Printers, envelope makers, lend me your ears. I come bearing good news: Direct mail is here to stay.
I realized this as I re-searched a piece on greeting cards recently for our sister online newsletter CM Plus (www.chiefmarketer.com).
For greetings, paper clearly is where it's at. Overall, Americans purchase nearly 7 billion greeting cards every year, generating $7.5 billion in retail sales, according to the Greeting Card Association (GCA). And Hallmark says that for Valentine's Day alone — the second biggest card holiday following Christmas — some 188 million cards are exchanged, not including those little cards schoolchildren buy in packs to exchange at school.
Think about your own habits. What holds more weight, a paper card someone took the time to go to the store and buy, or an e-card they found and sent online between other e-mails?
Maybe it's something about a card's tactile nature. You can post it on your wall, prop it up on your mantel. You just can't do that with an e-card, no matter how cute the animated singing cats it featured were.
I don't know about your household, but I think the same principle applies to paper mail. No, I'm not going to pin the 25 direct mail credit card offers I get weekly to my refrigerator. But I do give them a bit more consideration than similar come-ons that hit my e-mail inbox. My delete-button trigger finger is much more of a quick draw than my “flip into the recycling bin” wrist (carpal tunnel, don't ya know).
The GCA says the average person receives more than 20 cards each year. I have no idea how many I receive, but it's more than that, thanks to the many friends and family on my December holiday card list. Still, no matter how many cards I get I open and read each one.
How many e-cards come my way? Not many. I have a few friends who are fond of sending them, but I don't always rush to open them, if I do at all. In the past year alone I've almost missed two important party invitations sent via e-cards because they didn't seem to convey any urgency. (And one, quite honestly, looked like spam.)
So friends, I don't think we need to send paper mail a sympathy card quite yet. And here's a tip, free of charge. No matter what the occasion — birthdays, Mother's Day, Groundhog Day — nothing perks up a card like a $5 bill. Or a check. Bonds are nice, too, and so much more personal than PayPal.
