There’s a lot of experimentation going on at the moment (in both the US and in the UK) to see the effects of the combination of using postal mail and email at the same time.

The latest story from the US is about a firm that got an amazing 10% response rate to its postal mailing by running the campaign alongside the email campaign.  There is also evidence the postal mail combined with web site advertising can generate quite a serious improvement in results.

So successful is this approach getting in the US that the postal service is actually offering a guarantee on some mailings where postal and email campaigns come together.

Certainly we have seen quite a considerable boost where both email and postal mail combine, although there are few statistics around to give definitive evidence.

But it does look as if the approach works best in an EPE approach:

Week 1: email

Week 2: postal direct mail

Week 3: email

Of course everything depends on there being a good email list for you to use, but if you have such a list, or are willing to pay a little to research a list (and of course for a trial it need only be a couple of hundred addresses that are researched) this can be done.

What puts people off however is the cost of the research of email addresses.  However once they are researched, you can email these people for virtually nothing, month after month.

If you would like to know more, please do call Hamilton House on 01536 399 000.

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Tony Attwood