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Direct Mail Marketing

IN RECENT YEARS, there has been a lot of debate about direct mail marketing. Some say direct mail is a “dead tactic,” and that it has been (or should be) replaced by newer forms of lead generation. Direct mail is certainly an expensive tactic, whereas other lead-generation tactics can be done more cheaply. Some marketing experts say it is silly for companies to spend $50,000 to create, print, and ship 25,000 direct mail pieces, when they can send out the same number of promotional e-mails for about $5,000, roughly one-tenth the production cost.

But direct mail is far from dead. In fact, it’s more alive than ever. In 2010, according to the U.S. Postal Service, U.S. businesses spent about $171 billion in advertising. Of this, approximately 12%—or about $20.5 billion—was spent on direct mail. U.S. households received 83.5 billion pieces of advertising mail in 2010. And although overall spending for direct mail advertising fell sharply during the 2008–9 downturn, it had a modest increase of 2.1% in 2010.¹

Like all lead-generation tactics, direct mail always has a varying response rate. Although most people will throw a direct mail piece away when they receive it, direct mail pieces still get more consideration than marketing e-mails. The 2010 U.S. Postal Service study also found that 81% of all people either read or scanned direct mail pieces sent to their address.² Meanwhile, a separate study by the E-Mail Experience Council of the Direct Marketing Association found that only 17%–18% of all e-mail recipients will actually open and read an e-mail marketing piece before deleting it.³

Unlike unwanted e-mail marketing pieces, people tolerate junk mail in their mailbox. People have a negative, visceral reaction to getting unsolicited e-mail, but they tend to think of receiving unsolicited postal mail as part of being a homeowner. Depending on what you are offering the potential customer, you may get a better response with traditional direct mail than you would with e-mail marketing. This is one reason why direct mail can still be an effective lead-generation tool. It can still work well in many different situations.