Kevin Harrington

Direct mail relevancy and accuracy

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Kevin Harrington

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,

Boden logoI’m not really sure who the winner is for wasted direct mail campaign effort this week. My favourites through the letter box this morning, and clear contenders, are:

Boden: A personalised letter with a £10 gift voucher to encourage me to use the catalogue they sent me a few weeks back. Sorry Boden, I haven’t received a catalogue from you, therefore your stream of restrictions and terms and conditions are of no relevance to me.

AA Insurance: A beautifully personalised letter inviting me to insure my car with the AA. The only real obvious blunder is that they are referring to a car that I sold nearly three years ago in August 2007.

I think my winner for the week is Boden.

Have you got any corking examples of poor, irrelevant or inaccurate direct mail? Please share.

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Kevin Harrington
I’m a UK-based B2B marketing consultant, specialising in strategic advice for SME business owners. I bring extensive hands-on expertise to every client engagement. Senior leadership roles across technology, media, payments, and publishing have shaped my practical approach. Highlights include serving as Chief Marketing Officer at The Panoply plc (now TPXimpact), Chief Commercial Officer at Tungsten Network, and Global Marketing Director at BBC Worldwide. Over the years, I’ve guided numerous SMEs through transformation and value creation. Helping businesses evolve and thrive is a genuine passion. Practical marketing insights and succession planning strategies are at the heart of what I do, as I believe growing a business’s asset value should be a rewarding and positive journey for every entrepreneur.
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Comments

8 responses to “Direct mail relevancy and accuracy”

  1. Rob Silsbury

    Hi Kevin,

    As I’m sure you’ve guessed, the letter you received recently was designed to be a follow-up to an initial mailing around 3 weeks previous. It does trouble me however that you did not get the first mailing as this was clearly a fundamental part of the strategy.

    While we can see good results from the overall campaign so far and therefore get some confidence that the majority are working as intended, I would like to investigate why you were different and establish whether you were either incorrectly omitted from the first select (clearly this would be a big problem) or whether this could have been caused by another factor (mailing house, postman etc.).

    If you would be so kind as to furnish me with the mailing details on the letter which you did get, I will ensure that my team do the necessary checks and come back to you with an explanation. I included my email address in your comments section, but in case for some reason you can’t access that, I am contactable via Twitter and Linkedin. Thank you very much for bringing this to our attention.

    Very best regards,

    Rob Silsbury
    Marketing Manager
    Boden

  2. Kevin Harrington

    I’ve exchanged a few emails with Rob at Boden now. He is looking at how I got the letter I did and he is sending me a catalogue. Intriguing as I still don’t know what they sell…I guess I could have a look online.

    Blimey, I just have http://www.boden.co.uk …not sure it is where I would normally shop, but we’ll see 🙂

  3. Kevin Harrington

    Good for Boden. All sorted, and their catalogue is pretty good. Thanks, Rob.

    As for the AA: they have now sent me two further letters reminding me how marvellous they are. What has it cost them so far talking to me? Multiply that around the UK and I can think of a way they could help further reduce insurance coasts.

  4. Marketing On The Internet

    Fantastic post full of useful tips! My site is fairly new and I am having a difficult time getting my readers to leave comments. They are coming to the website but I have the impression that “nobody wants to be first”.

  5. Kevin Harrington

    My guess is that your site looks a bit like a place holder for Google adverts and that is a deterrent for people.

  6. Denny Ressel

    I have been recently performing a good sum of research on direct internet marketing for a brand-new internet site that we are working away at and merely felt like saying that you blog is incredibly solid. Many thanks for the topical info you have come up with.

  7. Julian Gratton

    Your frustrations with financial services mailings could increase as with a rise in VAT more financial services clients will take advantage of VAT-free direct mail. Read more here:

    http://www.redcmarketing.net/blog/marketing/time-to-rediscover-the-power-of-the-vat-free-direct-mail-pack/

  8. International Mail Delivery

    Very amusing stuff. I was very impressed to see Rob from Boden contact you so openly and try to resolve the issue. Very few companies have grasped how to deal with online critisicm so it’s good to see one that is pro-active.

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