Mail House Rock!

I find myself hard pressed to think of a business that would not benefit from having a website.  It used to be that people went to the yellow pages when they looked to find a business.  Now it seems that more often then not they go to the web instead.  It is every bit as important to have someplace in the virtual world where you can be reached as it is to have one in the real world.  Your website is your location in the virtual world of cyberspace.

Considering that you can get a website for free, there is really no excuse for not having one.  But if you are serious about marketing your business you should get a decent site designed and have it hosted on a fast server with your own URL.

When it comes to direct mail your web site provides a valuable way for your prospective customers to learn more about you and the services or products you provide.  It also enables your customers to interact with you; through things like email, feedback forms and online stores.

When we design mail pieces, we consider the web address to be just as important as the phone number.  A good website that ties in well with your direct mail pieces can go a long way to increasing the effectiveness of your direct mail campaign.

I'm going to start a new series of blog posts showing how the Internet can be used to bolster the effectiveness of your direct mail campaigns.  I've always been a firm believer that advertising works best when you coordinate multiple activities and use them in concert to bring new clients to your business.  I talked a little bit about this in an earlier post "Marketing: Active, Passive & PR."  In this series we will look at specifically how direct mail and the Internet can work together to make your marketing more effective.

The Post Office is continuing to move forward on changing to five-day delivery.  Tuesday they filed their official request with the Postal Regulatory Commission to make the change.

We have started adding some direct mail guides to our web site.  I posted the first one this morning.

How to Create a Direct Mail Campaign

Because I want to make my guides as helpful and useful as possible, I am very interested in your feed back on this.  So... please, read the guide and let me know what you think!

Over the last few weeks I have been doing upgrades on the Website.  I am about to clean up the blogs. Hopefully this won't result in a bunch of RSS spam.  This post is my first to attempt to verify that it does not. 

We just updated our blog software.  Looks like it re-fed the entire blog on the RSS feeds.  Sorry for the info overload and the Spam.

When discussing various forms of marketing I like to break them down a bit. One of the big distinctions I make is, are they Active, Passive or PR. If you are going to be successful you need to consider all three.

I was going through some of our old marketing materials and came across a gem of a newsletter article written by my wife in the early 90s. I think it’s particularly apropos, given the recent economic climate. So… here it is with a few minor edits to bring it into the current century.

Looks like prices will be staying the same next year.  This is great news for Direct Mailers!

After 28 years in business, I have seen my share of both good and bad times as far as the economy is concerned.  However, economic downturns have never effected me too greatly. 

Why not?