Our tongue-in-cheek video tackles the age-old question and showcases a buffoonish marketing gnu who stumbles his way through one invalid point after another.

Do not — we repeat, do not — take his advice, or you will fail. In both business and in life. Besides, can you take someone seriously in that kind of a hat? How absurd.

So, where do you stack up in the scheme of things? Are you a marketing guru? Or a marketing gnu?

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While television was part of the reason the campaign tagline, “If it fits, it ships,” became a catchphrase around the country, the biggest response (35 percent) came from our direct mail efforts. That was no surprise to us — after all, we know the power of direct mail better than most — but the reaction it generated with other audiences told us something: We needed to get the word out about the power of mail.

So, recently we began a new campaign, this one focused on letting consumers and businesses know what an effective medium mail can be. You might have seen the first round of those ads, which talk about the privacy and security that mail offers.

An interesting thing happened when we tested those ads. More than 64 percent of consumers told us they “value the mail” they receive in their mailbox, but when we asked businesses what they thought, only 36 percent told us they thought consumers still value their mail.

Clearly, there’s a disconnect here. Consumers still attach a high value to messages communicated through the mail, but many marketers have turned away from the mail in favor of communicating through digital channels. As our use of digital communications such as e-mail, SMS and social media has grown, many marketers have formed the opinion that mail is no longer relevant.

As these numbers point out, that’s simply not true.

Let me be clear that we’re not Luddites. We’re not advocating that marketers abandon digital communications completely for mail. What we’re saying is that your customers should have a choice: They should be able to select the channel they prefer for communication, whether it’s receiving offers, paying their bills, receiving a catalog or simply gaining knowledge about your products.

We all understand that different channels are highly effective for different types of messaging, but as the survey points out, mail still has a vital role to play in getting your brand’s message into the hands of your customers.

As our annual Household Diary studies have continually showed us, people really do love getting mail. Even young people, whom marketers have come to regard as the “digital generation,” said in a recent survey conducted by ExactTarget that they’d made a purchase based on something they received in the mail (76 percent).

And would you believe that 65 percent of adult Millennials say they prefer to read something on paper? It’s true.

The message here isn’t that digital is not an effective tool. It’s that a multichannel approach is the best way to get your message across. That brands would be wise to listen to their customers and communicate to them in the way they find best. And that even in an increasingly digital age, mail still has a vital role to play in growing your business.

Joyce Carrier is manager of Advertising and Promotion, U.S. Postal Service.®

John Schulte, president and chairman of the National Mail Order Association, previously worked as the advertising and marketing director at a bridal gown store. He sent direct mail letters to newly engaged women, which were hand addressed and hand signed, and included an offer to receive a free gift in the store. The campaign resulted in a 20% response rate, he says, and customers said they opened the letter because it was hand addressed. “They thought that was special, and reflected that we were really interested in helping them,” he adds.

Personalization can be more expensive and time consuming to execute, so direct marketing experts suggest using it strategically; noting to use it on higher ticket items. These tactics, like employing handwritten notes for clients, will always elicit higher responses.

Employees at a North Carolina firm send one thank-you note per week through the mail to stay connected with clients. The thank-you note program has resulted in a greater percentage of repeat business and faster payments from those who have received notes.

Personalizing direct mail pieces can go far beyond a handwritten note. Here are some creative ways to use personalization in your campaigns.

1. Attach a sticky note

Mark Bodzin, an online advertising executive, headed a campaign at a former job consisting of a piece that looked like a torn-out page from a newspaper. Affixed to the upper right section of the newsprint was a sticky note handwritten with the target’s first name and a brief message. The response rate skyrocketed from 1-2% to 4.5% with personalization. He says, “It was such a powerful piece that I received letters from people asking if they knew me.”

2. Provide a useful, personalized service

If you’ve ever moved into a new town and had to figure out the basics all over again, such as finding Post Office™ locations, schools, hair salons and doctors, you know much work it can entail. Seattle-area healthcare provider The Everett Clinic, in conjunction with its advertising agency Frank Unlimited, recently launched a direct mail piece for families new to the area. The mailer is labeled with the family’s name and a highlighted driving route and distance from that home to the nearest clinic. The agency used a prominent search engine’s maps technology to help create the pieces, which are mailing to 1,500 recipients monthly, says agency principal Susana Cascais.

