Direct mail once was the largest component business-to-business lead generation campaigns. Then came e-mail, podcasts and webinars. These days, however, e-mail-weary BTB marketers are rediscovering the power of direct mail, says Carolyn Goodman, president and creative director at Goodman Marketing Partners. Here, Goodman discusses how targeted marketing strategies have given a boost to direct mail, why e-mail dependent BTB marketers have no leads in the pipeline and how agencies and printers can work together. CT: During the depths of the recession, everyone was so focused on their existing customers. Now that the economy appears to be improving, are business-to-business marketers revving up their lead generation programs again? CG: Yes, absolutely. During the recession, the cut backs were exclusively related to costs. And direct mail is a pretty high cost compared to e-mail. Now, I think everybody has woken up, looked in their sales pipeline and realized they have a problem because they have no leads to work on. The problem was that BTB marketers focused too heavily on sending out e-mail after e-mail to try to generate leads. Well, guess what, the open rates and the click rates are so incredibly low for e-mail, that instead of having 500 or 1,000 leads in their pipelines, they have 10. As a result, the marketing people are asking for more money to do a proper campaign, which means multiple channels with direct mail usually being one of the key channels. CT: Can you provide any examples of how BTB marketers are embracing lead generation and direct mail? CG: We just recently signed three new BTB clients where lead generation is an aspect of the assignment and all three are using direct mail. For one of these clients, we are creating separate landing pages or resource centers to send their leads to for more information. We’ll be using direct mail to drive targets by vertical industry to those landing pages. We’ll do research into the vertical sectors so that we can talk to each vertical in a language that is appropriate. For a second client, we’ll use dimensional mail to grab the target audience’s attention because we have a very fast story to tell in a very short period of time. One thing everyone knows is that a 3-D mail package always gets opened. The third client is a BTC client for which we will be trying to beat the control package. One of the most fun things to do is to dissect a winning package to find what is working, then try to leverage that and explore it at a deeper level. CT: How has direct mail’s role in BTB lead generation changed recently? CG: For a long time, BTB marketers weren’t developing targeted strategies and solutions for the different verticals in which they operate. Once they started doing that, direct mail began playing a more important role because they weren’t sending out mass mailings but, were instead sending out targeted, verticalized communications that the audience could relate to. What BTB marketers need is a fully integrated approach across multiple channels. Because not everyone reads e-mail and not everyone opens direct mail. What they want to try to do is surround their target and try to insert themselves into the conversation and say, hey, look at me, I’ve got something that can increase value to your organization or, I want to heighten your awareness of our brand and bring more information to the table. Direct mail plays a critical role in being able to accomplish this. If you understand the psychology of how direct mail gets opened, that’s great. But more importantly, you have to understand the target audience. Most businesses are working with different clients in different ways. And the conversation they have with each group about their solution is usually very different. CT: Do you have any advice for printers working in this space? CG: The US Postal Service doesn’t help our cause. They’ve changed so much in terms of what can be mailed, not to mention the costs. As a result, it’s imperative to stay current with what he post office is doing with their equipment and how they are handling mail on a mass scale to insure you are producing direct mail that keeps postage costs at a minimum. One thing printers can do is to stay completely abreast of what the Post Office rules and regulations are. That way, when a production manager sends over a package for a quote, the printer can not only provide the quote but also any appropriate feedback such as if there might be a size issue with the Post Office or if tabs are going to be required. Being proactive in that way is extremely helpful.