seeing, marketers
are recognizing and taking advantage
of how multifaceted mail really is.” n
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 3
DIRECT MAIL
WHAT WE DO BEST:
Japs-Olson Company is your direct mail production solution provider.
To receive our sample kit, text DM to 313131 or contact
Debbie Roth at [email protected] or 952-912-1440.
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 4
DIRECT MAIL
Long Term Care Associates Gives Its
Direct Mail Program a Digital Boost
The extended-care insurance marketer implemented a solution to turn handwritten
information into digital data and speed up its lead-distribution process. By Elyse Dupré
M
arketing shouldn’t
be an either-or industry. It’s
not
about deciding between either direct
mail or digital, or either conventional
or new-age methods. Marketers need
to leverage each channel’s strengths
and combine them to create a multichannel mix that packs a powerful
punch from every angle.
Long Term Care Associates (LTCA),
a national marketing organization for
extended-care insurance providers,
learned the benefits of fusing traditional tactics with modern technology
when it implemented a new solution to
make its direct mail lead distribution
process more efficient.
Switching between old and new
Before the internet, LTCA relied on
direct mail to promote its products.
The company worked with affinity
groups such as alumni associations or
professional clubs to send their members information about extended care,
as well as a quote and a reply card.
To turn these prospects into leads,
LTCA’s employees would manually
enter the data into the company’s database — a process Gary Forman, SVP
and cofounder of the organization, describes as time and labor intensive.
Then about 10 years ago, LTCA shifted much of its marketing efforts online and began targeting prospects via
email and pay-per-click ads. The company invested in technology, including
web-to-lead forms and Salesforce’s
CRM platform, and created a more integrated lead distribution system.
But over time, Forman realized the
digital space was becoming more
■
crowded, and he decided to revisit direct mail. Still, he wanted to find a way
to bring the efficiency of online marketing to the offline world. LTCA can receive tens to hundreds of direct mail response cards a day, and he didn’t want
to have to hire more people to manually
enter the information into its database.
“As we saw things opening back up
in direct mail, all of a sudden the light
went on,” Forman explains. “We need
to marry these two.”
So about a year-and-a-half ago,
LTCA implemented cloud data management platform Captricity to transform handwritten information into
digital data and speed up the lead
distribution process.
Combining the best of both worlds
Here’s how Captricity works: Through
the platform, LTCA can make an online template that matches the fields on
its direct mail response cards.
■
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 5
DIRECT MAIL
As we saw things opening back up in direct mail,
all of a sudden the light went on. We need to marry
these two (direct mail and digital)
— Gary Forman, Long Term Care Associates
For example, if a response card
asks customers for their name, phone
number, email address, and ZIP
Code, LTCA can create a template
that contains these corresponding
fields. Each of these digital fields then
has a matching database field.
So when LTCA receives a reply
card, it can scan the card into the
Captricity platform, turn the handwritten data into digital data, and immediately transport the data into its
Salesforce CRM system.
To ensure the data being uploaded
is accurate, Captricity supplements its
technology with human review. Once
the data is in the CRM system, LTCA
can use it to build mailing lists or share
the information with its sales agents to
have them follow up with a lead.
Today, LTCA generates about
25% of its leads through direct mail,
and the company has reduced the
amount of time it spends on manual data entry for its direct mail program by 80%.
Forman believes the speed at
which the company processes this
information has helped it earn a return on its investment.
“Anything that shortens that time
frame for us is gold,” he notes. “It just
gives the client less time to go somewhere else to get the information or
inform themselves and become unsold or just become uninterested.”
Still, he knows one channel cannot
do it all and continues to rely on a
combination of direct mail, email, and
pay-per-click marketing to drive ROI.
“It’s always been a balance of trying to operate at the sweetest spot in
each of those markets and keep the
ROI good in all of them,” he explains.
“You can’t just shift to only one
market because, at some point, you
lose the sweet spot and it becomes a
little less receptive.” n
Reaching the right markets
Still, Forman recognizes that direct
mail can be expensive.
