Back in 1923, Claude C. Hopkins, widely recognized as a great advertising pioneer, wrote in Scientific Advertising: “The severest test of an advertising man is in selling goods by mail. But that is a school from which he must graduate before he can hope for success. There cost and results are immediately apparent. False theories melt away like snowflakes in the sun. The advertising is profitable or it is not, clearly on the face of returns.”

In 1991, I wrote: “Direct mail was the shining star of advertising in the 1980s and promises to continue to be so in the 1990s. It’s the fastest growing form of advertising because it’s measurable, relatively easy to produce, and cost effective.” Fast forward about 20 years and I could probably say exactly the same thing about e-marketing. How the world has changed!

While the delivery mechanisms are different, in reality, the basics of communicating effectively with whoever the target audience might be really haven’t changed very much, if at all. Effective communication is still effective communication, and direct mail — whether in the snail mail environment or online — still benefits from the same tried and true principles that gurus such as Claude C. Hopkins, and later, Bob Bly and Herschell Gordon Lewis espoused and practiced. When you run a radio spot for your product or service it’s hard to tell exactly how effective it is.

When you mail coupons to prospects — whether delivered via snail mail or email — it’s easy to measure the results; simply count the coupons you get back. Better yet, in the digital age, you can tell how many people opened your email, how many forwarded it on to others, how many clicked through to various parts of the message, and (based on their email addresses or domains) who they are!

Truly, the beauty of direct mail is its measurability — the ability for marketers to know, with certainty, the value of the effort they have put forth. That same thing can’t be said about other forms of advertising. While success may be implied, it cannot be explicitly measured when we use techniques such as television advertising, billboards, print advertising, etc.

Regardless of what you have to sell or who you want to sell it to, direct mail (traditional and/or digital-era) can provide a flexible, measurable, and very cost-effective means of delivering your message and achieving results.

Those who are already steeped in the practice of traditional direct mail will find that there aren’t a lot of differences between the traditional and the new-media approach. Those who have not yet dipped their toes into direct mail marketing will be glad to learn that the principles can be readily applied whether they’re developing materials for delivery to a mailbox or a desktop.

It sounds simple enough and it really is. The information in this book will make it easy for you to plan and produce your own directmail campaigns, measure their results, and make improvements to subsequent campaigns to generate even better results. That’s the beauty of direct mail! [Introduction p. xiii-xiv]

"While the delivery mechanisms are different, in reality, the basics of communicating effectively with whoever the target audience might be really haven’t changed very much, if at all. Effective communication is still effective communication, and direct mail — whether in the snail mail environment or online — still benefits from the same tried and true principles that gurus such as Claude C. Hopkins, and later, Bob Bly and Herschell Gordon Lewis espoused and practiced. When you run a radio spot for your product or service it’s hard to tell exactly how effective it is." [Introduction p. xiii]