http://copygrove.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-will-current-financial-crisis.html

I wrote about in November.

Which just goes to show ya’ that list is supremely important. The “doormat” sized card is large enough we can include a personalized “letter” on the address side of the card – so it does have more of a “package” appeal. If anyone’s interested the case study of the first two cards is posted at http://www.TMRDirect.com/contractors.

One thing many mailers don’t understand is that each format has its strengths and weaknesses. It’s not just a matter of expensive, less expensive, and cheap. Some products don’t need a lot of selling, so smaller formats can work well. Other products need more selling, so bigger more expensive formats are required. Formats are like tools. You have to know when to use the hammer and when to use the wrench.

They focus on mailing price instead of cost per sale and mail cheap instead of smart by not applying decent list hygiene.

My clients are demanding postcards instead of envelope packages mainly because they still can’t track sales by source.

Better tracking systems were never put in place during the good times. So clients cut costs because that’s all they know how to do in the absence of reliable sales data.

With the lack of decent tracking, I hate to get pushed into cheap formats without controls established by disciplined testing. Why? Because many tests later, classic envelope packages and snap pacs continue to outperform postcards as a general rule. They even outperform self mailers with a few exceptions determined by industry.

So we work with what we have and take one step forward and three steps back.