Secrets of the Mailroom Trash Can: 3 Lessons for B2B Marketing
There’s a giant trash can in the mailroom of my office building in Cleveland, Ohio. Every day, it fills up with discarded business mail.
Sometimes I peek in the can to see what my fellow tenants have thrown out, and it’s quite revealing.
Here’s what I’ve observed as a casual mailroom trash inspector, and three valuable lessons from this experience for business-to-business marketers who want to develop a smart marketing strategy.
What Business Executives Don’t Want in the Mail – and Don’t Get
So what’s in the trash can at the Gemini Towers in Cleveland?
- Unwanted direct mail: As a direct marketing consultant, it pains me to see how much of the trash is unwanted B2B direct mail. I’ve watched people stand at the trash can and throw direct mail out before they even leave the mailroom. Either the executives to whom the mail was addressed were the wrong recipients or the mail didn’t have enough value to warrant delivery. In both cases, the direct marketers who sent it received zero return on their direct marketing investment.
- Unwanted business magazines: There often are dozens of copies of discarded business magazines. Most are controlled circulation publications that must no longer be of interest to the recipient. But this may not be the recipient’s fault. I’ve asked to be removed from the mailing lists of several B2B publications, but they keep on coming.
- Bad personal addresses: A large volume of discarded mail is sent to people who no longer work in the building. Business executives change jobs often, especially during a recession, but that’s no excuse for poor list hygiene, especially if you’re mailing to your own customers or prospects.
- Bad business addresses: Even more surprising is mail sent to businesses that are no longer in the building or even in business. I still receive mail for the previous tenant in my suite, even though my marketing consulting firm has been at this location for nine years.
Three Lessons for Your B2B Marketing Strategy
Here’s what B2B marketers can learn from this informal mailroom trash can review:
- Mailing list cleanliness is next to godliness. The best business databases and the smartest business marketers invest heavily in keeping their data current. If you send direct mail to bad addresses – individuals or businesses – it’s the equivalent of tossing your money in the trash. Clean up your data or hire a professional direct marketing data management company to do it for you.
- Subscriber numbers for controlled circulation publications should be taken with a grain of salt. If you’re running advertising campaigns in controlled circulation B2B magazines, look for publications that can verify subscriber data with a BPA audit. Even then, recognize that some portion of the subscriber list (perhaps a significant portion) may be relatively disengaged from the magazine. One way to gauge the value of a B2B publication to readers and advertisers is to compare the number of paid ads to the number of house ads. If the former doesn’t far outnumber the latter, spend your ad dollars elsewhere.
- Direct mail that isn’t obviously and immediately relevant to the recipient will always be viewed as junk mail. Every piece of direct mail you send to a business executive has to register as a message worth reading immediately or it’s a goner. Engage the recipient on the mail panel with relevant content that focuses on their most important business interests. Create direct mail that looks like official, must-read business communication. Or use a unique, interesting format that demands attention and gets readers inside.
If you apply these three lessons to your B2B marketing, you’ll be well on your way to a smart marketing strategy. And you just might be able to avoid showing up in my mailroom trash.
Deborah Maher
As a commercial artist and graphic designer I’ve spent my whole career wondering why the direct market publishers I worked for spent so much time and energy on the design and printing of direct mail pieces and almost no time updating their long established mailing lists. Great points!!
jeangianfagna
Thanks, Deborah. The list is the most important element of any direct marketing strategy. That’s why it’s so critical for direct marketers to invest in keeping their own data current but also using commercial mailing lists that are of extremely high quality. You really do get what you pay for when you buy a mailing list, especially a B2B mailing list.
Craig
Jean,
Another great post!
I have an associate that has purchased a mailing list with 10,000 names on it. This will be used to send a postcard with [hopefully] relevant information to the recipients. How does one verify the quality of the mailing list now that it has already been purchased? Is the only way to hire a data management company, as you suggest above? Are there alternatives?
Thanks!
jeangianfagna
Good question, Craig. The list quality is often determined by the source. If it’s a list of previous respondents to direct marketing, paid subscribers to a publication, or members of an organization, chances are the list quality will be fairly good. If it’s a compiled list of individuals who share similar characteristics but have not indicated any interest in the type of product or service being offer via direct, the list quality could be an issue. If your associate has concerns about the list quality, they should test a portion of the names (at least 1,000) before they drop the entire mailing. They should also request address correction services from the USPS to gauge how deliverable the test names were.
Angie
Okay…. I’m not trying to be sarcastic or snarky. I guess I’m just surprised by the responses on this post. I don’t know why…. Having been on the receiving end of junk mail all my life, none of this strikes me as profound. It’s kind of sad, actually, that anyone would be interested in reading or browsing the *junk mail* of others.
Now… For half a decade, I used to work for a major auto manufacturer’s legal department. We weren’t idiots. We shredded EVERYTHING that might be evenly remotely interesting to someone who might be browsing through the trash.
And I’m sure this is standard policy everywhere….which would explain precisely why junk mail would be all you’d find left.
jeangianfagna
Hi, Angie-thanks for the feedback. FYI, the kind of trash I’m talking about is the stuff that never made it to the addressee–promotional mailings that were sent to a bad list or were not effective enough in their message to get past the mail screener who picks up and sorts a company’s mail. This is important to direct marketers because many businesses use direct mail to sell products and services to other businesses. I am a big advocate of direct mail and I often advise my clients to use it. I am trying to help them do a better job of preparing mail that reaches the addressee and engages the addressee in a meaningful dialogue that leads to a sale, rather than having the marketer waste their money on direct mail that doesn’t work.
Susan Abbott
Wow, great observations, and also scary in many ways.
Who knew the rest of the world was ruthlessly going through their mail the same way I do?
A good reminder that immediate relevance is all that counts. Whether it’s paper or digital.
Thanks for a clever take on this.
jeangianfagna
Thanks, Susan, for sharing your comments. I continue to see B2B marketers waste valuable marketing resources on direct mail that never reaches its intended recipients due to poor addressing, weak creative, and the use of outdated lists. Just last week, our marketing agency received four identical direct mail promotions from Dell, two of which were addressed to employees who haven’t worked here in five years and one which addressed me as “Geane.” A prime example!
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