For decades, responding to a direct mail piece was pretty simple. Fill out a Business Reply Mail card. Send back an order form. Make a phone call. Walk into a store.
The process wasn’t always fast, but it was familiar and it worked.
Over the years, our industry has introduced a few technologies designed to make responding even easier. Some have improved the customer experience. Others … not so much.
Looking through some PDFs of old mail pieces a couple months ago, I was reminded of an early connected device called the CueCat.
The CueCat was a handheld barcode scanner that plugged into your computer. Scan a special barcode printed in an advertisement or direct mail piece, and your browser would automatically take you to a related website. It was introduced in 2000 and given out at Radio Shack and mailed by Wired, Forbes, and other magazines to their subscribers.
It seemed futuristic at first, but there were problems. It required consumers to buy into an entirely new behavior for very little reward. You had to install software, connect a separate device, and sit at your desktop computer just to accomplish something you could already do another way. The technology wasn’t solving a meaningful customer problem, and it certainly wasn’t making life easier.
So it quietly disappeared.
Sometimes great technology arrives before people are ready for it, or before it offers enough value to change behavior.
Read this full article on Printing Impressions, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
