If you're mailing Standard Rate, you've got until Friday to present your material for entry at the USPS at the current rates. I hope you've been getting ready to mail at the old rates. Is there anything you shouldn't try to get in the mail at this point? I can think of a couple things.  While [...]

A quick reminder that U.S. postage rates are going up on May 12th, with First Class postage going up by one cent to $0.42.  The new rate schedule is available here. Drop your mail before May 12th, if possible, but please don't rush.  Never is the phrase "penny wise, pound foolish" more appropriate than when dealing [...]

And sometimes I just shake my head. My apparently never-ending stream of poorly executed direct mail continues, with the latest effort being a shockingly bad example from Marriott's Fairfield Inn and Visa.  It appears to be the result of a co-op promotion, which may account for the execution; nobody at either Marriott or Visa felt [...]

After lashing out at Verizon and Vonage a little while ago, I thought I'd move on to other topics. But Verizon can't help but make simple mistakes in their direct mail efforts.  On Friday, I received yet another first-class mailing, this time promoting Verizon's FiOS Internet service. Since I've now been a triple-play customer for two months [...]

I've recently received several direct response efforts that are unfortunately poor examples of our science and craft. But they provide some important lessons that we should all take into account when preparing our next campaigns, whether they be acquisition, retention or winback efforts. The two efforts I'm going to write about appear to suffer from at least one flaw that I try to address with clients and employees. I call it "fingertips." By that, I mean that the nuts and bolts and detail of the marketing effort or analysis need to flow from the written page or the computer monitor through your eyes, be processed by your brain and then exit via your fingertips to the email, instant message, Excel spreadsheet, etc. It's not about forwarding the print production schedule you get from your printer or assigning the analysis of the media plan to your least-experienced employee because it's tedious. Having "fingertips" means you know the detail because you've not only seen it, but processed it and then had it exit via your keyboard. I didn't see the "fingertips" of the marketing managers in these efforts. Al Pacino, in his famous rant at Kevin Spacey in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross would have put it more bluntly. "Where did you learn your trade?"

For the first time in a long time I took a few minutes to run through the Valpak co-op mailing I received last week. After a few minutes of looking at the offers, I came up with a short list of things to consider if you're using Valpak (or other co-ops) as a marketing channel.  The [...]