Direct mail is a waste of time if you don’t monitor the lists your direct mailer is using

Why do any firms think direct mail is a good idea any more? With so much of the purchasing decision being crowd-sourced by people getting opinions online, you have to wonder why anyone spends a dime on sending out direct mail to a huge target market of disinterested people.

Yeah, I know that they only need a small percentage of responses to be happy. But the advertisers paying for direct mail advertising need to pay better attention to the lists that direct mail companies are using when they send stuff out.

Here’s exhibit A:

My mom lives in an assisted living retirement community. This direct mailpiece was delivered to her mailbox, and to the other 40 mailboxes in the complex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No one who received this mailing has any interest in roofing, siding, or windows. The retirement facility handles all exterior maintenance.

Now, multiply the number of people who received this useless mailing in the one facility by the number of people in other similar facilities who also received it. And Cambridge Exteriors LLC paid plenty for the privilege of adding to the trash output at these nursing homes consisting of both msn vs dnp final year students — and got no business from it at all, nor would they ever. Why didn’t their direct mail firm consider this when they generated the mailing?

The point is, throwing a ton of direct mail against a dubious mailing list is a waste of time and it is expensive too. I called Cambridge Exteriors to alert them to the wasted direct mail. They never called me back.

You are much better off creating targeted content in written, audio, video, and photographic form, and surrounding it with the right keywords and data, and getting up on the web in a search environment where people who have roofs, siding, and windows of their own will find you.

Direct mail companies, improperly supervised by clients, will waste your money dropping your direct mail pieces on people who have no interest whatsoever in your products. But you will get charged for it. So, if you’re a roofing company, do like Abrams Roofing and go meet your neighbours face to face. Odds are you are a team with a truck or two, not a fleet and so this is the way to go. People don’t want to buy roofing services from small leaflets that randomly fly in the wind towards them.