£411,000,000 wasted on “rubbished” marketing

A survey released this week showed that 3.4 billion pieces of direct mail were send in the UK over the last year. And, of that, 22% (748,000,000) went straight into the bin without being opened.

The cost of these binned items was an estimated £411 millions.

However, according to Edinburgh-based Marketing Consultant Steve Gibson, most of these were only binned because they had the ”wrong envelopes”.

In an article called “How to get your direct mail opened”, he says that the simple way to make sure your direct mail gets opened is to make sure it doesn’t look like direct mail.

He says:

“When you stick a big corporate logo on an envelope, you’re telling the recipient that it’s an ad. What do people do to ads? They ignore them.

If you use a plain envelope instead, the recipient doesn’t have a clue what it is. It could be personal; it could be something that has to be dealt with. He has to open it to find out.”

So, why do people use the corporate look?

“I have a theory about this.

I think that big companies use their logos because they're so obsessed with their "brand" that they put "getting their name out there" ahead of actually making sales.

And I think that smaller companies do it because they see the big boys doing it and assume that it must be the best way to do things.”

And the solution?

“Plain envelopes win the day most of the time, simply because you have to open them just to find out what’s in it.”

And, once the envelope is open? How do you stay out the bin?

“That’s a whole different article.”

“How to get your direct mail opened” can be read at: http://www.greaterprofitsguaranteed.com/get-your-direct-mail-opened.html