You’ve seen dozens, if not hundreds of these direct mail pieces in your mailbox. The ones I am referring to are the post cards pieces that offer a free phone if you sign up now for a 2 year cell phone contract. The others push Internet subscription services with 90 days free for a one-year minimum subscription. They all are usually 4 color mailers with nice graphics and big headlines with a couple of paragraphs of copy.

What stuns me is that these multi-million piece mailers do not practice the fundamentals.

Most of them cannot answer “Yes” to any of these questions.

1. Are you testing offers, mailing lists, and other media to establish winners?

2. Can you track response by customer, by offer and by medium?

3. You are presently using broadcast and print as awareness builders. Do you view direct response print, DRTV and email as direct marketing media opportunities?

I’m not sure what these companies are doing and why they don’t learn from the direct marketing community.

They are selling one-to-one and making an offer. But does this qualify them as direct marketers? Could they dramatically increase their ROI by applying basic DM strategies?