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This is not Junk Mail.
By Luis Paez | November 11, 2009
I received this on Monday and was enamored by the “whole package” of this campaign – from the colors to the personalization. This is one of the most clever direct mail campaigns I’ve seen in a while, because it makes people stop. Think. Re-consider. Below is the envelope which features in stark letters “This is not Junk Mail.” , a clever tactic considering that many people consider direct mail to be junk mail. We can argue about the proper term, but this envelope does a better job than we ever could. It pushes back at a prejudiced notion that anything that comes through the mailbox is “junk mail”. It makes people re-consider that this advertising message is of value to them. That they should open & consider it.
Once you open the envelope, it contains a folded letter, a folded flyer and a small insert. All three pieces re-iterate the value proposition, that of fast mobile internet access at a price point way below what other wireless companies would charge you. It did it’s magic – I myself am considering the service because I’m impressed with their value prop & message in addition to the marketing of it all.
Another aspect to consider on this piece from a marketing perspective is their use of variable data & URLs. Although they direct me to call them through 2 options: a phone number or a URL, that URL specified (although not personalized with my name) obviously would link to a version of the landing page that is linked to me.
Curious to see whether they’re integrating my name/address on the landing page as well, I clicked through to this page:
landing page
While it was a very professional looking page, with video elements & clean design aesthetics, I wished it were more personalized to who I was. After all, I typed in the entire unique URL (that was obviously unique to me)… I didn’t just google ‘clear wireless’… but the landing page seemed to lack any personalization to even larger (non-demographic) ideas – like the region I live in. A simple variable element to this landing page would have been to change up a sidebar box to have the title “Best Coverage in Central Texas” or something to that effect. Considering they only are offering this service in a few regions in the nation at this point, it would have only meant 10 or so variations. And since the unique URL shoud have linked to my state, this would have been a fairly simple exercise.
Besides this, Clear is on the right track to winning hearts & wallets with their campaign (and great wireless proposition).
January 16th, 2010 at 11:05 am
I also was lured into opening the envelope even though I was not in the market for their service. I had to see if this truly was ‘Not Junk Mail’. In my opinion and I would guess in the opinion of the vast majority of the population, this is, by informal definition, junk mail. Which makes the advertising a lie, and when someone enters a conversation with me with a lie, then they have lost me. I wouldn’t now consider Clear service even if it was a smoking deal. Lying just pisses me off and that’s that. Unfortunately lying has become a part of our culture that’s acceptable, especially in advertising.
January 18th, 2010 at 9:29 am
The fact remains, this IS junk mail, and the lower the signal-to-noise ratio gets, the harder it is for people to weed out the important bits of mail from the ridiculous offers from non-entities like Clear.
Praising the decision to mark a junk-mail envelope as non-junk-mail is heinous. This is a practice that should be ended, if not scorned.