Marketing Commentary from interlinkONE
Marketing. Web-to-Print. Warehouse Management.
Using Direct Mail to Promote Online Activities
Posted by 
on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 
at 8:16 AM 
in The Mailing and Fulfillment Service Association (MFSA) has been around for more than 88 years. As you can tell from their name, their primary objective is “working to improve the business environment for mailing and fulfillment companies”. (Full disclosure: interlinkONE is a Gold Partner in the MFSA Vendor Program)
Yes, traditional mail and fulfillment has been their focus for a long time. However, they are not shying away from using online tools to help them accomplish their objective.
I received a direct mail piece from MFSA this week. It contained an invitation to their New England Chapter meeting in September. The mailer listed costs, registration options, an overview of the agenda, and I also believe a choice of chicken or prime rib (Okay, I made that last one up).
However, one of my favorite pieces of content on the mailer was a line that said “Join the New England Chapter Group on LinkedIn“. The familiar LinkedIn logo was placed next to this line of text.
I am quite familiar with MFSA — I’ve attended conferences, I receive most of their email newsletters, I’ve been to chapter meetings, and I visit their website. However, I was not yet aware that there was a LinkedIn group for the New England Chapter. It is certainly possible that I have completely overlooked advertisements about it on those other channels.
However, for some reason, seeing the note about it on the direct mail piece caught my attention. I joined the group that day.
People see, hear, touch, and smell more marketing messages than ever before. We are all competing to find ways to get our message noticed.
In a multi-channel world, I think MFSA just did a great job of that.
The Direct Mail piece
The Promotion of the LinkedIn Group
Tags 2 Responses to “Using Direct Mail to Promote Online Activities”
Jason,
I think your point is well taken. We need to use a plethora of channels sometimes to get our message through. Direct mail has the ability to just sit there waiting patiently on your desk or kitchen counter until you are ready to receive the message. Just like a well written and optimized blog post will sit patiently out on the web until it’s discovered by someone looking for a particular piece of information. We are bombarded by so many messages that we shut out or skip quickly through most of them. I’m a big believer in the targetability and “patience” of direct mail and it’s ability to connect us to where we want to be on the web. Thanks for the post and happy marketing!
Jason,
Very true are your comments.
Another compelling reason to use direct mail to drive traffic to web is that it delivers the correct web address to the correct audience. How many times do you get directed to view sites that are irrelevant to the topic you were searching for? With direct mail you can target the message and deliver the actual web address ensuring the recipient gets where they need to go. We run a direct mail program called “invite to my website” that is very effective, and can be less expensive than SEO spends.