Trust, fake news, and where now for direct mail?

Facebook has dedicated teams and tools. Every national newspaper website has a section earmarked just for it. And the “leader of the free world” bandies the phrase about like a child repeating a lie to convince themselves it’s the truth.

Added to Dictionary.com in 2017, fake news has become stitched into society, helped by the massive magnification power of online platforms.

There have been many examples of fake news in relation to the current pandemic – it’s been made in a laboratory (usually in China, but other countries have also been mentioned); the Pope has it; so does Cristiano Ronaldo.

Recently Twitter announced it would label with warning messages tweets it considered to be fake news, especially in relation to Covid-19. It followed through by labelling two of President Trump's tweets this week - you can imagine how that went down.

So how do we decide who to trust and who not to believe? And how can marketers address the issue?

Establishing your brand

Familiarity will breed trust.

So many businesses have stopped their marketing efforts during the current crisis. That’s absolutely understandable, but we all need to make sure that our clients or potential customers know we are still operating. Being present in the places they expect to see you is a good start, whether that’s on social media, online, or continuing some of the regular analogue activity you would have done anyway.

Scaling things back is one thing, but disappearing off the radar altogether is another. With the collapse of many much-loved brands and plenty of other businesses now teetering on the edge of viability, those of us with a strong heritage (PMG has been around for 30 years) and a good base to work from don’t want to miss sales because customers assume we’ve gone to the wall and look elsewhere. That would be a very ironic and unwelcome kind of fake news.

Choosing trustworthy channels

Royal Mail research has repeatedly shown that physical mail is more trusted than email and other digital distribution methods. 87% of people surveyed said mail was believable, compared to just 48% who said email was believable.

I am biased, of course, but a well-targeted piece of direct mail is always going to make a good impact. The challenge right now is where to send that direct mail to. So here’s the catch. If your customers/clients are mainly working at home, direct mail and print should not be what you look at right now.

But if your clients are back working at site, or your business is B2C and everyone is guaranteed to be at home, you need direct mail in that marketing plan and fast!

With the merging of people’s home and work lives emails are more likely to go unread. Plenty of people are doing digital detoxes, avoiding the depressing updates and controversial news in a bid to protect their sanity. So with people largely spending their time at home you could capitalise on the childlike excitement of receiving actual post (that’s not a bill!) to improve your brand visibility.

The good news is that in the same Royal Mail survey, 45% of people said that they had enquired by phone, 41% had renewed an existing service and 36% had bought or ordered something. Another study showed 66% of people had bought something as a result of direct mail.

Trust is more important now than ever. So what are you going to do to protect your brand? Have you any thoughts on the dilemma of direct mail for B2B clients now working from home? I’d love to hear them.