Remember how much direct mail you used to receive?

How much time it took you to sort through it, see what was interesting or relevant, and select the envelopes you wanted to open?

Not anymore.

Direct mail volume is down significantly in the last quarter of 2008, and the first two quarters of 2009 – and it doesn’t look to improve any time soon.

These days in the mailing industry undoubtedly are not the best of times. They may not be the worst either, but they certainly are challenging. For the past three years, those who use mail for business communication and commerce have had to deal with unrelenting attacks by self-styled critics of our industry and practices who are relentlessly pursuing state and federal legislation that would stringently limit your ability to use mail within your business.

When customers open their holiday purchases this year, most won’t think about the supply chains that produced and delivered their gifts. But, those of us in logistics know that the impact of efficient product flow and management–from manufacturing to delivery–is more important than ever during the holiday season.

The cost of satisfying an unhappy customer is far more expensive than the original product cost or associated shipping cost.

List hygiene has been a concern as long as email marketing has been around, and the basics are just that–basic. Opt-outs and opt-ins should be processed quickly, while internal lists should be synchronized so you don’t miss anyone and risk a spam complaint. Inactive addresses or those that are hard or soft bounces, should be suppressed and possibly appended, while risky addresses–for example, sales@domain.com

In the early days of Web marketing, the promise of the new channel’s potential was over-the-top. In fact, many optimists argued that, in the future, the Web and e-mail were going to make direct mail obsolete. 

A funny thing happened on the way to the Web. Not surprisingly, the reality did not live up to the hype.