Before we get into the meat and potatoes of whether direct mail marketing works, you might be asking yourself what is direct mail marketing? Direct mail marketing is when a business sends physical sales letters in the post. (Also known as advertising mail and, oh dear, junk mail.)
But does direct mail marketing work? Yes, of course it does but if you’d like to know how it worked for me, please linger a while.
This article is fairly TL;DR so if you don’t have time now, bookmark it for when you do.
Here’s what we’re covering:
Ok, let’s get into it.
Where I’m currently at.
Old-skool (and some new-skool) copywriters understand the mystical art of direct mail marketing. The thing is, I’m not a copywriter, well, not traditionally speaking. Do I write web pages that ask the user to ‘click this’ or ‘go here’? Absolutely, in that sense, I write copy. But I mostly ideate, research, organise, and create SEO-ready content.
“Website content usually has a single goal: to attract organic traffic. Copywriting is only concerned with immediate results. It requires users to make quick decisions.”
>>Content writing and copywriting: your website needs both<<
That being said, I’ve grown weary of the digital age. Despite marketers cooing endlessly about social selling, personal branding, and the dreaded ‘influencer marketing’, I find it all so hollow and depressing. And that’s not hyperbole, social media is bad for my health. But I’m not convinced it’s great for flogging my services either. Yes, promoting my business on the socials does work. But is it worth the effort required? Those who bang the social selling drum would emphatically cry, YES IT IS! But it doesn’t work for everyone and that’s for reasons.
Selling on social media is slow. And most of the prospects tend to be tyre kickers. So the question for me is, how much time am I willing to spend, posting/engaging on social media to attract a minuscule amount of decent clients? The answer is, not much time at all. I don’t have the required mental bandwidth for internet interactions (pun intended). I have no desire to ‘contribute meaningful comments’ on other people’s posts——in some vain attempt to be seen by the right person (the one who will hire me). I have more productive things to do with my time, like looking out the window/exploring other marketing channels. Because placing all my marketing eggs into one social selling basket is stupidly shortsighted.
One of the other problems with social selling (and all content marketing) is the requirement to publish regular blurb to attract prospects. This brand awareness lark not only takes time but it takes work, meanwhile, you’re crossing your fingers that the right kind of person will see what you’re publishing. Sure, you can do things to narrow the market, for example, you might only connect with folks on Linkedin who are likely to hire you. But with direct mail marketing, you cut out the audience who have no interest in what you’re selling. And rather pleasingly, you are no longer subject to a capricious algorithm.
I’m aware that my digital disenchantment is ironic. My entire business lands squarely in the digital marketing space so why would I, of all people, entertain the idea of direct mail marketing?
Google is why.
The big daddy of search engines sends out hardcopy sales material. So that has me thinking: Google might be onto something. Of course, you can send cold DMs to your heart’s content, especially if you see results, but for my sensibilities, direct mail is less anus-puckering. And people are much more receptive to sales letters than they are to unsolicited LinkedIn messages. And who doesn’t like getting something in the mail (as long as it’s not another bill, a bomb, a death threat, or dog shit).
Another reason direct mail marketing appeals to me is that it offers a level of creativity you don’t get with digital marketing. Depending on the media favoured for each social media platform, there are only so many ways I can post. But the real clincher is that very few of my competitors are sending sales letters. Most content writers, unsurprisingly, rely on the internet. Even if social selling is a successful lead gen strategy for you, it’s still not wise to bank entirely on it. You are at the mercy of the platform landlord. They can choose to throttle the reach of your content and they decide when to add and remove features. And if you’ve broken their rules, they’re within their rights to throw you out on your ear. Just to clarify, my view is not to shun the online world, it is to open my mind (and yours) to other ways of doing things.
The direct mail campaign.
Have you seen the cost of stamps? Unbelievable. Posting stuff is bloody expensive. (But so is spending half your life on LinkedIn.) Stationery will also require purchasing. Therefore, for my first rodeo in direct mail marketing (and any further rodeos in direct mail marketing) I must nail who’s most likely to hire me. As an SEO content writer, I decided on digital marketing agencies. The types hiring writers to create content for their clients. And specifically, medium-sized ones (not clients, agencies). In my view, medium-sized agencies have more cash to throw around but they’re still conscientious enough (I hope) to desire quality content rather than human-edited AI content.
I focused first on businesses within my locality and then branched out nationally. I began to populate a spreadsheet with company details along with contact names. I reckon it’s preferable to hunt down the right person to address your sales letter to. And I use the term ‘hunt down’ because finding that shit is like finding an erection in an ED support group. Not everyone publishes a ‘Welcome to the Team’ section on their website. Another issue is that some companies have multiple offices. As you can see, this isn’t as straightforward as it first might appear.
The sales letter.
I want to avoid anything that screams ‘junk mail’. So, I used high-quality white paper with STUNNING navy-coloured envelopes. White envelopes are generic. Every business expects to see them but like the Spanish Inquisition, no one expects a navy envelope, especially one handwritten in blood——sorry, white ink.
The inspiration for my letter was from a highly successful direct mail campaign known as Letters from a Mouse. It was a series of sales letters selling office furniture, written from the point of view of a mouse who lived in the office (I know, how ruddy cute!). Each one was expertly written and very, very funny.
You can read the entire series >>here<<.
