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- Dec 14, 2014
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First, I've been away from the forum for a while. It's been a roller coaster ride and maybe I ought to post a re-introducing myself thread. Anyway, this place is great. One of the internet's best destinations. Glad to be back.
At the moment I had a thought that I wanted to throw on the table.
I'm reading "The Boron Letters" (strongly recommend, it's a read-it-again classic.) As I'm reading and in my mind "updating" the context, applying the ideas to the internet age, the thought hit me. I don't think I've received a long form sales letter in the snail mail in years. I used to get them all the time. Honestly, I liked them. They could be fun to read. Good ones do grab your imagination and move you emotionally. I've seen the equivalent as web pages. I've gotten them as email. They stopped showing up in the mail.
Obviously, a multi page paper letter is an order of magnitude more expensive to send than the equivalent email. It makes sense that the bulk of the marketing world isn't physically taking totes full of letters to the post office. Does that mean that directly mailing letters to prospective clients is an extinct relic of a bygone time?
I wonder if the right product for the right market is still the right fit for a direct mail letter campaign. Maybe something targeting an older client. "The Boomers" have a significant slice of the pie, and they buy stuff. Would they still be as moved by tangible mail as they were when that was THE medium?
I still get postcard sales mail, I'm sure many here use them to promote your business. It's a great way to let people in a geographical area know about your service. What I haven't seen lately is the thick envelope that was the tell tale indicator of a multi page letter.
What do you think? Is it something that still works? Maybe you are sending long letters out and I'm just not on the list? Or maybe this is just a daydream spawned from reading classic Halbert?
At the moment I had a thought that I wanted to throw on the table.
I'm reading "The Boron Letters" (strongly recommend, it's a read-it-again classic.) As I'm reading and in my mind "updating" the context, applying the ideas to the internet age, the thought hit me. I don't think I've received a long form sales letter in the snail mail in years. I used to get them all the time. Honestly, I liked them. They could be fun to read. Good ones do grab your imagination and move you emotionally. I've seen the equivalent as web pages. I've gotten them as email. They stopped showing up in the mail.
Obviously, a multi page paper letter is an order of magnitude more expensive to send than the equivalent email. It makes sense that the bulk of the marketing world isn't physically taking totes full of letters to the post office. Does that mean that directly mailing letters to prospective clients is an extinct relic of a bygone time?
I wonder if the right product for the right market is still the right fit for a direct mail letter campaign. Maybe something targeting an older client. "The Boomers" have a significant slice of the pie, and they buy stuff. Would they still be as moved by tangible mail as they were when that was THE medium?
I still get postcard sales mail, I'm sure many here use them to promote your business. It's a great way to let people in a geographical area know about your service. What I haven't seen lately is the thick envelope that was the tell tale indicator of a multi page letter.
What do you think? Is it something that still works? Maybe you are sending long letters out and I'm just not on the list? Or maybe this is just a daydream spawned from reading classic Halbert?
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