So, he relies on segmentation to ensure his campaigns reach the people
who are most likely to buy extendedcare insurance.
For example, the average age of a
long-term care buyer is 58, he says.
Therefore, the company primarily
sends direct mail pieces to people who
are close to that age.
However, when it comes to email
marketing, the company can afford
to send digital communications to
people who fall within a much broader age range.
“I think that’s just being good stewards of the marketing budget, trying not to overextend ourselves, and
sort of operate within the space that
we know that we can be successful,”
Forman explains.
■
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 6
DIRECT MAIL
The Advancement of Ad Blockers
Almost 70 million Americans will use an ad blocker
this year, according to recent data. By Elyse Dupré
S
orry advertisers, but there’s
no blocking this trend.
Recent data from research
provider eMarketer shows that
69.8 million Americans will
use an ad blocker this year — a 34.4%
increase over 2015.This figure is expected to increase to 86.6 million in 2017.
So, what exactly is an ad blocker? Ad
blockers, according to the research, are
“software utilities installed on an internet-connected device — including
a mobile device — specifically for the
purpose of removing the advertising
content of a web page or app, thereby restricting certain ads from being
served or viewed.”
The population of ad block users is
growing, too. Recent estimates project
26.3% of U.S. internet users will leverage an ad blocker this year.
Consumers can block ads across
their devices. For example, 63.2 million
people will use an ad blocker on their
desktop or laptop this year, according
to a recent report, and 20.7 million will
US Ad Blocking Users and Penetration, 2014-2017
86.6
61.5%
26.3% of U.S. internet
Ad blocking was estimated
to cost publishers nearly
51.9
30.7%
eMarketer estimates that
users will leverage an
ad blocker this year
69.8
39.7
use one on their smartphone. There is
overlap between the groups.
To put it another way, 90.5% of users block ads on their desktops and
laptops, versus 29.7% who block ads
on their smartphones.
But mobile is gaining traction.
According to the recent data, the
number of people using ad blockers on
their smartphone will increase 62.3%
this year compared to a 30.1% increase
in people using ad blockers on their
desktop or laptop.
34.4%
32.0%
$22 billion in 2015
There are currently
15.7%
2014
20.0%
2015
Ad blocking users (millions)
26.3%
24.0%
198 million ad
block users in the world
2016
% change
2017
% of internet users
Note: internet users of any age who access the internet at least once per
month via any device (including a mobile device) with an ad blocker
enabled
Source:
eMarketer,
June 2016
Source:
eMarketer,
June 2016
211609
www.eMarketer.com
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 7
DIRECT MAIL
Anderson Canyon Hits 200-Time
ROI Through Direct Mail Video
The architectural design firm generated a significant return on its investment
by sending direct mail video players to a small pool of executives. By Elyse Dupré
M
arketing doesn’t have
to be grand to be
great. Architectural
design firm Anderson Canyon solidified this notion when it generated a
nearly 200-time ROI from a $1,300
direct mail campaign.
Designing a new strategy
Renate Jones, marketing and office manager for Anderson Canyon,
wanted to run a campaign to attract
the attention of C-suite executives at
multi-family builder companies, but
she didn’t want to rely on traditional
cold-calling or email techniques and
run the risk of having these executives’
“gatekeepers” disregard her outreach.
After researching her options, Jones
decided to turn to direct mail to stand
out. So, in August 2015, she reached
out to UviaUs — a company that integrates video with direct mail — to create direct mail video players that would
be sent to 14 prospects unfamiliar with
Anderson Canyon’s services.
“It just made sense to hand-select
these people than just blanket the city,”
Jones explains, citing budget constraints as one of the primary reasons
for targeting a smaller group.
■
An effective direct mail piece
By working with UviaUs and video
content producer Shakr, Anderson
Canyon was able to create customized
direct mail pieces that featured video
players inside of a branded package.
Recipients could click a button on the
player to watch a video showcasing the
company’s portfolio.