3. Make it funny

Everybody loves cartoons. That’s the philosophy behind CartoonLink, a Seattle firm that has produced cartoon-based direct mail programs for 30 years. The company creates cards and mailers imprinted with cartoons, and personalizes them by inserting the customer or prospect’s name into the cartoon caption. The company developed a subscriber acquisition campaign for a well-known advertising magazine, which delivered the highest gross response in four years and the highest payment-with-order in the publication’s history, according to CartoonLink president Stu Heinecke.  The offer included an 8″ x 10″ print of the cartoon for people wanting to frame it. “While most promotional mail gets screened away, recipients tend to treat ours as keepsakes,” he says. A campaign featuring cartoon greeting cards for an insurance company generated a 100% response rate, based on 1,200 prospects who agreed to meetings with sales reps in follow-up calls, Heinecke adds.

4. Use technology to streamline efforts

Real estate companies depend heavily on referrals and 1-to-1 marketing, so everything has to be personalized. “We wanted to create a product that had all the benefits of self-created direct mail pieces without the time and cost,” says Chad Rueffert, president of From Your Friends, a Colorado Springs–based marketing firm focused on the real estate industry.

The firm partners with local restaurants and attractions to create a monthly postcard featuring a discount offer at the venue. The real estate salesperson then uses an online design tool, provided by From Your Friends, to personalize the postcard by adding their photo, contact info, personal notes, a scanned signature, new listings, or detail on the local real estate market. Clients have shared that the program has increased sales, and that customers often call agents to thank them for the postcards and to offer new names for the mailing list, Rueffert says. Many of his real estate clients close three or four deals every year because of the program, he says.

Polly Traylor writes about business, technology and marketing from Golden, Colorado.

In order to help readers access those kinds of online resources with a mere scan of a mobile device, Brookstone has begun printing quick response (QR) codes next to select catalog items.

“We get to build all these really cool features and benefits into a product, and we need to communicate those, and QR codes help us do that,” says Jeff Rohling, Brookstone’s vice president, general manager direct channel. “Our online business is partially driven by catalogs, and QR codes provide quick access to additional product information and videos.” Quick QR Code Facts

• There are many ways to use QR codes and other types of two-dimensional barcodes to potentially drive sales — destinations can range from coupon codes to online pages with products similar to those in a catalog.
• Companies are beginning to experiment with the quirky little marks amid growing consumer interest in the technology.
• Forrester Research found that 5% of adults in the United States with a mobile phone had used a 2-D barcode reader in 2011, compared to only 1% in 2010.

QR Codes and Thoroughbreds

For thoroughbred auction firm Fasig-Tipton Co., the codes present a way to keep a catalog fresh. The company recently used QR codes in its catalog called The November Sale, which featured fillies and mares that would be offered at one of the most elite thoroughbred auctions in the world.

The book went to press about six weeks before the event, and many of the highly accomplished horses featured had not stopped racing between press time and the auction. “[Six weeks] is eternity in the horse business,” says Max Hodge, Fasig-Tipton’s director of client services. The value of a horse can increase dramatically in a single day or race, he says, and indeed, one horse doubled her value during the time period and sold for $1.2 million.

So by printing a QR code for each horse, Fasig-Tipton could provide its global audience with updated data and additional information. The individual landing pages — which Hodge calls “enhanced online catalog pages” — offered race replays, news articles and other resources that potential buyers would have had to scour multiple sources to collect.

“We received extremely positive feedback,” Hodge says. “Through this feature we provided a higher level of service than our competition and it has given us a competitive advantage.”

Form-Fitting, High-Performance QR Codes

Speedo USA, meanwhile, largely used the codes in its 2012 Spring Performance catalog to drive readers to videos of top swimmers casually talking about technical aspects of certain products. The book, which targets the nation’s competitive swimming community, is designed to drive sales through niche swim shops and its website, SpeedoUSA.com.

