The Power of Print
There’s nothing like it. You step to your mailbox, lift out a pile of pieces businesses have sent you and suddenly they are in your hand.
Think of how unusual this is. People don’t carry a radio commercial inside their home (though possibly a jingle can get stuck in their head). The billboard is obviously a little too big for dropping on the coffee table. Online ads are out of sight, out of mind, out of clickable reach.
So, it comes down to this: Print marketing has the tactile quality that electronic and digital media can’t touch.
Certainly, online platforms disrupted the old marketing model – causing all of us to salivate at the idea of the Internet as “free marketing.” The big guys like JCPenney gave it a try, dropping their print catalog in 2010 because everything was supposed to be digital. Yet, the retail giant brought it back in 2015 because they saw the error of lost opportunity. Even WebMD (as digital a platform as you can get) added print mailings to their marketing.
Recent stats show that the U.S. Postal service handles 47% of the world’s mail, so there’s still a lot being dispatched to homes and businesses in this country. And recipients are OK with that – in fact, 70-80% of Americans say they’ll open the mail even if they know it’s junk. Plus, 70% say marketing mail is more personal than other forms of advertising. Because it’s tangible, it lasts longer. Not only that, with less competition in the mailbox, your print mailing gets seen.
Yet, in all of this, the most important takeaway for marketers is to integrate traditional and online strategies. Print trends focus on connecting channels – by pushes to digital as it promotes website visits, offers free downloads and videos and encourages following on Social Media. As it does so, the consistency in the branding of print, digital and Social supports one unified message.