At Darwill, we love direct mail. We love it because it works, and we print hundreds of thousands of pieces every month. But sometimes our clients’ direct mail campaigns don’t return the results they want. Is direct mail itself to blame? Not necessarily. When clients are producing high-quality pieces that have all the right components (good list, copy, offer, call to action) and still aren’t getting the results they want, we have learned to dig deeper. Sometimes there are other problems afoot. A lot can happen between the time a direct mail piece shows up in a mailbox and a sale is lost. We can help our clients control what shows up in the mailbox, but we cannot control what the people’s buying experience is once they pick up the phone, log into a website, or walk into the store. That’s why it’s important to look at the whole process. Often, it turns out that marketers don’t have a direct mail problem. They have a website, sales, or other problem once people respond. For example, we have one client with great, strong direct mail campaigns that weren’t getting any sales. The call to action is a phone call, so we contacted one of the many companies that track phone calls. These companies assign a unique phone number to each marketing campaign, then record the content of the incoming and outgoing calls. When our client signed up for this service, you know what they found out? They had a little bit of a sales problem. Some of the people answering the phone needed some additional training; some, frankly, just needed to be a little friendlier. If you think your direct mail isn’t working, don’t write off direct mail. Let us help you investigate alternate reasons your campaigns might not be as effective as you might like. Let us help you solve the real problem and get your results back on track. Mark Pageau is VP Sales at Darwill. He has been in B-to-B sales and marketing for 35 years and has been at Darwill since 1995. You can reach him at mpage@darwill.com or on Twitter at @mpageau