Many Roads Lead to LeadsEngaging and acquiring customers is no longer as simple as using direct mail.

As someone who writes about marketing for a living, I have to come clean. I hate my mailbox.

有一件事, it's one of those apartment-style slots that fills up in two days, forcing me to impose on neighbors to tend it like a tank of tropical fish while I'm gone. But even more annoying is the stuff that fills the mailbox. Bills, of course, but also the most aggravating collection of direct mail offers and solicitations that I would never in my life succumb to. Whole, thick catalogs from companies vaguely affiliated with vendors I once bought from, years ago. Invites to subscribe to magazines at a "professional discount," and appeals to renew before the subscriptions run out in a mere six months. And credit card offers. (Is anyone still rising to this bait?)