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Direct mail – postcards, ‘invitation-style’ mail, brochures, folders, flyers, etc. – is a very effective marketing, advertising and promotion tool which offers great flexibility and tremendous potential for creativity. It also provides the opportunity to talk right to your target audience, even if you’re targeting ‘consumers in general’ and you can deliver your message to people where they live or where they work. As we have already mentioned, direct mail is one of the most effective forms of advertising and promotion, if not the most effective! That effectiveness comes in part from the fact that it’s an ‘active’ marketing outreach, rather than a ‘passive’ outreach which must first wait for the audience to come to the promotion vehicle in general and your ad in particular, such as if you advertise on TV or radio, or in the local newspaper, etc.

Another reason direct mail is so effective is that, in theory at least, your mail will be delivered directly to your prospects – addressee by addressee – even when the promotional piece is sent to “current resident”. We said ‘in theory’ because the truth is, no one can ever really guarantee that your specific prospect will actually retrieve the mail the very day your piece is being delivered, unless the mail piece requires identification and a signature. The added costs for those postal services, on top of the cost of postage alone, would make the mail piece too expensive for most direct mail campaigns.

However, for some “high-ticket” items, such as real estate, car sales, luxury items, etc., the added cost might be justified, and warranted, in order to make a profound impression. That same logic may also be applied if you and your promotion partners decide to send something other than the usual, two-dimensional printed piece. For example, a box with a Halloween object inside, to accompany your Halloween promotion.

the downside for direct mail is, there is a tremendous amount of “junk mail” still cluttering mail boxes. In fact, most direct mail probably falls in the junk-mail category. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider direct mail, just that you should make sure your mail promotion will stand out from the clutter.

And, with that parameter clearly in mind, there’s one other thing to remember: direct mail will give you great freedom to be extremely creative, as long as your creativity is appropriate – for the audience targeted, for the theme or concept of the promotion and for each and every one of the partners participating with you. A promotional partner is a sponsor that is helping to pay for some or all of the advertising costs.

There are some mail ‘mechanics’ to keep in mind, such as, whatever the actual mail piece is, it should either provide advertising or promotion space for each participating partner or appropriate space to group all partners together, even showing the individual store names and logos, just the way a merchants’ association would for the participating merchants in a mall. Another direct mail ‘mechanic’ to remember involves the minimum number of pieces required to qualify for reduced bulk mail per-piece postage rates. And, unless your direct mail piece is going to be mailed for first class postage, you’ll need to acquire a bulk mail permit, for a fee, and the pieces in the mailing will need to be “bagged and tagged” according to the postal service’s requirements.

The Federal Reserve on Wednesday considerably raised its expectations for inflation this year and brought forward the time frame on when it will next raise interest rates.

However, the central bank gave no indication as to when it will begin cutting back on its aggressive bond-buying program, though Fed Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged that officials discussed the issue at the meeting.

“You can think of this meeting that we had as the ‘talking about talking about’ meeting,” Powell said in a phrase that recalled a statement he made a year ago that the Fed wasn’t “thinking about thinking about raising rates.”

As expected, the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee unanimously left its benchmark short-term borrowing rate anchored near zero. But officials indicated that rate hikes could come as soon as 2023, after saying in March that it saw no increases until at least 2024. The so-called dot plot of individual member expectations pointed to two hikes in 2023.

Though the Fed raised its headline inflation expectation to 3.4%, a full percentage point higher than the March projection, the post-meeting statement continued to say that inflation pressures are “transitory.” The raised expectations come amid the biggest rise in consumer prices in about 13 years.

“This is not what the market expected,” said James McCann, deputy chief economist at Aberdeen Standard Investments. “The Fed is now signaling that rates will need to rise sooner and faster, with their forecast suggesting two hikes in 2023. This change in stance jars a little with the Fed’s recent claims that the recent spike in inflation is temporary.”

Markets reacted to the Fed news, with stocks falling and government bond yields higher as investors anticipated tighter Fed policy ahead, including the likelihood that the bond purchases will slow as soon as this year.

“If you’re going to get two rate hikes in 2023, you have to start tapering fairly soon to reach that goal,” said Kathy Jones, head of fixed income at Charles Schwab. “It takes maybe 10 months to a year to taper at a moderate pace. Then you’re looking at we need to start tapering maybe later this year, and if the economy continues to run a little bit hot, rate hikes sooner rather than later.”

Even with the raised forecast for this year, the committee still sees inflation trending to its 2% goal over the long run.

“Our expectation is these high inflation readings now will abate,” Powell said at his post-meeting news conference.

Powell also cautioned about reading too much into the dot-plot, saying it is “not a great forecaster of future rate moves. “Lift-off is well into the future,” he said.