Yes, there exist many advantages of using digital platforms like email, although these also come with their flaws. A direct-mail marketing campaign however has a plethora of benefits ranging from its highly targeted manner and personalised appeal to the fact it has far less competition than its digital counterpart. The benefits discussed below may shed some light on what direct-mail offers in the 21st century!
1. A More Personalised Experience
So what do we mean by this?
Direct Mail is “Organic touchiness”.
Direct Mail is physical; you can grab hold of it, read it, keep it or bin it. It lands on your door step – what can that be? It can be of interest or a waste of time. What’s true is that you always get a physical action with Direct mail.
2. A 100% Delivery Rate
That’s right. Direct mail has a 100% delivery rate.
Once it goes through the post-box, that’s it. How many times do we go through our inbox aimlessly deleting all those spam emails?
The average person receives around 147 emails a day. Of these, around 71 are deleted within 3.2 seconds of viewing!⁶
When this happens, that’s it! Your carefully planned email marketing campaign is gone without even a glance. In contrast however, 9/10 people will actually open their direct mail.⁴ Statistics that speak for themselves!
3. Less Competition!
The majority of companies now use email avidly. The Radicati Group (2015) reports that in 2015 the number of emails sent and received per day totals over 205 billion, with the average person potentially receiving around of these 147 emails daily! This poses problems when trying to get your brand noticed amongst the competition.
Direct mail is therefore the perfect platform for the savvy marketer as there’s far less competition between brands with many companies opting for the digital route and forgetting the direct mail option.
4. Higher levels of consumer emotional engagement
The Managing Director of Royal Mail MarketReach reports on higher levels of emotional engagement by consumers and the results of a neuroscience study that finds that:
Mail ensures consumers remember more and experience higher levels of emotional engagement (Royalmail.com, 2015).
Both of which may work in your companies favour. An article from the DMA further endorses confidence in mail:
56% of people believe that printed marketing is the most trust worthy form of communication (Dma.org.uk, 2015).
A long-used style of communication, in the technological age, direct mail is still as reliable as ever; in fact, the fact that it has been around so long makes it a very familiar format, putting people at ease!
5. Direct Mail is eco-friendly compared with mass email broadcasting
Surprising yes, and true!
The Guardian (Berners-Lee and Clark, 2010) reports that:
“Around 62 trillion spam messages are sent every year causing around 20 million tonnes of CO2 per year.”
The average email has 1/60th the footprint of a letter. Of course this looks like a carbon saving. That is unless you end up sending or receiving 60 times as many emails than letters posted or received. Realistically in this day in age, that figure is not hard to beat.
According to the Guardian, this is a good example of the rebound effect –
“A low-carbon technology resulting in higher-carbon living simply because we use it more”.
6. Direct mail supports other marketing platforms
The best results are sometimes seen when online marketing is coupled with offline marketing like direct mail, creating a marketing effort that reaches from the consumer’s inbox to their front door.
Harvard Business Review (2012) actually found that direct mail coupled with email has the highest response rate at 25%.
However, direct mail alone still had a higher response rate than email alone, further supporting direct mail. By incorporating direct mail into your marketing campaign you also have the opportunity to reach a wider audience – as some individuals are not as coherent in using the internet as others.
All in all, modern direct mail comes with strong benefits and the statistics to support it. To conclude with the age old analogy we shall ask:
What’s the difference between Direct Mail and a Dinosaur?
Dinosaurs are sadly extinct never to return whereas proven Direct Mail evolves with a brand new energy that strengthens responses when working with other modern communication.
The power of direct-mail is as enduring as it ever has been and continues to be a brilliant platform for really getting a message across in a more personal way as compared to working in solo with other media like email.
References:
1 Berners-Lee, M. and Clark, D. (2010). What’s the carbon footprint of … email? [online] the Guardian. Available at:https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/oct/21/carbon-footprint-email [Accessed 15 Oct. 2015].
2 Harvard Business Review, (2012). Why Email Marketing is King. [online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2012/08/why-email-marketing-is-king/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2015].
3 Royalmail.com, (2015). Why use mail? | Royal Mail Group Ltd. [online] Available at: https://www.royalmail.com/corporate/marketing/why-mail [Accessed 15 Oct. 2015].
4 Dma.org.uk, (2015). DMA | Article | Why Direct Mail in the 21st Century? [online] Available at: https://www.dma.org.uk/article/why-direct-mail-in-the-21st-century-1 [Accessed 15 Oct. 2015].
5 The Radicati Group, Inc, (2015). Email Statistics Report, 2015-2019. [online] Palo Alto, p.3. Available at: https://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Email-Statistics-Report-2015-2019-Executive-Summary.pdf [Accessed 15 Oct. 2015].
6 Vanderkam, L. (2012). Stop checking your email, now. [online] Fortune. Available at: https://fortune.com/2012/10/08/stop-checking-your-email-now/ [Accessed 15 Oct. 2015].
