Direct Mail: It’s Alive! It’s Alive!

Like the evil monster in the 1958 B-grade drive-in movie, direct mail seems to be “The Thing That Couldn’t Die.” This horrifies the electronic media pundits, who keep insisting that marketing communications that use paper and ink already have one foot in the grave.

In May of 2009, a Borrell Associates research report predicted that direct mail spending will decline 39 percent during the next five years, from $49.7 billion in 2008 to $29.8 billion in 2013. According to Borrell, “Direct mail has begun spiraling into what we believe is a precipitous decline from which it will never fully recover.”

Not dead yet.
But a recent Wall Street Journal article contradicts that prediction: “Despite prevalence of digital media, entrepreneurs find old fashioned direct mailings still key to winning customers.”  Some pretty convincing anecdotal evidence shows that responses and sales start declining when firms abandon direct mail in favor of e-mail.”

And direct marketing guru Bob Bly cites a BtoB Lead Generation Guide article that shows:
•    Direct mail responders are 10 – 20% more likely to convert to a qualified lead than their online counterparts.
•    Direct mail responders are 10 -20% more likely to convert to qualified leads than online responders.
•    Sales reps are 7 – 15% more likely to work a DM lead, vs. an online lead.
(Full disclosure: We do both DM and EM at here R&M. We’re good at it. Our clients get results. We make money.)

It keeps coming back to haunt us.
Here’s why direct mail is still alive:
•    It’s tangible and real in your hands, while e-mail is virtual and can be eliminated with a click. Plus direct mail can deliver the “lump” – the merchandise item or dimensional construction that inspires curiosity.
•    Direct mail can use dramatic copy and graphics together, to get recipients to open the envelope. E-mail is limited to the one-dimensional subject line. Of course, this is a meaningless distinction if you’re a credit card marketer who sends out the typical “XX% APR” direct mail in a #10 envelope.

•    A lot of direct mail hangs around to be looked at later; most e-mail gets deleted immediately. Before sitting down to write this, I opened a Valpak mailer received two days ago, to extract a coupon for the local gyros stand.
•    There’s less competition – I personally receive far fewer direct mail ads than e-mail ads.
•    You can tell a longer, richer story in direct mail. I received the spring 2010 Burpee garden catalog in the mail, during a snowstorm, and sat down to page through it immediately. But I probably would have deleted a Burpee e-mail with a link to their online catalog.

Yes, we all know that e-mail costs less and is easier and faster to develop than direct mail.  But most efficient is not necessarily most effective. And anyway, if the Borrell research is right, this is the time to be a direct mail marketer, because you’ll have the whole mailbox to yourself.

Tags: Borrell Associates, direct mail marketing, direct mail vs. e-mail, e-mail marketing, lead generation

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Fred Petrick, Lowell Wallace, Marketing Communications, Robinson & Maites. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.