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For all the hemming and hawing that goes on about millennials and their smartphones, social media pages and alleged inability to unglue their eyes from the various screens that encompass their entire existence, it seems they’ve flipped the script on the older generation.

That’s right – in a brilliant twist of irony, millennials have banded together and said, oh yeah, we’re hopelessly addicted to all forms of digital media? Put this in your vaporizer and…vaporize it…?

Have millennials been mocked so mercilessly about their purported need for instant gratification that, in an act of face-saving social disobedience, they’ve turned marketing on its axis by embracing the direct opposite of what they’re ostensibly addicted to?

The science behind the contradiction

Social commentary aside, there’s no denying the numbers found in a 2018 study conducted by the U.S. Postal Service and Temple University:

• 77% of millennials read and analyze direct mail advertisements
• 90% of millennials consider direct mail advertising to be reliable

Despite what you may have heard about millennials, they are cognitively drawn to physical advertisements. Researchers also found that a high percentage of millennials had a strong emotional response to physical advertisements and that the physical ads stimulated parts of the brain connected to desirability and value.

And those numbers are just the tip of the revelation-iceberg found in this study, the underlying trend being that direct mail advertisements seemed to leave a much longer-lasting impact on millennial participants and were generally more effective when it comes to triggering purchasing behavior when compared to digital advertisements.

But..why? How? What?

While this may be puzzling to many marketers, if you’re at all familiar with this generation (that is relentlessly lampooned) you should’ve seen this coming.

Think about it – this demographic is made-up of people who’ve brought vinyl and even cassette tapes back into mainstream favor. Many of them will openly scoff at the idea of drinking a cup of pre-ground coffee, despite its convenience, preferring the longer process of grinding fresh beans each morning. They also brought handlebar mustaches out of obscurity.

This is conjecture, but it seems that based on this generation’s tendency to embrace things that are undeniably “retro”, they favor authenticity over convenience. Why?

Because they’ve had convenience shoved down their throats for so long.

People have been calling millennials lazy, entitled, social media zombies for a long time – it’s no wonder they’ve developed an affinity for stuff that’s considered “old school” as a defense mechanism. It’s also worth considering that because they’re a generation that has always been inundated by digital advertisements, physical advertisements are like a breath of fresh air.

They don’t mind the old way of doing things because to them, it’s fringe, not antiquated. It’s quaint, not old-fashioned. It’s different than what they’re used to.

Got it – I deleted my Facebook Ad account. Now what?

Pump the brakes.

Just because your millennial brother in law recently bought a record player doesn’t mean he’s deleting his Spotify account, nor is it going to stop him from posting the pics of his vintage Victrola to Instagram.

Similarly, just because millennials are embracing direct mail advertising doesn’t mean you should abandon digital advertising entirely. In fact, it means just the opposite.

You should make your direct mail pieces as modern as possible.

Incorporate digital elements of your business into your mailers. It allows this particular demographic to identify you as a unique, yet modern business that will appeal to their millennial sensibilities.

Invite recipients of your mailers to leave you a review online and visit your social media pages. Ask them to subscribe to your email list. Include QR codes.

Create designs that are eye-catching, yet simple and sleek. Write copy that is conversational, concise and genuine.

Most importantly, don’t try to be something you’re not. Remember, millennials are drawn to authenticity, and because they were born on the internet, they have a keen eye for weeding out advertisements that aren’t worth their time – even if it’s appearing in their mailbox instead of their Facebook feed.

The moral of this article is, essentially, that no single group is always 100% of anything all of the time. Not all baby-boomers are technologically inept and millennials can appreciate a timely, well-designed advertisement in their mailbox.

Stand out from the crowd and reach millennials in their mailbox with custom-designed direct mail programs, made especially for businesses like yours. Many of our programs have no monthly minimums and none of our programs have long-term contracts. Contact us or give us a call at 800.926.2451 for more information!

