My love affair with Direct Mail

I have always enjoyed recieving mail. Who doesn't? But when I went away to university to study (in the days before email), mail became so much more important to me. It was a way to stay in touch with friends and family and the more elaborate and interesting my mail was, the more I valued it.

I began to make my mail to my friends more interesting too. I had friends in the Navy who were far from home like myself. I sent them mail -- not just letters but newspaper clippings and photos and things they would find interesting. They often told me that my mail would brighten the darkest day for them and they were often the envy of their crew mates.

And so started my life of sending out relevant mail.

My degree is in Marketing but it always seemed such a broad area of study to me. So with my last year of university approaching, I took a course on a topic that wasn't well known at the time... Direct Marketing.

It was almost as if a light had gone on. Here was a way of creating and executing marketing campaigns that had a method of tracking success! The reponses were measurable! I was hooked. And did everything possible to get as much background as possible in this area.

The one thing I've learned in life is that being focussed on your goal will help you achieve that goal. And I was almost obsessed with getting into the direct mail business. Which worked to my advantage because I found it hard to break into direct mail without having any experience.

Eventually though, perseverance paid off and I managed to get into an organization that was well known for it's direct marketing/direct mail practices. Six books for a dollar anyone?

I spent three years in the book business, supplementing my work experience by working towards a direct marketing certificate accredited by the Direct Marketing Association. But soon enough, I found the meagre wages I earned in the publishing industry weren't enough to pay my bills so I looked to broaden my experience.

The next phase in my career was moving to the world of advertising agencies. I quickly learned it was not as glamorous as the movies make it.

I was hired for my direct marketing background and the agency that hired me didn't yet have a direct marketing department. In fact, my supervisor and I were the direct marketing department and we were hired at the same time!

I learned a lot in the agency world. I was an account executive (aka "a suit") and I worked long hours and ran my butt off making the client and everyone else as happy as I could. But I also learned about the creative process and how an agency takes a briefing and creates wonderful (and sometimes bad) creative for their client.

In the end I also realized a few undeniable truths:

1. The agency may want to win awards but the client wants to win new customers.

2. No matter how creatively perfect something may be, the client will likely need to tweak it to fit their strategy, comply with their standards or fit properly with their brand. If you're lucky, the creative team won't pout or shout at you about the changes.

3. There is no job security in the agency. If your client isn't happy, you might as well start looking for a new job.

After two agency jobs, I was more than ready to move client side and have a nice stable job that didn't require 60 hour weeks.

I managed to secure a position with the largest financial institute in the country and had struck direct mail paydirt! Here was a company that sent out mail -- a LOT of mail -- and tested, and analyzed results (agencies often don't see results, the info is often proprietary)!

Everyone hates banks. But if you want to be in direct marketing, financial institutes are fabulous places to work for a number of reasons:

1. Big budgets. Banks have the budgets to do large scale direct mail programs that include test cells (and even no mail control cells)!

2. Banks have large client databases. Often, you may not even need to spend money on an outside list. Can you say cross-sell??

3. Direct mail expertise. The banks send out so much direct mail that they are often at the front of the pack on new techniques or direct mail advancements.

4. High standards. Being at a bank means you are highly regulated and very much a target for public opinion. That means you use every Do Not Solicit list there is, you don't send out inferior creative and you make sure there are no mistakes!

5. Normal hours. Work/life balance. Good wages. Good benefits. Stability. The list goes on....

I must be getting old. I say that because direct mail is no longer cutting edge. Mail is considered "snail mail" and social media is the newest thing Marketers are talking about.

But no matter how impressive those emails in my inbox, they still pale beside a well executed direct mail package in my inbox. I save those. I take them into my colleagues and I critique them. Because I love mail.