Direct Marketing Trends
Blog Category
People Don’t Like Work Email – Is It Time to Re-Evaluate How Employees Communicate?
We’ve talked before about how millennials have been labeled lethal when it comes to trends, industries, and established norms. Add one more to the list that you wouldn’t expect: the work email. This past week, The New York Times published an article whose title posed the question: Could Gen Z Free the World from Email?
USPS Promotions are Becoming More Important Than Ever
With a significant postage rate increase on the horizon, the postage discounts that can be earned from participating in USPS promotions have become increasingly important to many marketers. As an added bonus, these promotions encourage marketing techniques that can make the direct mail portion of multichannel campaigns more relevant and engaging for the recipients, driving higher response and greater return on marketing investment (ROMI). Here are some key details and dates for the more popular mailing promotions:
ANA Conference Reports on the Effectiveness of Direct Mail
Since the pandemic I’ve found myself enthusiastically leaving my house…to check my mailbox. I wouldn’t just glance at my mail, but really looked through and read my mail daily. Apparently I’m not the only one who did this. According to the USPS, 41% of consumers said due to the pandemic they were more excited to […]
Selling Insurance to Millennials Requires Education and a Personal Connection
This past year, I had to buy home insurance, and I wasn’t the only millennial in the market. There are approximately 73 million millennials in the U.S. Of that number, 80% own a car, 45% own a house, and an additional 78% plan to buy a house in the next nine years. That’s a lot […]
Authenticity and Transparency Are Key When Connecting with Millennials and Gen Z
Consider what millennials and Gen Zers spent their formative years witnessing: 9/11, stock market crashes, economic recessions, mass unemployment, global warming and climate change, and other none-too-pleasant events and worst-case scenarios. Oh, and a global pandemic, though classifying that as a “formative years” event—even for Gen Z—may be a bit generous. This has led to […]
2020 Year-End Postal Issues Update
As one of the most challenging years in recent memory draws to a close, we wanted our final postal issues update of the year to reflect on what has been a bumpy year for the U.S. Postal Service and take a look at what may be ahead in the coming year.
Holiday Shopping Trends Reshape Retail Direct Marketing Efforts During the Pandemic
Before we explore the latest holiday shopping trends, I want to wish our readers and subscribers a safe and healthy holiday season! The holidays are a special time for traditions—decorating, baking, gift giving, and—my favorite tradition—shopping. For my annual shopping trip, I gathered my shopping list, my direct mail and email ads and coupons, and […]
Match Your Holiday Marketing Efforts to the Moment
Every year around Halloween, the Leone family gets together for Spooky Dinner. It all stems from past Halloweens when the Leone children were living at home and ate my mom’s halloweenies (pigs in a blanket) before trick-or-treating. My parents decorate their house and everyone arrives in costumes and brings a Halloween themed dish to share. […]
How Verticals Have Adjusted Marketing Approaches to COVID-19
We’ve been analyzing how various verticals have adjusted their marketing approaches to COVID-19 and the impact on direct mail volumes. When the Winterberry Group released “The Outlook for Data Driven Advertising and Marketing 2020” in January, they projected direct mail to increase 0.6% and digital channels to increase an average of 14.5%. Then the COVID-19 […]
ANA Data & Analytics Conference: Expert Advice to Sustain, Grow, & Transform Direct Mail
The second annual ANA Data & Analytics Conference, hosted by American Express, was virtual this year, but its impact and insights were very real. ANA promised the audience would hear from key experts on innovation in data-driven tools and new technologies, personalization, brand and creative techniques founded in neuro-marketing, as well as the latest in compliance and privacy laws. More than 20 of my IWCO Direct colleagues registered for the event, and all who dialed in agreed it was a rousing success.
