Nishma Patel Robb Totally Mailed It

I remember when I was a little girl, mail was a predominant media. You had TV, magazines, radio, and what came through the post. And what stood out then I think still stands true today - that tangibility and targetability, felt so personal, it felt like someone had written to you. So, I think when I went into my career, I loved it because I always had.

Over 30 years I’ve worked in businesses that have been at that intersection of technology and creativity, from Teletext through to Google. So, I've dealt with the ether. I've not had the tangibility of the products that I've either sold or marketed, and direct mail allowed us to give that sense of reassurance, credibility and trust.
 

"In the last five years or so, mail has become more targeted, more creative, and more a part of the campaign."

In the last five years or so, mail has become more targeted, more creative, and more a part of the campaign. And in a heavily digital world, there's the joy of having something that's physical, in your hands and kept. So, whether it's an invitation or a story, people will sit down and take the time to read it, but you wouldn't necessarily get away with that in long form content. I love that mail can take you from URL to IRL. We tend to think of IRL (in real life) as experience, but IRL is just as much as something you physically hold in your hand, and I love that the most. 

The work I’m doing now with The Glittersphere has shown me that creators want more and more IRL, because that's how you get a really engaged community. And the value of a really engaged community, just like smart targeting, is tenfold to a brand. So, this is about content creators, who are entrepreneurs in their own right, using direct mail to do it. 

I've seen some creators who live their life in a social media, digital world, and how do they ever really exist to their fans? There's one brilliant creator who has used direct mail to keep in touch with her fans, and it is about those little touches. Hers was a simply designed postcard that gave a wonderful way of bringing her personality and creativity to life.

If you're a purely online business or providing a service, having direct mail for me was the thing that I think really makes a difference because without it, how do you know it exists? How can you put your trust in it?
 

“With mail you're not fighting for 4 seconds of attention, that can then just be scrolled past.”

It's amazing how much of that can be conveyed through mail, you're not fighting for 4 seconds of attention, that can then just be scrolled past. You have someone's attention in that moment, it's kept, not lost in an inbox or filtered with lots of other distractions. So, it's building trust not just because of the tangibility, but because of the opportunity to engage over a bigger dwell time as well, and that opportunity is quite unique.

At Google, we were trying to engage advertisers, but it's not an easy concept to necessarily communicate when you're going end to end. We wanted to make the steps simple and easy to pass on to somebody else as well. I think complex ideas were well communicated through direct mail, genuinely taking something that might feel a bit dry, a bit boring, and making something memorable. Mail took us from the inbox to the letterbox. 
 

“Mail was a critical part of that journey and helped us be way more effective than our competitors who were simply using a digital channel.”

Mail was a critical part of that journey and helped us be way more effective than our competitors who were simply using a digital channel. So, we were connecting something that came through someone's letter box to a digital trail, it was IRL to URL flipping back and forth. But that piece of engagement gave us time and then we were more likely to convert them. 

I think if you're really doing a good job of mapping out the customer journey, there will be multiple touch points that mail would play a critical role. And I do think every marketeer is currently searching for engaged, targeted, less wasteful ways of reaching people, and I'd put mail firmly in that category. No one wants to be spammed but the thoughtful, personalised, curated, smartly created piece that comes to you, it's going to cut through. 

It's quite hard to get people to picture your product through clicking on an ad, but if I can get something through your letterbox. You hold it, you pick it up, you look at it, you read it, you pop it on your desk or your mantlepiece, you share it with somebody. There's a real sense of emotion and theatre around direct mail that is quite hard to achieve in another media and you can control that.

I mean, isn't that what we're trying to do? Make someone laugh, make someone smile, make someone feel something, drive them to action. Think of another media that will give you the opportunity to have quality time with your customer. I can't think of many other media doing that right now.