Lately, there has been a lot of buzz about dimensional mail, also know as lumpy mail. Why is that? Advertising has been becoming increasingly less effective because of fragmentation. Consumers are busier than ever and spend less time focused on any single medium for a great length of time, so reaching them with a consistent message is more difficult and more expensive.

Direct mail was once one of the most powerful advertising mediums, beating out even television in terms of return on investment, but dimensional mail has taken the lead as one of the most effective forms of advertising today. This is because it is still reaching them in the same manner as direct mail, and while it maintains a higher cost per piece to send, it also generates a significantly higher response rate due to its memorable nature. Unlike postcards or sales letters which are often filtered out (to the trash) by good-intentioned secretaries or assistants, dimensional mail is almost never filtered out because it is contained in a package. Think about it for a minute – if a package arrived addressed to your employer, would you throw it away or even open it to see what it was? No, you would ensure that they personally received it. That generates half of the effectiveness of this powerful medium. The other half is generated by the creativity of the campaign. It’s not enough to simply stuff a bunch of flyers and business cards into a box and ship it off to your prospects. Your dimensional mail campaign needs to be creative and ideally should tie in to what your company does instead of just a cute stunt.

Be sure to check back regularly; we’ll be posting some dimensional mail campaigns that we’ve done for some of our clients here on our blog.

We communicate through a variety of mediums today, each time, painting a picture of who we are. Sometimes it’s accurate, sometimes it’s not. If you’re going to take the time to communicate with someone, regardless of whether they are an employer, employee, client, prospect or any other type of contact, be sure to take the time to communicate effectively and professionally. I can’t tell you how many times each day I see an email with no regard for spelling, grammar or punctuation, and each time, my reaction is the same. If someone isn’t willing to put in the effort to compose a proper email, what on earth would make me think that they would put any more effort into anything else? Nothing, so I move on.

What does your communication say about you?

If you do any direct mail marketing, especially dimensional mail, be sure to download this handy PDF of the USPS rates and sizes.

Does your marketing strategy consist of a little newspaper advertising here, some direct mail there and maybe email marketing from time to time? If so, it’s pretty similar to that of many other small businesses. That’s not a good thing because it’s inconsistent and your marketing channels are not working together.

Marketing is a collective activity in that when multiple channels are used together, the results are almost always far greater than the sum of the channels. Direct mail, radio and television can support internet marketing to bring you results that you could never achieve with the same budget used in any one of those mediums. This is because after the creative aspect of any marketing campaign, the effectiveness is due largely to repetition and consistency. When your prospect is on their way to work and they hear your ad, they may be only slightly convinced that your product or service is right for them. When they arrive at work they’ll probably do a little more research online, and if they come across your marketing message again, they will likely become a little more convinced. Later that night when they’re watching an episode of The Big Idea on their local cable channel and they see your television ad, chances are high that they’ll be very convinced that your product or service is the right choice for their needs. Now this doesn’t mean that the will buy from you just yet, but you will be standing on significantly higher ground than your competitors at this point.

To develop a marketing campaign where all of the channels work together you’ll need to determine what your desired outcome is to be. If you’re trying to educate your prospects about a complex product or service, all of your marketing channels should be used either to drive them to your web site where they can access the applicable information or to encourage them to schedule a meeting with one of your representatives. If your goal is to push sales in a particular retail location, all of your marketing channels should be focused on driving them directly to that location. In a nutshell, choose one goal and utilize all of the marketing channels available to you to foster achieving that goal.

Businesses that utilize direct mail marketing to promote their business will be in for a shock soon due to a proposed rate increase. The average increase is expected to be 7.6% but could be as high as 40% for some mailers, which will certainly affect businesses of all sizes.

We recently posted about the impact that email has made on direct mail and mentioned that direct mail was still a powerful tool in your marketing tool box, however that may be changing. As direct mail continues to increase in cost, many businesses will mail to smaller and more selective lists to maintain a cost-effective ROI. Ultimately, direct mail will stay around for a long time, but like other traditional mediums, it’s use will evolve to meet the needs of marketers.