By: Neil Metviner

Pitney Bowes and direct mail: a match made in heaven, right? Absolutely. At Pitney Bowes, direct marketing is a critical component of our customer-acquisition strategy, particularly as we move deeper into the small-business segment of the market. Well over 80 percent of our new customers in the small-business market come to us through direct response.

We also use direct to service our customers and to continue to sell to them as well. Most of our small- business customers are not called on by field-sales reps, so we communicate with them by mail, phone and the Internet. We mail out annual catalogs from our supplies organization, through which we sell not only postage-related materials but other office supplies as well. We also use mail to communicate critical information. The recent postage rate change, for example, required timely and easily understandable communications. And we used the mail to report the rule changes to all of our customers.

What makes direct mail so effective is that it’s visual and graphic, which makes it particularly helpful when we’re trying to extend the brand, launch new products, or extend the functionality of existing ones.

For example, when we launched our mailstation™ product as a replacement for our Personal Post™ postage meter, we saw response rates go up markedly with direct mail because we were able to pictorially show the new product. So the power of mail told a story that couldn’t be replicated on the phone.

What’s more, our customers who respond to direct mail exhibit a higher degree of loyalty. Because they make the conscious decision to call us or to respond over the Internet, we get much greater buy-in. They become very qualified customers, they have little buyer’s remorse and a low cancellation rate.

We know they’re very interested because they’ve taken the time out of their day to respond: They’ve received the direct marketing piece and, at a time convenient for them, have taken control of the selling process. When you do outbound telesales, it’s the time and place of the seller’s choice, not the buyer’s. Direct mail isn’t nearly as intrusive.

But in order to stay relevant, direct mail needs to become part of an integrated approach to marketing. Most of our customers who respond to our direct marketing do so through a different channel. We get their attention through the mail, but we typically hear back from them on the phone or over the Web. It’s important to give customers that convenience: Direct mail lets them discover more about Pitney Bowes at their convenience, and telephone and the Internet give them the convenience of contacting us when they’re ready.

We’ve been very successful at acquiring customers with direct mail, but our future challenge is to continue to leverage direct mail as we move from a transactional sales model to more of a customer relationship-management approach.

Our job has become much more complicated than simply acquiring lists, running them through a modeling program, and counting the responses. The challenge becomes moving away from being campaign driven to more of a relationship-based model, and when you’re talking about 850,000 small businesses, that’s no mean feat.

As we expand, direct mail will remain a major component of the channel mix. It will continue to be a vital part of our customer communications.