Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

As the summer doldrums wear on I am getting the sense of a slight rebound in direct mailing activity.

In my own shop and in conversations with contemporaries and affiliated companies the numbers are still abysmal, production is down everywhere with a capital “E”. However, the fall season is starting to take shape nicely. RFP’s are up again. Production schedules are filling in. Employees are busy producing. The question is at what level? The second question is “Will there be a profit?” Answers will only be realized after the fact of course. For now, let optimism reign.

The stock market has made back almost half of its’ precipitous decline. The mood of the consumers, thank God, is not as bleak. The government is messing with things it shouldn’t, but slowly the people are voicing their objections to some of the more objectionable intercessions. America is nothing if not resilient and forceful. Our strength of will, courage and determination is what keeps us all going in spite of exterior situations and conditions. Sometimes we appear to be fool hardy, not giving enough gravitas to those conditions and proceed anyhow. That, folks is what make this country one of risk takers who have always driven the US of A to the top of everything.

Enough philosophizing.

All my reading and research support my previous position – that direct mail is not dead.
The predicted direct mail spending declines of over 30% are more in the 10 to 15% range. Of course that is not good, but it is far from bleak especially when held up against the condition of the economy.

Multi-Channel is now the talk of marketers. The mixing of all available media in any given effort. Traditional (TV, Radio, Print, Direct Mail) and New Media (Internet , e-mail, Social Networking, Mobile Apps). The allocation of resources proportionately based upon the effort. As a driver and support mechanism direct mail still is a work horse and by consensus of the professionals I have been following one that almost cannot be eliminated. In this strategy direct mail still plays a pivotal role in many campaign successes. A place for everything and everything in its’ place.

Non-Profit organizations are realizing that their knee jerk reaction of trashing their direct mail fund raising was of course not wise. They jumped to online with gusto and reaped the quick additional donations. A good thing for them. Subsequently they are also realizing that online donors will only go so far. Online donors are harder to renew, harder to enlist in the overall mission of the Not for Profit and absolutely harder to make part of the ‘family’. An important point, that senior development office fund raisers have been raising with their executive directors and boards, is that once they lose the momentum of their direct mail efforts it will be very costly to regain, if at all. They are pushing to “stay the course, keep doing what works”. Again, a real world view of the role of direct mail in a significant industry.

Commercial communicators, as in the past, have digested the annual postal increases and rule changes and come out with their revised budgets and plans. Many are redesigning a more economical delivery package to mitigate the USPS bump up in postage. Lists are being scrubbed and segmented at a much higher level then ever before. Because none of us perform in a vacuum it is always about change and the direct mail industry has always been extremely good at that. As production technologies continue to make new and interesting modalities available you can bet that direct mail efforts although less by volume will be more in terms of effectiveness. That is a good thing.

Since the turn of the year 2009 was in a ‘sky is falling’ mode and many companies were hunkering down and just trying to hold on. With fall just around the corner it seems that the clouds are just starting to break, even if it is only a little, and that of course is a great thing.