So there I was, using my time productively on a Saturday morning (watching telly) when I heard the familiar noise of my mail being aggressively shoved through the letterbox. I eventually shuffled over to the door and browsed through a host of familiar materials: postcard, bank statements, missed delivery cards… until I came across a leaflet from Amazon Prime.
There it was, a colourful collage of film and TV show titles, beneath an iconic image of ubiquitous character actor Titus Welliver (him from out of that thing, you know?), as the star of the latest Amazon original series, Bosch.
At first, my reaction was one of mild annoyance. I was already an Amazon Prime customer, so why were they trying to pitch me their services again through direct mail? Couldn’t have they at least done it via an easily forgettable e-shot? But then, as my gaze shifted, I noticed the letters scrawled across the bottom of the leaflet, which read: “Michael Charles Grass, you’re a Crime genre fan…”
…am I? I flipped over the leaflet to find out more. I was impressed. Apparently, Amazon Prime had put together this piece of personalised mail based on the TV shows that I’d recently been bingeing on (The Shield, The Fall, The Following) and the books I’d purchased on my Kindle (I have quite the collection of Batman graphic novels and have been reading a lot of Gillian Flynn lately). Guess I was a crime fan, after all!
In an age where the direct mail market is continuing to face challenges from digital media, Amazon Prime had found a clever way to revitalise the print side of it. In fact, this was probably one of the rare instances in which I didn’t mind my consumer data being pooled for marketing purposes. It felt more personal, thought-out and it certainly beat having a plague of annoying pop-ups invade all my social media pages.
More importantly, the mail shot succeeded in what Amazon set out to achieve, i.e. getting me curious about its new product, the Bosch series. Looks like a few more of my Saturdays will be spent in front of the telly…
What other companies are getting direct marketing right? Have you received any eye-catching or memorable direct mail pieces recently? Let us know below!