October 2020 -

The Revenge of Analog

Posted on October 20, 2020September 26, 2022 by Ilan Mann

Life is moving online—so why are so many of us going offline? The Revenge of Analog explains why.

If you’re a literary junkie, you know there’s been a quiet civil war raging among the community of book-lovers. At the core of this conflict is a sacred question—would you ever peruse a book using an e-reader? Is a book really a book if it isn’t on paper? On one side are those who appreciate the practicality of their Kindles and Kobos. No wonder why. They make books more affordable, take up less space than shelves, and are easier to travel with.

And the other side of the divide? To them, it isn’t a practical argument. To them, the sanctity of the paper book is spiritual.

Consider comments in this Reddit thread explaining why users prefer paper books:

“I love the feeling of a good book in my hands.”

“There is nothing more satisfying than opening a new book and getting the honour of breaking the spine.”

“Seeing withered spines and taped covers makes me smile, and I like to think the reader is reliving so many memories just from that one book.”

Note the commonalities. “Feeling,” “opening,” “breaking the spine”—these describe the physicality of the book. They say: Nothing compares to the experience of touch. Touch is connected to memory, and especially to good memories. Touch becomes the doorway to the soul.

The sanctity of touch is the theme of David Sax’s 2016 bestseller, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. The book explores a contradiction in the digital revolution. At a time when most of life is moving online, more and more consumers are showing a clear preference for analog—or physical—alternatives. Essentially, things they can hold in their hands—and how feeling things makes them better. Where a Google calendar offers efficiency, a paper calendar offers beauty. Where a Facetime call provides convenience, a conversation over coffee creates intimacy. Where digital can feel distant, the physical feels closer—even in the case of a handwritten letter, where the sender can live far away.

Sax chronicles the analog revolution through anecdotes that would make Malcolm Gladwell smile. He opens with the unexpected resurgence of vinyl records. Sales reached half a billion dollars in 2015—the highest level since the late 1980s. Vinyl is an experience of music that feels “heartfelt, raw, and organic,” says Sax. “You watch the record spin, and it’s like you’re sitting around a campfire,” one musician tells him. “It’s hypnotic.” And hypnotism remains a face-to-face art.

Do you think this anti-digital vengeance comes from older demographics pining for simpler times… a Bingo club of “You kids, get off my lawn” consumers? You’d be wrong. Those now dipping their toes in analog grew up bathing in digital products: Millennials and other young consumers. They are driving the success of analog alternatives like old-school Polaroid cameras with built-in printers.

Our favourite part of the analog trend is what it reveals about our enduring love of good old-fashioned paper. For instance, beyond books, Sax raises the hopeful future of magazines:

“The newer magazines that are succeeding today, publications like Kinfolk and Monocle magazines, they’re saying, ‘Okay, we might have a few ads in here, but we’re really not dependent on ads in the way that time and Newsweek and Vanity Fair is. We depend on your subscription dollars. If you like it, you pay for the subscription, you pay for each issue, and it’s going to cost you more than those Sports Illustrated things, and we’re not sending you a football phone. You’re going to pay for this, but you’re going to get something that’s a high quality and that you’ll like and it won’t feel as disposable’. And if enough people think that, then, that’s a business.

In our industry, we at Postalgia see the paper preference at play with the power of direct mail. From the huge plurality of consumers who look forward to checking the mail to the ways direct mail gets better response rates than comparable digital marketing, we see paper’s incomparable capacity to create an emotional connection between you and your stakeholders. Forging a connection in a way that digital marketing hasn’t yet matched.

This is why the paper preference is so powerful. Paper creates relationships. We’ve seen that during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the enormous proliferation of pen pal groups and letter-writing among family members as an antidote to social isolation—and in contrast, how draining the endless Zoom meetings can be.

Nowadays we hear a lot about disruption—and that the only way to be disruptive is digital. Today, the opposite is true. The revolution of analog products is on. This revolution won’t be televised—it will be handwritten on paper you can hold in your hands.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

How writing letters can fight pandemic depression

Posted on October 14, 2020February 2, 2024 by Ilan Mann

Life-giving responses to COVID-19 can include:

The answer is four. Yes, actually. Handwriting letters to loved ones can make a big impact in the era of COVID-19—especially in addressing the health crisis offshoot of the virus, the depressing effect of social isolation. We all know it first hand after too many draining Zoom calls: the threat of loneliness is very real. One study published in the academic journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences put it bluntly: “Loneliness kills people.”

