When advertising to a new audience it has become progressively more apparent to direct marketers that email is less responsive than physical mail. Here we look at recent research proving response rates for direct mail will beat email nearly every time and why direct mail continues to perform well in a digital society.
There is much debate in the marketing community comparing physical mail and telemarketing to digital channels. While it is quite important to have a variety of channels in a marketing mix not every company has the budget to take advantage of all these avenues. So when a business owner is determining how to allocate funds up to date research can prove to be immensely beneficial.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) discovered that direct mail carries a 4.4% response rate while emails average is .12%, according to Yory Wurmser, director of marketing and media insights at the DMA. This research was conducted using transactional data from Bizo and Epsilon, analyzing more than 29 billion emails. It concluded that direct mail was anywhere from 10 to 30 times as responsive as email.
One key point aspect of this research that business owners need to realize is that it pertains to reaching out the new customers. People who have opted into email show a much higher response to offers.
At AccurateLeads we have found there are a number of factors as to why direct mail consistently has high response rates and continues to outperform many other channels. One being it is a breath of fresh air after being bombarded with email, display ads, and social media.
Another reason is direct mail does cost more to execute than many channels but the consumers are aware of this and know that spammers are not willing to spend the money. It is incredibly easy and to spam an email box and virtually costless. Consumers are also leery of many digital mediums because of the constant threats of viruses and identity theft.
AccurateLeads has also found direct mail reaches an audience which digital advertisements do not. There is still a chunk of people out there who do not go to the internet for every facet of their life and some of these people are highly open to postcards, catalogs, and pamphlets.
While email has a large role in customer maintenance, and can be profitable for reaching new customers, there is no time in the near future business owners will see it outperform physical mail campaigns.