We created the “Irresistible Mail” book to showcase how powerful mail can be when integrated with innovative technologies. “Irresistible Mail” was our new creative platform for mail, but the book would also serve to educate marketers, and as a resource, they could refer to it when planning direct mail campaigns; a regular reminder in their office of what they could do with mail. We also created the digital gallery IrresistibleMail.com, which picked up the Irresistible story and gave marketers even more details on the various innovative techniques, including case studies of how other companies had used them to achieve better impact.

We unveiled the “Irresistible Mail” platform in May 2015 at the USPS’s annual mail-focused event, the National Postal Forum, seeding the market by distributing the book to interested marketer attendees. After the Forum, we also created and sent several mailings that served as product demonstrations of how impactful mail can be when used in innovative ways. Our mail took one example from the “Irresistible Mail” book to show how adding augmented reality to a mail piece could make it come alive. Our mailings, and the “Irresistible Mail” book then led marketers to our digital gallery at IrresistibleMail.com, where they could learn more about each of the innovative techniques we highlighted. We used IrresistibleMail.com to give more comprehensive info on the techniques, in addition to how other marketers had used them in creative ways to achieve greater impact.

The most successful direct mail campaign for the USPS in recent history was the end result. We achieved just under triple our average response rate, and more than 5.5X our average response rate among our e-commerce marketer target. These leads that were generated have led to $3.4 million in new mail revenue, with another $3.3 million in potential revenue.

Direct mail is both the focus of, and one of the mediums used in this campaign. The purpose of the work is to inspire marketers to do more exciting and impactful direct mail by integrating innovative formats, printing technologies and digital elements.

We decided to focus on marketers who had been spending more advertising dollars on digital mediums than direct mail, principally e-commerce retailers. This audience felt that because their business was in digital, digital media would be the best way to connect with potential customers, using email, display, search and social advertising, achieving what we knew were significantly less impactful results (direct mail drives 37X more response than email, social and paid search ads, and 185X more response than online display ads). We wanted to show them how much better they could connect with customers and potential customers, and drive those people to their e-store or other digital properties. We targeted them with both our message and our mailings, compelling them to “see what’s possible when you make direct mail "irresistible".

While marketers were finding new and better ways to use other advertising channels, they largely used direct mail as they always had, only with less impact in a sea of sameness. We had to show them the innovative and exciting possibilities direct mail has to offer that can help their mail stand out and drive action. Mail is the USPS’s own medium. We had to take charge and lead marketers to more powerful work. We needed to give mail a creative platform in order to shift perception that it was a flat medium, disconnected from the digital world.