Give Direct Mail Due Credit

Poor, direct mail. Another year, another Google search proclaiming the death of print marketing. The fact of the matter is those claims are less trustworthy than the latest supermarket gossip rag, and here’s why:

1.)    According to the 2013 Direct Mail Association Factbook, 65% of consumers, of all ages, made a purchase as a result of direct mail. Those are promising statistics. Now do you want to know what the average response rate for electronic mail was? Ready for this? 0.12%. Direct mail came in at 4.4% for both B2B and B2C mailings.

2.)    Direct mail yields the lowestcost per lead. That’s right. Lower than pay-per-click advertising, lower than print advertising, and yes, even lower than email.

3.)    Socialmedia and web marketing are popular and certainly have their perks, but we tend to overestimate their capabilities. Because social is a commonplace medium today, we think everybody must use it, but that’s just not true. An estimated 55% of senior citizens do not rely on internet messaging, so if that’s an audience you’re after, you need to reconsider your marketing priorities. We’re not saying to abandon your web efforts, but combining them with print efforts could reach a lot of potentialcustomers that you could be missing.

4.)    It’s creative. For example, one gimmicky marketer reports that he has, in the past, attached a cheap watch and asked consumers for a bit of their “time” or a mirrored mailer asking how consumers “see” themselves. Cheesy? Maybe to some, but it is creative and creative is what gets people interested.

5.)    39% of customers say that they decided to try a business for the first time becauseof a direct mailer. It accounts for an average of 78% of non-profit donations, and 44% of people will visit a company’s website after receiving direct mail.

So next time you see a headline reading  something like, “Is This the End for Direct Mail?”, you can rest assured knowing what the answer will be. Talk to us about how we can work together to ensure your marketing efforts are turning out the best results for your business. We’ll get you setup the Tray way!