When capability outpaces understanding
Every industry eventually reaches a point where its capability outpaces the market's understanding of it. Technology evolves, businesses transform and customer expectations move forward. Yet perception often lags years behind reality. We have seen it happen in banking, telecommunications and retail. The print and mailing industry is no different, and over the past decade, mail has been quietly reinventing itself.
Today it is connected, responsive and data-enabled, working alongside CRM platforms, automation and digital channels as part of a single customer journey. Yet ask many marketers what comes to mind when they think about mail and the answers remain remarkably familiar: slow, inflexible, campaign-led and difficult to change.
I do not believe that is because marketers have not been paying attention, rather I believe it is because we have been speaking the wrong language. As an industry, we have spent years explaining how we have changed when we should have spent far more time explaining why those changes matter.
We have talked about production, while marketers have been thinking about customers. We have explained processes while they have been focused on outcomes. We have described capability, while they have been looking for commercial advantage. Neither conversation is wrong, they are simply happening at different levels.
Understanding your value
One of the themes I have spoken about for several years is that the middle is disappearing. Across almost every sector, organisations are increasingly becoming one of two things: highly automated or highly experiential. The businesses creating the greatest value understand exactly where they sit, communicate it clearly and make it easy for customers to understand. Marketing has evolved in much the same way.
Today's marketers are not selecting channels in isolation. They are orchestrating customer journeys, connecting data, automation, content and experience into one continuous conversation with customers. Mail has evolved to become part of that connected ecosystem, yet we still too often describe it as though it were simply a production service.
The language we use matters, because language shapes perception. And if we position ourselves as printers or mailing houses, conversations naturally gravitate towards specifications, turnaround times and unit costs. But, if we position ourselves as partners helping brands create more relevant, responsive customer experiences, the conversation changes entirely. The capability has not changed overnight – the positioning has.
Discovering our capability
I have lost count of the number of times visitors have walked around one of our production facilities and said, "I had no idea print could do that." They are not surprised because the technology is new, rather they are surprised because nobody had explained that it already existed.
Today, a retailer can trigger a highly personalised piece of mail from customer behaviour within their CRM in a matter of hours, just as they would trigger an email or a mobile notification. From a marketer's perspective, it is simply another decision within the customer journey.
Yet many still assume mail requires weeks of planning, because that is the story our industry has unintentionally allowed to persist. Innovation only creates value when people understand it. Until then, it is simply capability waiting to be discovered.
A leadership challenge
Perhaps that is where we have gone wrong. Our industry does not have an awareness problem because marketers fail to understand mail ¬– it is because we have spent too long explaining ourselves to one another, instead of explaining ourselves to marketers.
As industries mature, they often become fluent in their own language and forget how to speak to their customers. That is not a technology gap, it is a leadership gap.
The print and mailing industry has never lacked innovation, it is more that it has occasionally lacked the ability to translate and convey the incredible effectiveness of its channels to market.
Marketers are not asking how something is produced, rather they are asking how it helps them acquire customers, strengthen loyalty, improve relevance and deliver stronger commercial outcomes. That is where our narrative must evolve.
Rather than explaining what happens inside the factory, we should explain what changes for the customer. Rather than describing the mechanics, we should describe the outcome. Mail is not separate from modern marketing. It is another connected touchpoint within the same customer journey.
Closing the gap
This is not about making mail sound more exciting, the mission should be to make it easier to understand. Think about BT. Many people still instinctively associate it with landlines, despite the fact that today it is equally recognised for digital infrastructure, cyber security and connectivity. The business evolved long before public perception caught up.
Mail is experiencing a remarkably similar challenge. While its capability has moved on, its reputation is still catching up. And the opportunity is not to persuade marketers that mail still deserves a place in the marketing mix – it is to help them recognise the role it already plays.
The technology already exists, now the opportunity is to explain it with the same clarity and confidence that we invested in creating it. When perception finally catches up with capability, marketers won’t see mail as a traditional production channel. They’ll simply see it for what it has become: a connected, responsive and commercially relevant part of modern marketing. That is when capability finally becomes understanding.
Jon Bailey is CEO of Precision Proco and a long-standing advocate of digital transformation, automation and data-driven customer engagement. He argues that the print and mailing industry does not have a technology problem – it has a communication problem. While capability has evolved rapidly, perceptions have not, leaving many marketers unaware of the role modern mail already plays within connected customer journeys.
