Recently I received a postcard as a direct mail marketing piece from a prominent retailer that has been recognized on several occasions as a leader in the direct marketing industry. Prior to receiving the postcard offering 15% off my next order, I was accustomed to regularly receiving catalogs from this retailer, while all of their sales offers and specials came by way of email promotions. Out of curiosity, I kept a close watch on all emails I received from them before the expiration of the offer to see if they would simultaneously promote it via email. They didn’t.
While most people would not give this experience a second thought, I was intrigued as a result of knowing the latest statistics released by the Direct Marketing Association. According to their research, email marketing response rates have fallen far behind direct mail marketing when reaching out to a house list. The reasons are many, but the primary factors include
- list fatigue (recipients have seen so many emails that they no longer open them),
- customers who have unsubscribed,
- spam filters block the advertisements from reaching the intended audience, and
- ultimately, the messages are simply being overlooked as a result of the immense clutter that currently exists in the digital marketing environment.
Today, when advertising to in-house lists, the response rates for emails have dropped to a low 0.1% while direct mail enjoys a whopping 3.7% response rate! All too often, companies view email marketing as a way to save marketing dollars and generate sales at a very low cost. Let’s apply some perspective to these results to see what the impact is on generating new revenue from a house list of 50,000 with an average sale of $100 per response.
If you don’t find these figures compelling enough to motivate you to include a healthy mix of direct mail in your marketing efforts, consider this: by strategically combining your direct mail with email and a micro-site response channel, we can provide an additional lift in your response rates by another 3X to 5X. If you still have doubts, contact us today to review case studies showing actual results of the effective marketing solutions we have developed for other companies.