“Social isolation, or a lack of social opportunity, gives rise to a sense of loneliness,” say the McGill and Oxford researchers in the study. “Directly or indirectly, this feeling has many wide-ranging consequences for our psychological well-being as well as our physical health, even our longevity.”

We have more ways to connect with others than ever before—even in a public health crisis that demands physical distancing even from our closest family. But many of these methods of “connection” don’t provide the jolt of warmth and community that comes from face-to-face social contact. Texting, WhatsApp messaging, video and phone calls—they just don’t feel the same.

It’s not only you who feels that way.

Two academic experts on the topic—one a professor of organizational behaviour and the other a psychologist—have written that “meeting online increases our cognitive load, because several of its features take up a lot of conscious capacity.” These experts point to the increased difficulty of noticing and processing non-verbal social cues during video calls, the lack of natural conversational rhythm caused by freezing streams and choppy audio…even looking at our own faces constantly can be stress-inducing!

Amazingly, writing letters to and receiving letters from our loved ones is a far more positive social experience than the looping roller coaster of daily video calls. We aren’t the first to notice this. To support lonely children during the pandemic, Kids Help Phone organized a letter-writing campaign where kids from across Canada could share letters of encouragement—a global, open-concept pen pals’ program. There’s an Ohio-based non-profit organization called Love For Our Elders whose sole mission is to share love with lonely seniors by empowering strangers to write them letters. Even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is getting in on the action, encouraging employees to write letters to elderly relatives to “brighten your loved one’s day.”

One advocate for letter-writing as a balm for the isolation of COVID-19 is Nashville social entrepreneur Courtney Cochran. Through her organization Shut-In Social Club, Courtney connects potential pen pals across the country and empowers Americans to write letters of encouragement to strangers. Courtney calls letter-writing during the pandemic “a silver lining on a very gray cloud. We just need it right now, more than ever…” Americans agree: the U.S. Postal Service reported higher product sales, including stamps, in April 2020, and also published survey results showing one in six American consumers were sending more mail to loved ones during the pandemic.

Now, you’re reading this and thinking: This sounds like a wonderful thing to do in your personal life. But why not your professional life?

Think about it. Your customers, donors, and leads are people just as much as your friends and family are. They’re feeling the same weight of isolation we all are – the strain of too many video calls, missed family time, the loss of their favourite hobbies and social activities.

We often think about ways to offer an open heart and a shoulder to cry on for those we love. Why not those our business depends on as well? Here at Postalgia, we know about the power of handwritten letters. We help businesses, charities, and other organizations produce and send them at-scale, to create an intimate personal connection with thousands of contacts.

Consider sending our handwritten letters to your professional contacts—not to sell anything, but to offer something. Offer to help. Offer to hear. Offer to offset some of the hurt they have experienced due to this pandemic—a pain we have all experienced in our own way. Use handwritten letters to commit a humble good: letting them know you’re here, you’re living this too, and we’re all in it together.

Doctors, nurses, grocery store staff, and other essential and frontline workers—these are the folks carrying the heaviest weight in the fight against the pandemic. But we all have a part to play. And maybe your part is the simple, radical act of sending a letter, to let someone know you care.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

These six attributes explain the power of direct mail

Posted on October 12, 2020February 2, 2024 by Ilan Mann

Is direct mail dead? It’s the question on marketers’ minds. At the very least, it’s the question they’re Googling: with 167 million results for the search “is direct mail dead?”

So, is it? Let’s just say you shouldn’t wait around for the funeral procession. In 2018 alone, Canada Post delivered nearly 8 billion pieces of mail and parcels—almost 32 million items delivered daily. Direct mail isn’t going anywhere. Its place in the wider toolset of marketing and sales channels may be changing. But its power to build your business isn’t. Here are six reasons why.

1. Direct mail delights

Those of us old enough to remember when we went to Blockbuster Video for our Friday night entertainment will recall when mail was annoying—the inbox spam of the ’90s. And like the movie rental chain, those days are long gone. 41{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of Americans look forward to checking their mail every day, including 36{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of Americans under the age of 30. In turn, a whopping 90{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of Americans look forward to receiving personal letters and cards… something we know a little bit about.

An enormous number of your potential customers, donors, and stakeholders like mail. They really like it.

