Dead Letters
There are lots of ways for communications to go astray. On the digital side these often involve drop-offs and gopher holes in the network supporting the medium. My fellow Direct staffer Ken Magill is probably tired of writing about the problems of maneuvering e-mail through deliverability thickets. On the Web, where communication is as much pull as push, the debate continues over whether real customers are at the back end of all those ad clicks.
I don’t think I’m being sensitive when I say that direct mailers have sometimes been a bit smug in their attitude toward these digital difficulties. The view I’ve sometimes encountered from traditional DMers has been that while their messages may not have been acted upon or even read, at least there was little doubt they got through.
But inspirational slogans about rain, snow and the dark of night aside, is anyone holding a yardstick to the U.S. Postal Service?
In March, I conducted a little homegrown postal experiment using my own mailbox as a test bed. I’d just come through a holiday season in which I got an inordinate number of catalogs and mailings intended for my neighbors, and I wanted some empirical evidence about the accuracy rate of our men and women in blue-gray.
During the month, I received 136 pieces of mail, including letters, bills, magazines, catalogs, and direct mail of all types, from car-wash coupons and
