The USPS Must Die

I know what you're thinking. "Another rant against the USPS." But that's not the case. This is not a rant against the post office. Your favorite marketing podcast host has worked with them for years and finds them to be a surprisingly friendly organization to deal with. So I don't want to malign them. This is instead a simple statement of fact: The U.S. Post Office is dying. It's been on life support for too long. It WILL die. And the direct marketing community needs to wake up to this fact before it's too late.

Yes, Mail Works...But For How Long?

Now before I'm attacked with a barrage of objections, let me assure you that I am well-aware that direct mail still works. I'll even go so far as to say that despite the hype around digital efforts, direct mail still packs greater response rates and more significant financial impact than most online marketing efforts. The numbers don't lie there. I'd give you a specific claim or study, but really, there are too many. So here's a Google search for direct mail vs. online. Knock yourself out.

Having said all this, there's a part of me that wonders if our reliance on results today is putting the entire direct marketing industry behind the curve. Is our insistence on mail as a reliable profit generator keeping us from developing solutions that will help us stay relevant down the line? Are we the victim of the same thing that brought down the automotive industry last year: Reliance on profits from aging business models that were destined to collapse?

It's Time To Be Forward Thinking

I'm not suggesting we throw out mail today. But I am saying that it's time to start investing in the future. And I mean more than just adding or enhancing our "digital play" to the agency roster. I'm suggesting retooling and rethinking to the point that we always lead with the future technologies, instead of just tacking them on to the campaign.

There's a legitimate reason for doing this. If we go back to the mid-90s, there was an assumption that direct would lead the way in digital, with it's banners and clicks and response pages. Instead, our direct principles were taken by the new breed of digital shops and the boundaries of what was possible were extended by the general agencies, leaving the direct shops marginalized. Now with mobile on the horizon, media moving online and paper becoming prohibitively expensive, the Direct industry finds itself largely ill-equipped to survive the coming changes.

So it's times to stop spewing the propaganda of, "It works." Yes, direct mail works. True. Fine. We get it. So does fossil fuel. But it won't last forever. The days are numbered for generating the necessary ROI in the medium and the time to address this and realign our businesses is now.