“Never are [Speedo’s sponsored athletes] really in front of the mass consumer saying, ‘Hey, I wear this, I use this product in practice, and here’s why you should get it, too,’ so that was something we wanted to achieve with the QR code videos,” says Katie Tyrrell, Speedo USA’s director of marketing. “I think it adds to the endemic pitch of trying to convince a consumer to buy this product.”

To be sure, like many other companies using 2-D barcodes, Speedo has found it tough to track conversion from QR codes. People may view the video online and subsequently purchase a related product at SpeedoUSA.com, but right now the aquatics brand doesn’t have a way to track the sale back to a code.

But Tyrrell senses these codes are helping to sell products, and Speedo is considering ways to use them in the future. Fasig-Tipton and Brookstone are, too. As they get more accepted in the public, Brookstone’s Rohling says, they are a “natural avenue” for catalogs.

“This is a mobile-based technology, so everything needs to be mobile optimized,” says Roger Marquis, a marketing consultant who authors the 2D Barcode Strategy blog.

You don’t want to link to content that could be disappointingly hard to view on a smartphone’s screen. Which code will I use?

You can choose among proprietary codes, such as Microsoft Tags, or open-source ones like QR codes. Many vendors generate codes for free but charge for services like analytics.

The capabilities of the codes vary. Some QR codes, like those catalog printer The Dingley Press offers clients, can be subsequently redirected to different content, which is useful if a code is not performing well or if a catalog will be used for a long time. How will I educate and entice my audience?

Not everyone knows what a 2-D barcode is, so it’s a good idea to offer brief, descriptive copy about what to do with the icon. Also, give your prospective customers reasons to scan.

Brookstone, for example, has used phrases such as “Scan the QR code to see online video” and “See more watch winders online.” Do I understand my targets’ willingness to scan?

Forrester Research found usage of 2-D barcode readers was highest among adults ages 23 to 45 and those with incomes over $70,000. But don’t assume readers outside those demographics will rebuff the concept.

“I ask [catalog clients], ‘When was the last time you measured your audience?’” says Rob Nowak, director of new technology for The Dingley Press. “Do you really know who they are, because as fast as people and technology are changing and working together — a year ago someone who’s never used [social media] is now doing that.”

Am I willing to take these barcodes seriously? Bringing customers on an unsatisfying journey can be detrimental. “Every bad experience is going to reflect poorly on the brand more than anything else,” Marquis says, “and it’s going to slow down adoption of the technology that much further.”

Since the days when tens of thousands of mail marketers compiled lists by flipping through publications like Bresser’s, the nationwide business of address targeting and database management has evolved and diversified quickly to stay ahead of economic challenges and the rise of new media. More than ever, mailing list publishers are turning to technological advancements in gathering information to stay relevant to data-obsessed marketing clients.

Good thing, too, as national economic challenges have forced mailers to step up their research. Record-level home foreclosures and increased business shutdowns in recent years are part of what’s made it necessary for list brokers to be more diligent about list cleanliness. Even with the economy’s recent signs of recovery, about 4 million American households are in foreclosure or 90 days past due on loan payments, according to LPS Applied Analytics, which monitors mortgage trends. As of February, New York alone recorded 80,000 active home repossession cases in state courts.

“We go and find out what you’re selling, what it looks like, what it smells like, and then we go and find the most relevant prospect,” says Bresser, whose company is among those finding new paths to success.

Describing Bresser’s Information Service as both a list broker and “a compiler,” Bresser says advancements in web research have made it easier to cross-reference pieces of a potential consumer’s demographic puzzle: “Computers allow quicker updating and the ability to integrate. One of the larger credit compilers, for example, has a list of people by age and income, and they bring different data elements together from different sources. So the quality of the data that we — and our clients — can access for a particular address has gone way up.”

Adds Bresser, “In the old days, you could compile once a year and see maybe a 7-percent turnover (in addresses), and now it’s about 26 or 27 percent, easily.”

For marketers, perhaps the one silver lining in this crisis is that more frequent updating has led to improved list accuracy, says Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of DMA government affairs.

