The Power of Direct Mail

Background

TNT wanted to encourage marketers to make more use of Direct Mail and to see it as an essential part of the marketing mix.

The challenge was to dramatise how Mail is the most personal way to communicate with everyone, one-to-one.

Idea

The thinking was that even though the Netherlands has a population of over 16 million, there is a different face behind every door. Young, old, male and female, everyone is unique yet all can be reached via the letter-box. By Direct Mail.

To make their front doors and letter-boxes as personal as the people inside, different painters were asked to paint portraits of the people who lived behind the doors on the doors.

The letter-box was the mouth in every instance to symbolise the dialogue between sender and recipient, conversations both personal and direct.

Images of the doors were then used in outdoor and in direct mail.

For some TNT key accounts, real doors were delivered with the customer’s face painted onto them. This way, marketing professionals experienced for themselves how personal mail can be, making them realise what DM could do for their key target audiences.

Results

With the Direct Mail campaign, the goal was to arrange a personal sales pitch with all the TNT key accounts. And that happened. With all of them. A 100% response rate.

Our Thoughts

This is one of those ideas that makes you furrow your brow when you see the board, but raise it in pleasant surprise when you watch the video. The artistic portraits on the doors are a solid strategy for reaching key clients, and are clearly very well received – one recipient carrying hers into a boardroom meeting and gleefully reading aloud the enclosed letter to her assembled colleagues.