Does Direct Mail Still Work?

Every month or two, I receive a Blue and White adver­tise­ment from Bed Bath and Beyond with a 20% coupon. Sound famil­iar? I do not typ­i­cal­ly need a 20% coupon nor do a buy a lot from them reg­u­lar­ly. How­ev­er, I can count on receiv­ing the coupon each month and when the time is right, I might even use the dis­count. I’ve also got­ten so use to see­ing their 20% off coupon fli­er that I can pret­ty much not even look at it. All this was the nor­mal way of deal­ing with Bed Bath and Beyond each month: I either stuff it in a draw­er or threw it out. I nev­er paid any atten­tion to the adver­tise­ments and spe­cials, because in my mind, I knew the gen­er­al idea of why they were send­ing me their ads: ​“Buy from us and take 20% off your next pur­chase.” How­ev­er, recent­ly I received a plain let­ter enve­lope with my wife’s name as the addressee and the return address with Bed Bath and Beyond on it. Every­thing was typed, no logos. Being a mar­ket­ing guy, I want­ed to know what they were up to in their lat­est direct mail cam­paign! Why the change? When I opened the enve­lope, I received a blue and white 20% adver­tis­ing fli­er. In fact, I believe it was 100% the same as the ones I typ­i­cal­ly receive. The only dif­fer­ence: it was in a white enve­lope. They did some­thing dif­fer­ent to get a bet­ter open rate. Maybe they real­ized peo­ple were stuff­ing or throw­ing them out instead of using them. Maybe peo­ple got too famil­iar with them! I strong­ly believe that because of their name recog­ni­tion and their new ​“white enve­lope cam­paign” home­own­ers were just as curi­ous as I was as they opened the mail piece. Maybe peo­ple even looked at the blue adver­tise­ment to see if it was dif­fer­ent too. What­ev­er the case, Bed Bath and Beyond, a major retail chain in Amer­i­ca is still doing Direct Mail. They have not stopped! So, does direct mail still work? If some­one with the big bucks like BB&B still do it, I must believe that direct mail still works. How­ev­er, the cam­paign still must strike inter­est to the poten­tial buy­er and remain con­sis­tent. The bot­tom line: don’t stop send­ing your mail­ers. Make sure you track results, make any nec­es­sary changes to the way you send them or the offer, and keep send­ing those mailers!