“While there are greater numbers of vacancies than in the past, the other side of that is there are fewer people being forced out of homes as the housing market starts to recover,” Cerasale adds. “A lot of the houses have been vacant for long periods of time, and people aren’t as hard to track as they were at the height of the foreclosures.”

Like Bresser’s, Texas-based Hoover’s Inc. has moved increasingly toward integrating data research. Also like Bresser’s, Hoover’s evolved from a reference book publisher into a list distributor, recently expanding data available to the 65 million companies it serves.

“You can now build a mailing list based on more than 60 target criteria — everything from credit pre-screen score to executive salary — well beyond the traditional location, size and industry criteria,” says Lucas Rotondo, Hoover’s product marketing manager. “This means that marketers can lower mailing costs and increase response rates by only mailing to qualified prospects.”

Hoover’s rebuilt data supply chain and wider pool of demographic sources are responses to both client demand and the changing landscape of businesses that it targets, Rotondo says. The company has also automated more processes and turned to its editorial staff to speed update processes. “This means fresher data,” adds Rotondo. “In the Internet age, customers expect real-time data and instant updates. The high rate of business closures and changes in today’s economy have made this even more challenging.”

DirectMail.com responded to client complaints about list accuracy by incorporating a “rigid, 30-day update process” in managing 140 million home addresses and 14 million business addresses in its data bank.

“If there’s one thing that customers will squawk about, it’s when their returned mail exceeds their expectations,” says Bob Salta, principal partner at the Baltimore-area broker. “They blame the mail company.”

“Since the housing collapse occurred,” explains Salta, “it was very obvious that we needed to find a solution for how we could mail smart and accurate lists. Traditionally, most companies might not update more than every 60 to 90 days, but, given these conditions, we thought that in order to ensure our customers that we are providing them with the cleanest data possible, we would reduce that time frame.”

Of course, despite the common reliance on digital resources, Bresser and others say traditional experience and legwork still matter most in mail targeting. List providers like Bresser’s follow up regularly with various data repositories, checking in each week to inquire about red flags such as recently disconnected telephone numbers, which often indicate vacant addresses. Other hands-on tasks include reviewing quarterly property deed updates reported through the county to help identify new residents, adds Bresser. The end result, he says, is improvement on the client’s return. “So if you sell left-handed golf clubs and there are only three left-handed golfers in the area, we’re not going to do a mass mailing — but we could do something more personalized.”

Meanwhile, DirectMail.com’s Salta says the combined strategies of improved address verification and expanded targeting options have been enough to lower the volume of “squawking” from customer complaints, which is music to his ears.

“We want to see mail work,” he announces. “And we want to see customers happy.”

Aside from identifying households as “back-to-school shoppers,” “parents of twins and triplets,” or having “tweens,” marketers can opt to receive additional household data such as education, ethnicity, household income, and age and gender of children. The “tween” list can be customized further to identify “green” families, as children of that age are often vocal about practicing recycling in the home as they learn more about the environment.

This detailed information provides retail and service companies such as child care providers, tutoring centers, and electronics, apparel and school supplies retailers with the demographic data needed to find their “best” customers and eliminate wasteful mailing.

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Our apologies if we shocked you. Or, if impressionable children looking over your shoulder happened to see the words. We have no wish to offend. Rather, we wish to make a point. We think it’s high time not only to stand up for the above-referenced S-words, but to wear them proudly like the badges of honor that they are.

Many marketers bend over backward to avoid using the S-words. Asked what we do for a living, not a few of us prefer words like “marketer,” “communication professional,” “representative,” “service provider,” “product consultant” — anything but sales. The trouble is, there’s always someone who can’t quite make sense of the euphemism du jour. When that person presses us, we find ourselves forced to mutter something about, er, um, well, “getting people to buy stuff.”

Come on, admit it: “Getting people to buy stuff” is selling. You may not personally go door-to-door or spend time on a sales floor. Your job may be strategizing, creative-directing, writing, designing, production-managing, data-manipulating, sorting, account-executiving or what-have-you-ing. But the raison d’être of the direct mail you create is to complete a transaction or generate a lead. Which is another way of saying that your job’s raison d’être is to — guess what — sell.

