DIRECT MAIL TECHNOLOGIES & POSTAL TECH TRENDS

MAILBAG WEDNESDAY!

With direct mail, we continue to see technology leading the way into 2025 and dragging direct mail along with it. Here are some of the trends which we’ve noted in 2024 and we expect to see expanded in 2025:

(1) Expanded Personalized Messaging on both sides of postcards, often using sophisticated reverse fonts, images, and text placement.

(2) AI (Artificial Intelligence): from writing appeal letters to making logo suggestions, AI is becoming a marketing buddy for even small businesses. For example, this vector art image here was AI-generated, much to the angst of our graphic designer.

(3) 3D Mail campaigns (a.k.a. dimensional mail): You might know these are “pop-up mailers” or at least have seen (or gotten) a musical Hallmark card that opens with die-cut imagery. Here, what we’re sensing, without getting into marketing-speak, is the hope that interesting, low-tech but high awareness tactics will capture recipient attention and anchor the brand message. So, what’s old is looking new again, but it still takes a big budget to amortize the set-up, die & print costs for 3D direct mailpieces.

(4) Online ordering to Personalized Print Marketing: Buy an industrial V-Belt from Zoro.com? We did… and you know what happened? We got an oversized postcard with the digital image of our order about 2 weeks later. This is astonishing and is shows the scope of how online forming a symbiotic relationship with direct mail.

(5) Augmented Reality: This “dark horse” technology turned into a total postal marketing bellyflop a few years ago (2018) after having been heavily promoted by the USPS. Now, whispers are being heard that it might come back again. Certainly, the technology is in place. The idea was this: that unique images could act just like QR codes and allow a recipient to have an “augmented” 3D experience of a house, product, vacation, etc., with mere Smartphone use (via an “overlay” of digital information). For the moment, QR codes are doing the job, but this is now back on our radar.

The key to 2025 will be how to tie the technology back to the mailpiece so that the mailpiece can utilize the technology. Right now, it’s the mailpiece that’s in the way – for the most part, the technology has already arrived. Future growth is going to depend upon getting the recipient to “invest” even 1 to 2 seconds to unlock a feature designed just for them. This is no small feat — just look how long it took for QR Codes to start getting real adoption.

If interested in Postal Trends for 2025, try exploring the USPS’s “Tactile, Sensory & Interactive Promotion” (ref: https://postalpro.usps.com/promotions/25-tsi)

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