2. Direct mail sticks around.

Today’s email inboxes are a blast zone of unopened brand newsletters, sales emails, and spam from that one store you visited on vacation once, and foolishly gave your email address for a digital receipt instead of a printed one. Big mistake trying to save the trees there.

Avoid the digital wasteland that is your customers’ spam folder. Direct mail, in contrast, sticks around. Over an 18-month research study, the UK’s Royal Mail service found that:

nearly 40{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of consumers have a dedicated display area for mail;
that nearly one-quarter of mail is shared among members of a household; and
mail remains in the home for anywhere between 17 and 45 days after delivery, leaving multiple opportunities for your message to be seen and re-seen.

A strong direct mail piece – potentially displayed publicly – will catch the eye of multiple occupants in one home and will stick around far longer—unlike an email, always buried by the next email to arrive. This boosts message recall, enhances brand recognition, and means more bang for your marketing buck.

3. Direct mail gets responses.

Sure, email marketing can be cheap—but sometimes, you get what you pay for. Canada Post found that postcard marketing has a response rate of 4.4{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57}, compared to digital marketing at 0.12{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57}. That means postcard marketing is 10-30 times more effective.

But why cause a lover’s spat when you can be a matchmaker? Ultimately, email marketing and direct mail are better off together. Canada Post conducted neuromarketing research and concluded that recipients “paid 39{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} more attention to integrated direct mail and digital campaigns than to single-media digital campaigns, and consumers had 40{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} higher brand recall when direct mail followed email.”

4. Direct mail drives customers to your website.

Let’s go a little deeper into the power of integration. Today’s consumers seamlessly move from offline experiences to online ones. We can catch an ad on a subway car, whip out our phones, and search more about what’s caught our eye.

The United States Postal Service commissioned a study into how direct mail directs traffic to senders’ websites. The results will make you smile. Direct mail and catalog recipients were not only more likely to make an online purchase—they were also more likely to buy more items and spend more money. Catalogues were particularly impactful. The study found a revenue lift of 163{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} for websites supported by catalogues, as opposed to those that were not—boosted especially by a greater influence on first-time shoppers, and a discouraging effect on competition shopping.

Direct mail, in this way, can serve as a strong cue for driving a consumer to your digital platforms—a particularly powerful insight for an e-commerce retailer, or other company dependent on-site traffic.

Given this extraordinary website traffic-driving effect, consider one of direct mail’s greatest benefits for retailers…

5. Direct mail can help you control sales fluctuations.

It’s a problem facing many retailers—peaks and troughs over the course of the annual sales cycle. Some are plagued by these fluctuations more than others. For instance, in 2017 many famous American retailers—like GameStop, Best Buy, Kohl’s, and Macy’s—depended on the holiday season alone for more than one-third of their annual revenue. That’s a nail-biting dependency for any business owner, where a bad season can mean downsizing, layoffs, or worse.

Direct mail’s ability to drive consumers to online stores can be strategically leveraged to even out your sales across the year. Consider identifying the period of the year where your sales performance is worst and deploying a direct mail campaign to boost revenue through special discount events and other tactics.

6. Direct mail is emotional.

Put simply: direct mail stimulates all the emotions that can create a lasting, loyal relationship between you and your customers.

That Royal Mail study we mentioned earlier found that more than half of recipients feel more valued after receiving mail, and value something they can touch 24{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} more than something they simply see.

We’re no strangers to the emotional punch of handwritten, direct mail here at Postalgia. We’ve written about how direct mail can turn an e-commerce transaction into a real-life relationship, and have also taken a deep dive into the ways expressing gratitude to customers or donors through direct mail can build lasting, loyal, long-term connections with key market demographics. Creating a genuine emotional connection with your brand is a time-tested way to build a business that lasts.

These are only six examples of how direct mail packs a powerful punch for any organization, whether you depend on new leads, donors, customers, or lasting loyalty. And no direct mail is more impactful than handwritten letters produced at scale—an incomparable personal touch for thousands of your stakeholders. Click here to learn how.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

Turn e-commerce into an IRL relationship with handwritten letters

Posted on October 2, 2020February 2, 2024 by Ilan Mann

E-commerce is everything for entrepreneurs in 2020. The NASDAQ estimates that by 2040, 95% of purchases will be facilitated by e-commerce. But we are already seeing that shift happening now. Consider: An Adobe report found that American consumers spent more than $50 billion on their smartphones during the 2019 holiday season—accounting for 84% of the holiday season’s spending growth that year.