Because the cost of postage is almost that of the entire economy of South Sudan, I didn’t fancy banging out a series of letters so I chose to send two. And like Letters from a Mouse, I wanted, wait for it, a humourous tone (oh my god, LOLs in selling is *such* a bad idea). C’mon, any other tone would be off-brand (as the marketing kids say). And just like the mouse letter, I wanted someone else to write it and that someone was my eleven-year-old nephew. Ok, I wrote the letter how I imagined he would write it.
Here’s the first sales letter:
Hi, I’m Josh. I’m eleven.
I have an aunt called Sarah Wilson-Blackwell. You don’t know who that is yet, but as aunts go, she’s seriously lame. I try to avoid girls but as she’s family, I’m expected to tolerate her. I play Minecraft (I’m pretty sick at gaming), my aunt says she knows about games but she calls Dead By Daylight, Dead By Daily! She has a Twitch account but she doesn’t even stream, all she does is watch a Scottish comedian called Limmy and a dead guy called Bob Ross.
My aunt cuts my hair——which I hate! I have to sit still for ages with a scratchy neck——it’s so annoying! She always moans about me not using a brush. She says my ends are dry coz I don’t use conditioner——I hate conditioner——and I don’t like having showers! She thinks she’s funny. She isn’t funny, she’s a geek.
My aunt wants you to know that she writes. I want to be an architect, I’m good at designing stuff. Some days she works at my house with Mum. The other day, when I came home from school, she’d left her laptop open. She was in the living room, talking for ages with Mum (like she always does) so I had a peek at her computer. There was something on the screen about finding agencies to work with. She’s tired of “content farms”——whatever they are. Anyway, I thought I’d play a little trick and write to you instead… she’s going to be so mad when she finds out. She’s a freelance writer. I dunno what that is but she seems to drink a lot of coffee and eat whatever she wants from the fridge. She writes “SEO content that doesn’t read bad”. I have no idea what she’s talking about but I hope you do.
She’s written something else here… “I could be an ace member of your content team”… “I’m the deadly weapon in your content-creating arsenal”… “Unlike AI, I *actually* think.”
If you’re looking for another writer or you just want to find out more, you can, she has a website: http://www.thesarkytype.com
If that doesn’t answer all your questions, you can email her: info@thesarkytype.com
I’m going to delete this now because she’s coming back.
Bye, Josh.
And here’s the follow-up letter:
Hi.
It’s Josh again.
I dunno if you remember me. I sent you a letter about my aunt, Sarah Wilson-Blackwell. This won’t be as long as the last letter coz I’ve been sent home from school with a cold.
My aunt has gone out for lunch so I’m on her laptop again. I can’t find any emails from you. Maybe you didn’t get my first letter or maybe you used it to make a paper plane——understandable, this paper is really good for that.
I guess you’ve been busy——grownups are always busy. If you don’t need a writer right now but you’d like to get to know her better, for future writing and content stuff, visit her website, and sign up for her newsletter. You can connect with her on Linkedin too.
Anyway, her contact details are at the bottom of this page.
Thanks, Josh.
PS I’m not being rude to the writers you already have, and my aunt wouldn’t want to steal anyone’s job, she’s just looking to join a nice team (and she won’t eat all your food——like she does at my house).
Yes, my nephew sounds exactly like that. He’s both obnoxious and precocious. Now you understand why I chose him as my letter writer.
The outcome.
You’re all dying to know this: how many sexy new clients did I get?
Erm…
Zilch. Nada. None, mate.
So, in short, direct mail didn’t work for me this time. Note I said “this time” because it would be silly to write (again, pun intended) this entire process off as being bollocks. I learned lessons from running the campaign.
Lesson 1.
Send more letters. Pretty obvious but I don’t think I sent out anywhere near enough. To improve your chances of receiving favourable responses, send out way more than I did.
I did get ONE response and it went like this:
“Thank you for the letter that you sent to us recently. We appreciate you thinking of us. You have a great website, looks like you’ve got a lot of knowledge and skills! However, we don’t hire freelancers, we only hire permanent employees for writing and content work.”
It’s nice of them to take the time and it leads me to the next lesson…
Lesson 2.
Know your market. Yes, digital marketing agencies hire writers. They need my skills to help their clients get visible online and boost engagement. That engagement leads to clicks that convert——blah blah blah but most of these companies hire employees.
Shit.
Quite the quandary. Freelancer agencies do exist. Great. Except it’s not great when you can’t find a business address to send a sales letter to, it’s like looking for a virgin in a brothel.
Side note: agencies hiring freelancers often charge terrible rates. Some are still doing the payment per-word thing, fucking yikes!
So now I’m thinking, for my next direct mail campaign, I’ll focus on the businesses that will benefit the most from my services——not the ones who already have a bevvy of employed writers. (As I write all this down, the more I see what an idiot I’ve been.)
Lesson 3.
Nail the follow-up. If I were a proper salesman, y’know with a tight polyester suit and a sweat problem, I’d get on the blower after sending my sales letter. It’s not a straight-out cold call because you’ve softened the blow with your letter——that baby has done the heavy lifting for you. The truth is, I’m better in a letter than I am on a call, hence my follow-up letter. Getting on a call is something I’m going to have to get comfy with if I launch another direct mail marketing campaign.
It’s easy to see why the conversion rate diminished with each thing I failed to do, especially when I only sent a few letters. Still, it’s been a useful exercise and I hope it’s made you think about trying something different.
First published, 13/02/2024.
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