The Unique Requirement of Mail as a Medium

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito for Direct magazine. The views expressed are solely the author's.

Okay, it's time for a pop quiz. Can you tell me what facet of any direct mail pitch is sure to influence the response rate you get?

If you said "the address," you're absolutely right!

Simply put, if the address is wrong, incomplete, or unreadable (by humans or machines), the likelihood is higher catalog or direct mail offer will never be delivered in the manner and to the person you intended. No matter how great the offer, no matter how creative the piece, if the mailing address is found lacking in any form, your marketing effort will fail.

This is rule number one for any advertising or direct marketing approach that relies on mail to be the means by which the message will be placed before your audience. Mail is a medium in its own right, and the nature of this medium imposes on users its own unique requirements.

Heck, this is nothing new. You can say the same thing about any other medium as well. We all know that the ad you'd create for television won't be identical to the ad you create for radio, a newspaper, a magazine, or a billboard.

Today, most mail is processed via automation. Consequently, there is more to "complete" addressing than just the human-readable part. Automatable mail requires a perfectly accurate barcode presented to a machine reader in precisely the place it expects it.

As the U.S. Postal Service continues to improve its mail automation technology, it will expect mailers to understand the need for placing this vital barcode and addressing information in a place and position on the mail piece that is designed to facilitate machine-readability and processing. Say this to many mailers and they begin to moan. "Aw, you mean you're going to stick that thing right where my art director has chosen to be most creative?" Increasingly, the answer may by "yes."

My advice is get used to it. For mail to work in an increasingly competitive world, it must work as perfectly and cost-efficiently as possible. That is, of course, unless you enjoy the prospects of paying higher postal rates. Mail will impose some requirements that may be unique to it as a communication medium. If you expect it to work and bring you the profits for which you're in business, be prepared to do whatever you have to do to facilitate mail processing, distribution, and delivery.