In addition to the video, Anderson
Canyon included a personalized letter
■
explaining why it was reaching out and
what it could offer.
The letter also included a call-toaction inviting recipients to set up
meetings with Anderson Canyon’s
team or speak with someone at the
upcoming Great Houston Builders
Association Prism Awards — an event
where Anderson Canyon would be
recognized as a finalist for its work.
The letter further explained an Anderson Canyon representative would
follow up with the recipient if the company did not receive a response.
Finally, Anderson Canyon put a QR
code on the video player to direct recipients to its website.
Instead of targeting
100,000 people, identify
your top 1,000
— Jaycen Thorgeirson,
UviaUs
Canyon intends to send more of these
video mailers in the future.
As for those looking to replicate
Anderson Canyon’s success, Jaycen
Thorgeirson, founder and CEO of
UviaUs, advises marketers to focus
on developing content that’s tailored
for the specific medium and to experiment with channels where few marketers are playing. Instead of sending
this content to all of their prospects,
he notes, marketers should focus on
the ones most likely to convert to
reserve resources.
“Instead of targeting about
100,000 people, why not
identify your top 1,000?”
he asks. “(They’re) the people that you know are your
ideal customer, rather than
hedging your bets on sending mass amounts of content
and then looking at the leads
and saying, ‘Is this really the
best marketing-qualified lead
or sales-qualified lead that I
The company sent out a direct mail video player
have delivered?’” n
Building results
The campaign, which officially
launched that September, delivered
significant ROI. Out of the 14 people Anderson Canyon mailed, two
responded to the piece. Of these two
respondents, one signed a deal worth
about $258,000. If the other deal,
worth about $441,000, goes through,
the campaign will have generated nearly $700,000 in business opportunities.
As a result, Jones says that Anderson
■
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 8
DIRECT MAIL
Will Programmatic Direct Mail
Be the New Growth Channel?
Martech impresario Lewis Gersh strikes out on his own
with what he envisions as a multibillion-dollar business
L
ewis Gersh is well known
on the marketing technology scene as an investor,
and he’s placed several
winning bets in that regard: Madison Logic, Indiegogo, Sailthru, and Tapad, just to name a few.
But the funder of startups in
cross-channel marketing, personalization, and retargeting left his full-time
VC gig to run his own company. What
breakthrough digital technology would
make the 48-year-old leave the strategy room? Programmatic direct mail.
Billion-dollar proposition
PebblePost, for which Gersh serves
as CEO, has secured a trademark on
that term. He sees his digitally reactive
version of direct mail as a billion-dollar
proposition, a new channel that blends
the scale of digital with the efficacy of
direct to lift digital marketers to stratospheric heights of engagement.
“Programmatic was sweeping through
display, but it was getting overdone and
efficacy was falling. PebblePost was
born out of that,” Gersh explains. “Everybody looked at anything but direct
mail as a solution. But direct mail is second only to TV in marketing expenditures, and no new products have come
out in direct mail for 25 years.”
■
PebblePost launched in June 2015
on a promise of 8% response rates and
15% conversion rates. After its first five
customers posted rates closer to 20%
and 40%, respectively, Gersh notes, he
knew he was on to something.
PebblePost is run on an ad server
that is activated by customer-determined hierarchies such as product segments. For example, should a customer go to a retailer website, look at some
shirts and blazers, and then leave without purchasing, a 4-by-6-inch postcard with an offer on apparel could
be sent out within 24 hours. Of course,
the retailer must have the consumer’s
physical address on file.
“We’ve built the first server connecting digital with direct mail,” Gersh
maintains. “This was really enabled
by the printing machine manufacturers. This is a cool extension of variable
data printing.”
Gersh now states he has more than
100 brands engaged in real-time, reactive direct mail.
One of them is Boxed, an online retailer of consumer packaged goods in
bulk sizes. It is a true multichannel
marketer, using Facebook, Instagram,
email, and desktop and mobile display
ads, as well as direct mail, for customer
activation. Boxed sees itself as “Costco
PebblePost launched on a promise of 8%
response rates and 15% conversion rates.