Chin up! There’s no need to be so darned apologetic about the business we’re in. To be sure, we can call ourselves marketers (and so forth) if we want, and there is no harm in it — provided we avoid slipping into denial about what marketing truly is. When we fail to concede that we are in the business of selling, we risk mistaking the execution for the goal. Prose that would make our English professor proud and design that draws praise from the art community are all well and good, but if they fail to sell, they are not marketing. And when we refuse to acknowledge as much, we are not marketers.

What you call your profession is your business. But let’s proudly own selling as the point of what we do, and allow it to drive our work. And, let’s remind the naysayers that responsible selling as described above is both socially beneficial and needful.

From gourmet pizzerias to local financial offices, small businesses are praising the new Every Door Direct Mail program from the U.S. Postal Service.

They like the simplicity of the service and the fact that it offers several advantages, including making it easier for businesses to target specific areas in their local markets and doing so at a substantial cost savings.

Peter Caserta, owner of Stuzzi, a gourmet pizza restaurant in Richmond, Va., says his eatery has been well established but he wanted to expand its home delivery service. So he turned to EDDM.

“It’s been very effective,” Caserta says. “We’ve increased home delivery by almost four times in just the past few months.”

Stuzzi is not your average pizzeria. Caserta proudly notes his restaurant is one of only five on the East Coast certified by the Italian government to make specialized pizza in a wood-burning oven.

“We offer reasonably priced handcrafted food,” he explains. “We don’t send out discount coupons, but rather a menu to let prospective customers know what we offer. We could have used some other advertising medium but we chose EDDM because it’s relatively inexpensive but very effective.”

The address-free direct mail program saves on mail preparation time and cuts printing costs. Local businesses can reach potential customers in designated areas of their businesses by using mail delivery route information, rather than names and exact addresses.

In the past, if a company mailed books or fliers to a city route, specific addresses had to be imprinted on the pieces. However, for rural routes that wasn’t necessary. All that had to be printed was “Postal Customer.”

Now, under EDDM, all mailings can be distributed by Postal carriers without specific addresses because both city and rural routes are treated the same. Letter carriers deliver supplements along with the day’s mail to every door that businesses want to reach. The EDDM website has information about how many businesses and homes are within a certain area or radius. Kevin Dover, manager of the Quick Credit office in Easley, S.C., says his firm is pleased with EDDM.

“We use EDDM for growth purposes to get more customers,” Dover says. “We’re a loan company and we send out fliers to just select areas within a 10-mile radius. We go online and we can designate what areas to send them to.”

Dover says his branch is part of a larger chain, but he considers the office a small business.

“EDDM has helped my office generate about twice as many new customers as we did before we used the service. We used to average about 12 new customers per month. Now the total is 22–25.”

EDDM also has been a big boost to printing companies.

Leo Haynes, of Grand Blanc Printing in Michigan and owner of a monthly shopper magazine, says it has had a positive “trickle-down effect” on his business.

“It benefits me when I print and mail my books each month,” explains Haynes. “The process is a lot quicker, less complicated, helps with my cash flow and helps me keep my rates down for my customers who advertise in my book.”

Haynes says he saves about 15 percent per month compared to costs before he used EDDM.

Tim Christian, plant manager for Another Printer, Inc., based in Columbia, S.C., also is very pleased with EDDM.

He says he tested the new service just for his company before promoting it for his customers.

“We sent several staff members to a seminar to learn about it,” Christian explains. “We then sent out a trial bulk mailer with coupons for our own business. It was very easy to do and we got very good results.”

Christian says when you add in all of the work that the direct mail program eliminates, his company is realizing cost savings of about 20 percent over a standard mailing.

“It’s a win-win situation. It’s simple for us and simple for our customers. It gets a small business’s name out there in a local market for promoting its goods and services.”

Have your own success story with Every Door Direct Mail? We want to hear from you. Share it with us on our Facebook page.