One of my favorite segments of Monday Night Football is a piece they call C’Mon Man where the commentators dissect plays from the previous days games that made them scratch their heads. Plays where professional football players often look like fledgling amateurs in front of a nationwide audience.

It’s a fun way to highlight particular moments that just make us all go “Really? Did that really just happen? From a professional? Really?”

With that, I’d like to offer up my favorite C’mon Man moment from the DMA Conference and Exhibition (now referred to as the ANA – www.ana.net) held last week in Las Vegas. This conference, showcasing the best and brightest companies and individuals in the North American Direct Marketing world, like football or anywhere else in life, can still serve up those “Really?” type moments as well.

As I sat at my desk two days after the show had closed I received not 1, not 2, but 3 mail pieces, delivered that day, promoting different companies booths at the DMA. Really nice, professionally designed pieces that caught my attention, but received 2 days after the show had closed. C’Mon Man!

Of course my company, JR Direct, is a Canadian based company and that will slow down US originated mailings, but there are several, simple approaches these mailers could have taken. A few ideas to consider:

  • Omitting Canadian companies prior to mailing to save some face if you know you’re timelines are tight (though you would have missed hundreds of attendees)
  • Looking for some Canadian based suppliers to handle your mailings for you. Sure you may pay a bit more, but if you convert just 1 or 2 more leads isn’t it worth it? (and by more it would likely be just pennies per piece since you’d save on postage – all the pieces I received had International postage)
  • Or, my favorite, just mail sooner.

I’m not one to be critical of my fellow DMers, and we all make mistakes, but as experts in this industry we need to work that much smarter to impress each other. After all, none of us wants to be the recipient of thousands of our peers thinking C’Mon Man.