Direct Mail Bloopers

When it comes to successful personalization, everything hinges on the database. It’s critical to keep your data clean and up to date. Here are some hilarious stories of what happens when you don’t. These true tales are taken from LinkedIn’s Direct Mail discussion group.

• The California Department of Health sent a direct mailing to 50,000 residents who receive adult day care. The addresses were right, but the envelopes contained a gift for identity thieves. Recipients’ Social Security numbers were printed right on the envelopes!
• A direct mail house did not properly de-dupe its client’s mailing list. When the mailing went out, one hapless recipient ended up with several hundred pieces of identical mail!
• At one women's college, many alumni prefer to have their mailing names listed as “Mrs.,” such as “Mrs. John Smith.” During one campaign, the mail house dropped the titles in the NCOA process and ended up sending the mailing to many of the alumni’s husbands instead.
• When the U.K.'s national airline was creating its passenger database, someone thought it would be funny to expand the passengers’ initials into military titles. So R. A. Smith became Rear Admiral Smith. The airline chairman received several letters from recipients requesting that they receive backdated pensions based on their elevated titles. It was funny until the data company had to hand search and correct every single title within 24 hours. All 50,000 of them.
• During one holiday season, a purveyor of fine meats and other food specialty items dropped 20,000 catalogs with an 800 number to call for faster service. Unfortunately, the number was wrong. Recipients ended up calling a funeral home.

We hope you get a few laughs out these stories, but there is very serious reason for sharing them. Data handling isn’t funny business. Talk to us before your next mailing to make sure your data is in the best shape it can be. 

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.  A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

Lana Turner

One-Two Punch Delivers Results

Want to increase the results of your direct mail campaigns? Try a combination of print and email. It’s a powerful “one, two” punch that can really deliver.

Why would having an email address make such a difference? Let’s look at three reasons.

• Customers who provide email addresses tend to be more engaged with your company. Not that providing the email address, in itself, makes the customer more engaged. It’s because they are more engaged that they are more likely to provide this information. An email address can be an indicator of engagement.
• Customers providing email addresses self-select themselves as being more receptive to your marketing.  By providing their email addresses, customers are telling you that they want to hear from you.
• Customers who provide their email addresses are more open to additional marketing “touches.” More touches means more results.

We see this two-step process producing results every day. By combining variable printing with email and an online registration process, one association, for example, was able to triple the attendance at its annual summer conference. In another example, a software manufacturer sent a follow-up email to non-responders to a print campaign, personalized using the same rules as the print mailer, and sales of its targeted products jumped 81%.

Of course, there are other elements to successful direct mail campaigns beyond using the dual punch of print and email. Still, this combination is a key aspect of many campaigns’ success. It’s no wonder that direct mail with email follow-up has become almost the de facto standard in multichannel marketing today.

Don’t have your customers’ email addresses? No worries. Web site registration, personalized URL campaigns and email list purchases are all techniques you can use to gather the missing information. Why not talk to us about expanding your next campaign to include email?

Jeff Lampert

Director of Marketing & Business Development

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."
--John D. Rockefeller