Print and mail firms that will do well in 2026 will not be the ones with the fastest inserters. They will be the ones that consistently reinforce their image as mailing professionals in the minds of their customers. Whether you run an outsource shop or an in‑plant, you can move from “a vendor that runs jobs” to “a partner that shapes strategy” when your team turns everyday questions, production wins, and compliance know‑how into a steady stream of useful stories.
Rethink Your Commitment to Old-School Marketing
Your capabilities brochure, five-year-old website, and occasional email blast may have once been enough to attract new business and keep current customers coming back, but conditions have changed. Customers shop differently now, and they do plenty of homework before they ever talk to you. Today, you must offer proof, perspective, and ideas before you ever make personal contact with a prospective customer. RRD’s research shows B2B marketers are redefining print and direct mail as strategic, data‑driven tools, which means they look for partners who bring insight, not just mailpieces on the belt.
Companies that rely on mail to communicate with their customers need education and guidance about how to get more from their postal budgets and from the mail they already send. A bulleted list of equipment published on your website will not do it. If your pitch deck still reads like a spec sheet, customers quietly assume your operation is interchangeable with everyone else. When that happens, the only distinguishing factor is price.
An Easy Way to Transition
Transforming your organization into one recognized for useful ideas doesn’t have to be difficult. A full-time marketing department is great, but it’s not necessary to create and publish useful, informative content your customers will appreciate. All you need is a simple set of topic categories. Marketing people call them content pillars, but they are just buckets of content focused on a common theme. Start with five categories and create content to fit them. This simple approach makes the work feel less intimidating. Here are some categories you might consider:
FAQs
Answering questions that come up repeatedly is something you can do on your own. You do not need a world-class writer, so use in-house resources for this task. Answering the questions shows you are listening to customers and helps non-experts understand how mail works in the modern age.
Ask your salespeople and CSRs what questions they field from customers. Then answer each one with a short article or a video. The format of this type of content follows a simple structure: state the question, explain your approach, describe the outcome, and provide proof. Publish the answers on your website, in your newsletter, and on LinkedIn, and point to those answers when the questions come up again.
Production Stories
You may not recognize it because you are working in production every day, but you have stories to tell. It might be an unusual application, a rush job you still delivered on time, documents you re‑engineered to save postage, or workflow changes that prevented errors. Take each case and write about it. Describe the challenge or unique aspect, the process you used, the customer benefit, and a brief quote or observation.
Production stories turn your claims about accuracy and efficiency into evidence‑backed examples customers can use to justify sending you their work.
Compliance and Regulated Industry Insight
When you are in the mailing business, you acquire a lot of knowledge about laws and regulations related to documents. Your customers may know the laws, but they don’t know about the measures you apply to ensure their mail meets all the requirements. Short explainer articles or videos about how you protect private information or validate addresses before mailing attract customers with applications that demand those safeguards.
This is not legal advice. Your published content shows customers that your shop has processes in place to protect them.
Campaign Briefs and Testimonials
Comprehensive case studies are valuable pieces of content used by potential customers as they approach a final decision point. They take some time to create and may require professional help to produce. A campaign brief, though, can be a single page that describes the campaign objectives, the solution, and the results. Use numbers as often as possible, even if you must anonymize details in the brief. Stories like these appeal to marketers as they think ahead about their own campaigns. They position your company as one that understands the reasons behind the mailing, not just the mechanics.
Testimonials are a couple of sentences from satisfied customers that describe what it was like to work with you. They add customer voices to the helpful content you publish. Use real names if customers allow it. Otherwise, you can use initials to identify the individual and a few words to designate their job title and industry.
Trends
The trends category is a place to show that you are paying attention to what is going on in customer communications and customer experience. This is where you can also cover areas like postal matters. An easy way to cover trends is by reading surveys and research reports. Do not simply link to the reports. Explain what they mean to your customers and how they should react. A clear point of view separates thought leaders from a job shop that occasionally posts a USPS postage rate chart.
From One You Get Many
You can publish each story you create in many forms. A blog post doesn’t need to be a standalone piece. Take main points from the content and make social media posts, create short videos, or distribute stories via an email or a LinkedIn newsletter. These tactics allow you to broaden the reach of the thought leadership content you create with little additional effort.
Encourage your salespeople to distribute relevant articles or campaign briefs via meetings with prospects.
After you have produced several pieces, make a collection and turn blogs or other content into e-books.
Getting Started
Start with a series of FAQ articles. Compile a list of popular questions and answer the first one, following the format described above. Get it written, edited, and published within the next ten days, even if it is not perfect. Then use that first article as a template and commit to publishing a new answer at least every other Wednesday.
Once that’s done, pick a recent job or a campaign that was interesting or successful and shows how your team reduced costs, accomplished a goal, or solved a problem for your customer. Write a brief about the event and post it to your website.
Before you know it, you will be turning out helpful content your customers and prospects are already hoping to find, changing their perception about your operation.
