Snail Mail

Do you still get junk mail?

I do. Every day I get a few full-color fliers and nondescript envelopes promoting a particular deal, event, clothing store, or charity. Why do you think they send those out? Probably because they work.

One of the reasons (I’d argue the main reason) newspaper web sites have such big online footprints is that they advertise them every day to tens or hundreds of thousands of people, by delivering a selection of their content to the doorstep.

It’s a powerful medium for advertising because there’s a cost involved in delivery. People notice snail mail more than they notice e-mail.

When you shut down your printing presses, think about snail mail. Why not offer a free, or nearly free, “subscription” to digest news via snail mail? It’ll cost you bulk-rate USPS postage to ship a daily advertisement to your potential web audience.

You could even sell one or two ads on this marketing material (how may other businesses can do that?). Maybe you’d even make a profit, since you don’t have to pay for a fleet of drivers to make regular early-morning deliveries.