Small town hardware store changed my mind about direct mail

I went to Bender's Hardware in rural Ohio last month to pick up paint and noticed they had a stack of handwritten postcards by the register, customers were actually taking them. The owner told me they send 200 of those a month and get about 15 people walking in with them, which is way better than my email open rates. Has anyone else found that low-tech local marketing beats digital when your customers are within 20 miles?

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the_grace4d ago

Oh man, that story takes me back. My buddy runs a bait shop near Lake Erie and he did the exact same thing, just handwritten notes to the regulars who lived within a few miles. He mentioned one retired guy who drove 25 minutes just because the postcard had a hand-drawn fish on it, said it felt like a friend wrote it. He gets maybe 5 to 8 people a week mentioning those cards, and his email list barely gets 2 opens a month. It's wild how a 50 cent stamp and some penmanship beats a fancy mailer app every time. Guess people just want to feel like someone took a second to think of them.