Given all the ways we communicate digitally through text, email, social media just to name a few, many wonder why “physical” marketing like direct mail is still used extensively by marketers.

With statistically longer lead times than digital as well as the expenses that come with printing and delivery, why do companies continue to connect with us through the mailbox?

In short, because it works––when it’s done right, that is.

It’s hard to market a franchise these days. No matter how much time and effort you devote to crafting great campaigns, distributing them throughout a national network of franchisees can be an enormous task.

Whether it’s a bulky, inefficient marketing supply chain or campaigns that fall flat time and time again, it can seem next to impossible to find harmony between your corporate marketing team and store managers operating on the frontlines of the business.

But as many franchisors have already discovered, the solutions to distributed marketing problems have less to do with your messages and more to do with the system you’re using to plan, produce and deliver them.