Direct marketing still has advantages over email, says expert
By: Mark HaslanMarch 22nd, 2010
Have email and social media eclipsed direct mail, or do print materials have a role in marketing that electronic media still can’t compete with? According to an article at Caller.com by Ralph Coker, a small business counselor with SCORE, direct mail is still one of the best ways to reach customers – and in many ways, it eclipses email.
Coker emphasizes the "proactive" potential of direct mailings that are developed with reference to well-constructed lists of potential and current customers. The messages not only go directly to the people they need to get to, they can be structured to uniquely address them. Emails, with their ability to spread far and wide, can often seem like an excuse to transmit generic messages – however, using segmentation data to produce optimized information will provide a far more effective strategy.
In fact, the return on investment that comes from direct mail marketing makes its case almost single-handedly. The cost, on average, is a dollar a piece, Coker reports. However, the return from each dollar is approximately $11.69, according to Direct Marketing Association statistics Cokers cites. For non-direct expenditures, it lingers at $5.24, less than half the return.
Unfortunately, in spite of data like this, too many businesses have abandoned the use of direct mail marketing. However, a Wall Street Journal article found that elimination of direct mail resulted in negative feedback from customers. The situation was sometimes severe enough to yield an up to 25 percent drop in orders, leading many of these businesses to reinstate their direct mail marketing programs.
What these customers were missing consisted of both special offers and information. According to a Vertis Communications study cited by Coker, 85 percent of women in marketing’s critically important 25 to 44 age bracket reported reading direct mail marketing they received. Among all adults, more than 70 percent replied to buy-one-get-one-free offers. Sixty-three percent responded to other discount offers.
Making these communications effective certainly relies on customer analysis, but standard marketing concepts like presenting exclusive values or catching attention through design or content also make a difference in turning a reader into a customer.
A recent Wall Street Journal article offered a complementary perspective regarding electronic marketing techniques. Though social media adoption is on the rise by many businesses, more than half of companies surveyed in a study cited by the paper claimed that they did no better than break even on their investment. Nearly 20 percent lost money. When the variety of available data are considered together, it seems as though the tried-and-tested methods of direct marketing hold more potential than the hype of electronic trends.
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