It’s nice to see the direct mailer guys switching to our side.

It seems like a no-brainer to anyone who has even studied a day of marketing in their life:  If you can directly target a specific individual at a specific time, you are light years ahead of what is currently being done in advertising with direct mailers.

Direct mailers have been around for many years and I am sure the first man (whoever he may have been) to discover the power of sending communication about a brand or a product to a person’s sacred place of residence directly didn’t realize the impact of the discovery for so many years to come.  And why wouldn’t it be great to send your brand to someones house?

Here is why:  That may have worked in those days when dad owned the house and mom owned the kitchen and mom probably received the mail.  Who receives the mail today?  Dad goes to work, mom goes to work, kids come home sometimes but they definitely don’t check the mail and if they did they would dismiss anything in the mail box because their phone would probably vibrate with a text message in their pocket at that exact moment.

So who are we sending our messages and communications to?  We don’t know, but the direct mail guys wont tell you that.  They will give you some fancy statistics about “between 25-56″ and income level of “30,000-80,000″ and you are supposed to make serious business decisions on those kind of statistics.

We are past those days and we are slowly coming to this realization.  Why would I send a direct mail piece if I can target who I send to and when they may recieve it.  I am talking about mobile marketing and communication with customers on the go.  Michael Becker, vice president of mobile strategy at iLoop stated -“Consider this – the mobile phone number is a unique, personal, identifier,” he said. “One is not simply sending a direct marketing message to someone’s house, email account or place of business when practicing direct mobile marketing. Rather, one, when employing direct mobile marketing practices, is engaging an individual directly, literally, wherever the individual may be in the world” .  iLoop, a mobile company has joined forces with direct mailer Harte-Hanks to offer their clients the advantages of communication via the mobile channel.

We (Plastic The Mobile Agency) like to say that you are solving three very important questions when you pursue mobile initiatives- The Where, The When and The Who….