In a world where we have become overwhelmed with the amount of marketing materials we receive in our inbox and letterbox, only a select handful of brands are putting in the time and effort to cut through the clutter – and Royal Mail is one of them.
We recently put our first house on the market and, as soon as the ‘SOLD’ sign was hammered into the ground, our letterbox was inundated with lengthy marketing letters and leaflets from various local removal companies.
But what they don’t know is that most of the items in our very first house were hand-me-downs or second-hand. When we move into our future house, we want to make it our ‘own’, so we won’t be taking our eBay dining room table or the mismatched pots, pans and plates. Those removal companies think they’re stalking me for my benefit, when in fact we’re likely to hire a van and do the move ourselves.
But last week I received a square-shaped mailer, designed to be a flat pack box, with the message ‘Have you packed your identity yet?’ Intrigued that it wasn’t a standard flyer or letter, I opened it and it popped up into a storage box, with messages on the top and bottom of the insides of the box explaining about Royal Mail’s redirection service.
The introduction explained that ‘in the excitement of moving home, some things can be easy to forget, like getting mail sent to your new address’. Reading on, it warned me that failure to redirect my post could be an open invitation to fraudsters who might access mail containing my personal information.
I take my hat off to Royal Mail for making such a creative piece of direct mail. So why did it stand out from all the rest?
Reason one: it wasn’t just any letter. It was a cleverly designed piece that grabbed my attention as soon as it fell through the letter box. And when it popped open, I had to look inside the ‘box’ to read the text.
Reason two: the messaging was subtle. The short and simple question on the front made me want to open it and it gave me all the information I needed in two small paragraphs. And only once I had opened it and seen the small logo and the memorable link for setting up the redirection service did I know it was from Royal Mail.
Reason three: I genuinely have no idea how Royal Mail knows I’m moving. This is precisely why this piece is so clever. Receiving mailers from removal companies is obvious, but I certainly wasn’t expecting to receive a mailer about redirecting my post – and especially from a huge national corporation like Royal Mail.
Other brands should take inspiration from Royal Mail’s approach and think ‘outside the box’ when it comes to targeting consumers. Finding innovative ways to carefully package up marketing materials to add impact with the customer will ultimately lead to a positive exchange between brand and consumer and drive revenues ‘home sweet home’!