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The Biggest Barrier to Quality Direct Mail Isn’t Price. It’s Time.

When people talk about Direct Mail, the conversation often starts with cost. Rising postage prices, creative, copy, data quality… they all matter.

But after years of working with marketing teams, we’ve come to a different conclusion.

The biggest barrier to producing really good Direct Mail is time.

As a mailing house, we’re normally at the end of the process. The campaign has been planned, the artwork approved and the data supplied. Our job is to produce it and get it into the postal network.

What we see time and time again is opportunities being missed simply because there isn’t enough time left.

Maybe there was an opportunity to split the audience differently. Perhaps a different offer should have gone to existing customers. Maybe two versions of the pack should have been tested instead of one.

The ideas are there. The technology is there.

Time isn’t.

There are now some excellent data tools available that allow businesses to profile customers, build meaningful segments and create much more relevant campaigns. The businesses that get the best results are often the ones that make time to use those tools, rather than sending the same message to everyone.

The same applies once the campaign has landed.

Measuring results properly and understanding what worked should be one of the most valuable parts of any mailing. Yet it’s amazing how often it gets pushed aside because everyone is already working on the next campaign.

At CMS, we’re looking at ways to help change that.

No, we haven’t built a time machine. We did look into it, but making one Clean Air Zone compliant proved a little difficult.

What we can do is use technology to remove some of the heavy lifting. We can help profile your data, suggest different ways to segment a campaign, explore different mailing options and help measure what happens afterwards.

The aim isn’t to tell marketers how to do their job. It’s to give them more time to do the parts of the job that really make a difference.

Postage isn’t getting any cheaper, which means every mailing needs to work harder than the last.

If we can help marketing teams make better decisions before a campaign goes out, and learn more once it’s finished, then we’ve done far more than simply put mail in the post.