Today brings us another guest posting from Jacobs Media’s Keith Cunningham:
In a climate where every marketing dollar must count, use this as a reminder to revisit your vendors and their mailing lists, or you could be wasting a lot of money. For six years now, I’ve lived at the same address here in Santa Monica. And throughout that time, I’ve been receiving KIIS and KYSR direct mail pieces on a very regular basis. While I haven’t kept track of the frequency, it seems like nearly every month in the Spring and Fall. On the one hand, I give Clear Channel a ton of credit for knowing they have to spend money to make money – they’re not taking KIIS’ monster ratings for granted, and they’re exhausting all possible resources to try and grow KYSR. But on the other hand, they’ve been missing it with me, and probably lots of other people here in the L.A. market.
Why?
Their direct mail vendor thinks I’m someone else. For six years, every KIIS and KYSR mail piece I’ve received has been addressed to the female who moved out before the tenant I replaced. To be clear, this address record has been wrong for at least 8 years. And while I’ve blurred the address info so I can protect her privacy, she surely fits a very different demographic profile than I do. So use this as a reminder, and if nothing else, apply the KISS (as opposed to KIIS) rule — keep it simple, and make sure your vendors are updating their lists, or you could be wasting a lot of money.
In the direct mail business, it’s a shotgun philosophy. Everyone knows that only a percentage of these pieces are going to end up in the right hands. But stations can ensure better results by pushing their vendors to keep those lists fresh. In a market like L.A., there’s a lot of residential coming and going. Getting these personal marketing pieces in the right hands is critical to a campaign’s success.
While it’s popular to take shots at Clear Channel and Los Angeles stations, it’s nice to see them doing consistent marketing. KIIS could easily sit back, throw the money to the bottom line, and maintain respectable ratings. They play the hits and have Ryan Seacrest doing mornings. But they’ve always realized that top of mind awareness not only contributes to ratings, but also with revenue.
Anyone want to bet whether or not I’ll get another KYSR or KIIS piece next month?
Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.
The proposed recent “Do not mail” is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing – and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?
I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!
The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today’s [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today’s merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman’s mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”
Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer’s right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.
To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”
We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.
https://www.newdream.org/emails/ta19.html
Signed,
Ramsey A Fahel