Whether you’re selling clothes or car parts, sandwiches or seesaws, your website has to load fast in order to keep up in this digital age. Users are more impatient than ever – they want their information and they want it now. Sites with a slow load speed may experience a higher bounce rate and, as a result, lost leads and revenue.

There are many free resources available on the web to help you determine how your website stacks up in terms of page load speed, like Google Pagespeed Insights and Pingdom Website Speed Test. These websites will provide you with a list of recommendations for changes that can speed up your site. However, unless you work with websites on a daily basis, the suggestions can be confusing and it may seem very overwhelming to actually implement these seemingly high-tech recommendations.

Common recommendations

• Leverage browser caching
  When browser caching is enabled, the user’s browser will remember parts of your website like the logo, CSS styles and other elements that carry throughout the site. This speeds up your site because the browser can just reference its records rather than downloading all of the information every time a page loads.How to do it: If you’re using WordPress, it’s as easy as downloading a plugin. WP Fastest Cache and W3 Total Cache are great options, just to name a few. If you’re not using WordPress, you’ll have to make some adjustments to your .htaccess file.
• Minify CSS/JS/HTML
  Although it sounds complicated, minifying these file formats simply removes extra unnecessary characters (like spaces and line breaks) from the file.For example, this line of code has many unnecessary spaces and line breaks:

  h1{

  color: #cc0000;

  }

  h2{

  color: #00cc00;

  }

  After minifying the code, it becomes:

  h1{color:#cc0000;}h2{color:#00cc00;)

  Although this format would be hard for a human to read and the spaces and line breaks seem inconsequential, making these seemingly arbitrary changes speeds up load times dramatically. Most caching plugins for WordPress also allow you to minify these files with the click of the button.

• Optimize Images
  Downloading images is one of the most taxing activities for a server so it’s incredibly important to make sure that all images are optimized. Before adding an image to a site make sure that it is not bigger than you need it to be and that it is saved in a web friendly format (like JPG).How to do it: While there are useful plugins to optimize your images as you upload them to WordPress (Smush is a great example), there is no replacement for properly sizing images. Even if you are using a tool like Smush, you can still decrease file sizes without sacrificing quality by using an online image compression tool like TinyPNG.
• Eliminate render-blocking resources
  When your website loads, the browser automatically tries to load everything in the order that it appears in your code. This means that everything in the header (including all Javascript and CSS files) are loaded before any of the content on your page, which is another factor that can contribute to snail-like loading speeds.How to do it: It’s generally best practice to put all javascript files in the footer of your site unless it’s absolutely necessary that they are loaded first. Autoptimize is a great WordPress plugin for the job, but be careful- this optimization can cause a lot of problems with your site. It’s best to work with a developer to ensure everything works properly.
• Reduce server response time
  This suggestion is fairly self explanatory – your server is not responding as fast as it should be. Unfortunately, the only way to improve this is by working with your hosting provider to improve your server speed. If this is causing a lot of issues, you may want to consider switching hosting companies.

Other things you can do

Of course, this list is by no means all inclusive – there are endless optimizations that can be done to improve your page load speed and every website is different. A good rule of thumb is to tackle the changes that provide the most enhancements without sacrificing any of the functionality of your site. If you’re using WordPress, you’ll want to make sure that you’re limiting the number of plugins that you’re using as too many can – you guessed it – slow down your site.

You’ll also want to make sure that you’re performing regular maintenance on your databases to keep them in tip-top shape, but we recommend working with a developer on this to prevent any damage to your site.

Things to keep in mind

As with all changes to your website, it is important to always make a backup of your files and databases before you make any changes (and on a regular basis, as well). This will provide a safety net in case something goes wrong and allow you to simply restore the backup without too much downtime.

These page speed graders, like the speed limit when you’re driving, are merely measuring tools. The goal when you’re driving isn’t to maintain the posted speed limit at all times, it’s to get to your destination efficiently in one piece. At the end of the day, if the people who visit your website are enjoying a convenient, seamless experience, you have a pretty good website.

Need help making your website blazing fast? Contact us or give us a call at 800.926.2451 for a free website evaluation by one of our talented strategists.