By: Aaron Dalton

In sports, the winning teams often excel at more than one thing. Take football, for example. A great quarterback acting alone can have a big impact – but pair that quarterback’s skill with the speed of fleet-footed receivers or the shelter of immovable offensive linemen, and a team’s offense can seem unbeatable.

Similarly, marketers who have jumped wholeheartedly into e-mail communications have found that it helps to team the volume and reach of e-mail with the targeted efficiency of direct mail. One medium can deliver good results – but the two media working in tandem can often reinforce each other in beneficial ways.

ATX Communications, part of Broadview Networks, a voice and data communications service provider based near Philadelphia, has begun testing a new print-on-demand application called PrintMail, says ATX vice president of marketing Andrew Goldenberg. The Variable Data Printing (VDP) tool allows marketers to augment their e-mail strategies by doing online, real-time editing to a direct mail piece that their creative agency has pre-designed. For purposes of tracking and measurement, direct mail created via PrintMail can carry a personalized URL. Images and text can be swapped out based on the prospect’s company, industry or demonstrated interest in previous marketing messages.

Goldenberg says that his company has already seen that prospects who receive personalized e-mails are 300 percent more likely to accept appointments from ATX’s salespeople. But he also knows that it’s not possible to reach every customer or prospect via e-mail. “E-mail addresses are valuable commodities,” he admits. “With spam and identity theft, people are very protective of their e-mail addresses. Therefore, we are not able to reach via e-mail all the people we can communicate with through mail service.