After its first five customers posted rates
closer to 20% and 40%, respectively, CEO
Lewis Gersh knew he was on to something
Direct mail advertising
in the U.S. draws revenue
of $12
billion
Source: IBISWorld
Direct mail achieves a
3.7% response rate
with a house list, and a
1.0% response rate
with a prospect list.
All digital channels
combined achieve a
.62% response rate
Source: 2015 DMA Response Rate Project
Cost-per-acquisition for
direct mail stands at $19,
compared to $16-$18
for mobile and social
media, $21-$30 for
paid search, $41-$50
for internet display, and
$11-$15 for email
Source: 2015 DMA Response Rate Project
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 9
DIRECT MAIL
Programmatic was sweeping through display,
but it was getting overdone and efficacy was falling.
PebblePost was born out of that
— Lewis Gersh, PebblePost
Online,” and because it’s often easier for
customers to just stop by the warehouse
club on the way home from work, the
e-commerce has been focusing on reengagement strategies. A good number
of its customers have lapsed and it’s difficult to re-engage with them.
“We started testing PebblePost targeting our unsubscribe list. Many of them
have unsubscribed in the past 60 days
and have come back to the website but
not made a purchase,” explains Nitasha Mehta, senior marketing manager at
Boxed. “Prior to PebblePost, we didn’t
have a way to engage with them. It’s been
groundbreaking for us.”
Higher conversion rates
Mehta says conversion rates via
PebblePost have been running six times
higher than those Boxed sees from
emails. She adds the company is feeling its way around programmatic direct
mail, but she thinks higher conversions
might have something to do not only
with the surprise factor of mail retargeting, but also with increased impressions
for the postcards.
“One email sent is one impression,
but one postcard sent is likely to receive
several impressions among members of
a household,” explains Mehta, who is
currently preparing a March Madnessthemed PebblePost campaign.
A big differentiator between programmatic direct mail and triggered direct
mail, says Gersh, is real-time metrics and
campaign management. PebblePost users
get a dashboard they can check to see the
volume of mail sent, response and conversion rates, and return on ad spend.
■
“You could never do this before on direct mail,” notes PebblePost CMO David Cooperstein.
Both Gersh and Cooperstein say programmatic direct mail remains in its formative stages, and more can be expected
of it in years ahead, such as third-party
access to physical addresses. As more
customers come on board, PebblePost
will continue to add breadth to the address cloud it’s constructing and validate
addresses as specific users of clients.
Then programmatic mail will shed its
reliance on first-party access and users
will be able to mail to unknown website
users without taking ownership of their
names and addresses. Of course, they’ll
be able to capture them if they convert.
“We’ll have ownership of the address
and won’t give it to the client. It’s like
when someone does a search and clicks
on a link for an item. The retailer doesn’t
know who it is, though Google may
know,” Cooperstein explains.
PebblePost’s reception in the marketing
community far exceeded his expectations,
Gersh notes. Brand marketers love it because they can load it into their programmatic budgets, digital agencies see it as a
natural extension of both programmatic and retargeting, and traditional direct
mailers employ it as a way to eliminate
some of the waste in an expensive channel.
“We have a product roadmap for
PebblePost that goes out five years,”
says Gersh, the digital era version of
Victor Kiam, the former president of
Remington Products, who proclaimed in
ads he was so impressed by its razors he
bought the company. “We’re looking at
multibillions in revenue.” n
According to the Direct
Marketing Association,
direct mail expenditures
in the U.S. are expected to
rise to $196 billion
by 2016, representing a
3.8% compound annual
growth rate from 2011
More households read
advertising mail now than
they did 25 years ago
Despite the myth that
direct mail is for an older
audience, the DMA found
22- to 24-year-olds are
the most likely to respond
to a direct mail offer
dmnews.com | Direct Mail 10