I have two confessions to make. First, I have very strong opinions about direct mail versus junk mail. And second, I am a tea drinker, and I go through a lot of loose leaf. Stay with me, these make sense together.
Direct mail works — multiple studies, from multiple sources have found over and over the direct mail generally gets around 20-30% response rates, compared to just 3-4% responses for digital outreach. When you combine the two, those responses can jump up to 40% and up. There is no denying it remains the single most effect marketing tool there is.
Junk mail, on the other hand, gets response rates that are slightly better than digital, but not by much.
Direct mail pieces are thoughtful, personalized in some way to make the recipient feel seen and acknowledged. It doesn’t have to mean a fully variable campaign, but it does often mean using, for example, a few different image and creative concepts, with things like demographics or geography or previous buying behaviors dictating which version a person gets. Direct mail is the kind of thing that people get in the mailbox and immediately open and take a look at.
Junk mail, on the other hand, is mass produced. Everyone gets exactly the same thing — and no, just slapping their name on it doesn’t count. These are the pieces that often don’t even make it inside the house. They are the ones the recipient detours to the recycle bin to dispose of as they head back inside. Nothing grabs them, or gives them a reason to want to engage.
Which is why I want to spotlight a company doing direct mail right. (This is where my tea obsession becomes relevant.) I go through a lot of loose leaf tea, and I tend to go on buying sprees when I start to run low, stocking up on both favorites and trying some new blends. I have a few companies I tend to go back to, but sometimes I’m feeling feisty and I try a new company to order from.
Adagio Teas is one of those companies on my regular list, but it’s been a while since I last ordered, since this past year I’ve been branching out more. I didn’t think anything of it really — I didn’t make a decision not to buy Adagio blends so much as I was exploring some other brands and blends I hadn’t tried before.
But they noticed.
I recently got this direct mail piece, and it immediately caught my eye. It is a pretty simple design — it doesn’t even have a ton of personalization! But it does speak directly to me and my relationship with them. “We miss you” is prominent as the message, and it comes with a discount to entice me to come back. But what puts this over the edge was that they included 4 single-serve packets of tea.
They know I love tea. They know I have spent money with them in the past. They know I like to try new blends. So they combined all of that with a piece that caught my attention the moment I opened the mailbox, came inside, was opened and read in full, and was immediately shared with friends and family. The tea went into my rotation, and Adagio just jumped back up to the top of my list for my next big reorder.
All because they took the time to send a thoughtful mailer that hit all the right notes.
Direct mail is a powerful way to connect a brand with the consumer, and to entice customers to either engage for the first time, or come back if they’ve lapsed. But doing it wrong can have the opposite effect. If this had just been a postcard saying “we miss you” I might have glanced at it, but I doubt I would have spent much time thinking about it. If it was just a generic “buy tea” sales pitch, it likely would have gone directly into the trash. But because they took the time to create a thoughtful direct mail campaign, they recaptured my attention. And that will lead to more sales from me in the future.
