Direct Mail vs Email - What will work for your marketing campaign?

We get asked this question a lot and certainly clients are always using direct mail products to collect names for their Email lists and campaigns.

In our technology-obsessed world, direct mail marketing still delivers impressive results. Consider the following:

According to an Adage article, (http://adage.com/article/media/dma-snail-mail-phone-beat-digital-response-rates/235364/) the Direct Marketing Association reports that, “direct mail is 10 to 30 times more effective than email.”

Additionally, when comparing response rates in the same study, 34 out of 1,000 customers responded to direct mail marketing while just 1 out of 1,000 customers responded to email

A Huffington Post article using data compiled by multi channel marketing firm Epsilon similar results. This study, "The Formula for Success: Preference and Trust," conducted by multichannel marketing firm Epsilon, found that respondents prefer direct mail over email about brands or products in almost every category, including financial services (36 percent to 8 percent), insurance (36 percent to 9 percent) and travel (21 percent to 13 percent).  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/direct-mail-preferred-over-email_n_1182327.html


The same study indicates that 50 percent of U.S. consumers prefer direct mail to email. The interesting reason is why. The article stated that the proliferation of email may be one reason why email is becoming less effective: 65 percent of those surveyed "strongly agree" that they get too much email, and 75 percent say they get a lot of emails they never open.

Test which medium is going to work for you. Ideally integrate both directmail and email in any campaigns you do. We need to reach our customers at least 7 times to get their attention so use a multitude of channels to do that.