Despite many of us turning into tech-geeks in this modern day and age, there is something that remains to be said about receiving a direct mail. With direct mails, you can see and feel in your hand and instead of an email that you can delete instantly, in less time than it would take you to type out 'hippopotamus'.

OK, so that was a long word. But the point is that, most of us are receiving notifications and alerts via email; the direct mailing system is considered the dinosaur of marketing.

However, suffice to say that most of us continue to enjoy leafing through our mail and 'junk' that we get in the mailbox. It is, to say the least, a refreshing change from the kind of spam we get in our email mailbox.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is this – HP's teamed up with Mindfire and they are rolling out a program incorporates the use of QR Codes.

What they are promoting is HP's SmartStream services which is aimed at the advertising, print and traditional media market. Basically, this new HP product helps streamline the process of designing, personalizing and printing direct mailers at the snap of their fingers. With traditional media marketing, different programs and software is currently being used to deliver the final product. The process is long, arduous and costly. Hence, the new HP services should receive some positive feedback if it is not too expensive. Oh, and with the HP SmartStream, you can personalize it with the receivers name right there and then...easily, it seems.

Mindfire is a company that deals with connecting the dots between traditional and online media. With their combined effort, Mindfire will be helping HP print out direct mailers that includes a unique 'landing page' personalized for the said user. The link will be a unique one that is provided by Mindfire and when the reader follows the link, the page is personalized. How, we are not exactly sure.

Instead of making the receiver of the direct mail type out the URL, they will be using a unique QR Code which the reader can get more information about the new product. Accordingly, those who are going for SmartStream can create and print QR Codes directly into their direct mails too. It is a part of the HP software tools.

It DOES sound interesting.