It seems logical that sending mail directly to someone’s doorstep would be an effective means of direct marketing. However, recent technological advances and the inundation of advertisements sent directly to people’s homes has made them ineffective. Junk mail or advertising mail is often thrown away by its recipients who do not bother to read what service or product the advertisement has to offer. Also, with the rising costs of postage and cost of printing the advertisement, this direct mailing method is more expensive than its technological alternative.
Junk mail makes up a large assortment of advertisements sent directly to peoples’ home or business. It consists of advertising circulars, catalogs, postcards, coupons, applications and other promotional items sent to homes or businesses. However, it costs a company money to print the advertisements, develop address lists, purchase postage and develop the advertisement.
Not only is junk mail costly for marketers, but it is also very unproductive with many of the advertisements not even being read by recipients. The average American adult receives 41 pounds of junk mail each year. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, about 44% of junk mail is throw away without being opened or read. People have become so inundated with advertising mail that they cannot or care to go through all of the pieces of junk mail that they receive, which leads them to just throw most of it out.
Junk mail recipients have become so annoyed and irritated by unwanted advertisements that laws have been put into place that allow them to opt-out. In response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Rowan vs. Post Office Department, applicants have the opportunity to obtain a Prohibitory Order issued by the United States Postal Service. This allows people to stop non-governmental organizations from sending them mail and demands that these organizations remove the consumers’ information from their mailing lists. This order blocks marketers from sending advertising mail directly to peoples’ home or business.
Direct mail marketing seems like a practical idea, since you are putting advertisements directly into a recipient’s hands by sending it straight to their home or business location. However, new technology, such as e-mail seems to be more productive than direct mail for many reasons. These reasons include it being cheaper, analytics that allow you to track if an e-mail is opened or if they click on included links and people who volunteer their e-mail addresses are looking forward to your advertisements and welcome them. With direct mail, you are unable to measure ROI since you do not know, in most cases, if the recipient bought your product or service because of the advertisement. Also, with e-mail being free to send and with many people using the Internet to research a product or service, direct mail seems to be an ancient way to get a potential customer’s attention.
Sarah,
While I can appreciate your argument, I think you’re off base. There was a study done recently – “Using Neuroscience to Understand the Role of Direct Mail” which was conducted by Millward Brown. The study found that direct mail leaves a deeper impression on the human brain than digital channels. They used MRI brain scans to show that our brains process paper and digital marketing differently and that direct mail creates a greater emotional impression than email or any other digital communications. Furthermore, a recent Mail Media Centre (UK) report found that in 2010 an average of 91% of direct mail was opened AND 48% of customers felt information received by direct mail was easy to understand compared with 20% by email.
These are some compelling statistics which I’m sure you cannot deny. We’re at a point where people are receiving too much email, their method of “opting in” is by purchasing something from a retailer and they get annoyed with the ‘daily deals’ so they ignore it. While I agree that some people consider direct mail “junk mail,” email has a spam box and filter for a reason.
I couldn’t agree more with Donna. Royal Mail (UK) commissioned Freshminds to research Direct mail and the findings were conclusively in favour of Direct mail. of 2008 adults surveyed, 45% said they kept some direct mail on their kitchen notice boards.
8 out of 10 of the top 100 Companies in the UK use Direct Mail in their marketing strategies, including Virgin, and I’m pretty sure they know what they are doing when it comes to marketing.
Amen Sarah, Be it spam email or junk in the mail box, advertising for my eyeballs is advertising. I have certain online retailers that I trust to buy from and I generally ignore the rest.
Paper adverts allow you to look at it, set it down, mull it over, and then get back to it if it really was something you could use.
Hit the delete button and good luck finding something even a couple of days ago.
Each form of advertising has it’s place in the marketing puzzle.
Hello Donna, Geoff and Don,
I would first like you thank you for your well researched feedback. I agree that direct mail can be productive in many cases – such as having something tangible to reference back to. I am no way suggesting that direct mail is invaluable, since in most cases it can be for many types of businesses (especially local ones). I am just taking the inbound marketing approach to the marketing strategy. Those who opt-in to receiving e-mails are more likely to be potential customers since they voluntarily provided their information to the company looking for updates or specials. E-mail is a quicker, easier and cost-effective way to reach out to a targeted audience.
Like I said, your research does hold valid points and I absolutely agree with all of them because direct mail can be very successful for many companies. To go off of what Don said, each of these strategies are pieces that make up the whole marketing puzzle – they support one another in their success of the company’s reach to potential customers.
Thanks again for your feedback!
-Sarah
Direct mailing is a marketing tool for the development of business.This service is used by all size of businesses and is ideal for restaurants,retail stores,hair saloons,doctors etc.