E-commerce represents an amazing growth opportunity while also being plain scary. Why? Two words: frictionless and spontaneity. E-commerce sales represent a nearly frictionless experience for consumers. Today, a customer can see an ad for a watch, feel an instantaneous emotional connection, and make an impulse purchase under a minute from their phone with pre-loaded credit card information. The time between initial awareness and purchase decision can be less time than it takes for a freshman to microwave a bowl of instant noodles—a food that literally has the word “instant” in its name.

But a spontaneous purchase decision is also an easily abandoned one, and that’s a scary thing for online retailers. That Adobe report we mentioned above found that 50% of smartphone shoppers abandon their carts—half of online shoppers! You can lose them as quickly as you get them, and you can lose them as soon as they click off their browser to open a text from the ex they weirdly still talk to. Distractions abound. But as long as these distractions continue to negatively impact the bottom line—letting checkout carts collect dust in your backend—online retailers are left with a critical challenge.

How do you create a personal relationship online with an easily distracted customer you’ll never talk to?

You see, back in the good ol’ days… (Narrator: “They weren’t that good.”)

Customers would come into your store, and you would talk to them. Over time, you could build a relationship. They would recognize you and your expertise. And you had opportunities to persuade them about the value of a product or a purchase.

Today, persuasion is happening over ad images and tight copy. And as much as you’re competing with others in your product category, you’re also competing for customers’ attention as they scroll through the device in their hands. Insert The Simpsons’ “Old Man Yells At Cloud” headline. Your enemy in this scenario is a calendar notification as much as a competitor.

To win the fight, get off the digital battlefield onto winning ground. Go analog. Handwritten letters can be a surprising but effective counter-measure in the battle for customers’ online attention.

E-commerce retailers think everything about their customer experience has to be digital. Flip that thinking on its head.

Here are six specific ways an e-commerce retailer can use handwritten letters to outsmart the competition—not to mention that pesky calendar notification.

1. Send a handwritten thank-you note along with a shipped product.

A thank-you note is just an incomparably personal and simple way to build a connection with a customer. You’re shipping to this customer anyway—why not include a personalized, handwritten note thanking them for their purchase? There’s so much research to support the conclusion that expressing gratitude is a powerful way to build trust and relationships. Telling a customer how much you appreciate their business is just one effective way of making a one-time customer a loyal and long-term one.

2. Send a follow-up letter months after a customer has purchased a product…

There’s an impactful generosity to giving a customer free information before they become a customer. In turn, to check in on a customer’s experience of your product months after they’ve purchased shows how deeply you care. Consider including your phone number or email address so they can follow up personally with feedback. This is also a great way to keep you top-of-mind with a previous customer, and an encouragement for them to come back.

3. …And up-sell in that letter.

Use that follow-up letter as an opportunity to up-sell the customer on new products. This is especially true if you’re in a product category where certain items can complement your customers’ purchases, like a new hamper for a towel set, or a travel bag for shampoos and other bathroom items.

4. Drive direct mail targets to your website.

One InfoTrend survey found that more than half of customers who responded to direct mail either went to the brand’s website or visited their offline store. Once you’ve piqued a potential customer’s interest with a piece of mail, they’ll visit your website and start browsing. Worst case, they are sharing data through their clicks, allowing them to be targeted with paid ads. The boundary between online and offline is gone. With handwritten letters, you’re sending recipients straight to your website—right where you want them.

5. Try special discounts for letter recipients.

Send handwritten letters at scale with the help of Postalgia to a new market segment in a certain geographic area. For any new customer receiving your letter, include a QR code or a special checkout discount code. Like the thank-you note mentioned above, a personal invitation, combined with the opportunity to save a little money on their first purchase, is a great way to create a relationship.

6. Send a newsletter with product tips, along with a handwritten introduction.

People love getting things for free. Especially when those things are valuable. And whether it’s fashion tips for a new season, the most up-to-date info on local real estate prices, or the hottest trends in home furnishing, a colourful, visual newsletter can deliver high-value information to potential customers that might inspire them to buy from you. Even better: with today’s direct mail targeting, it’s easier than ever before to micro-target a newsletter right to your best consumer demographic.

Including a handwritten introduction with a newsletter is a great way to personalize the information shared—include an email or phone number so a potential customer can reach out to you and learn more.

These are just six examples, but any creative entrepreneur can think of occasions than fit their sales process. The lines between the offline and online worlds haven’t just been blurred—they’re gone. Take advantage.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.