Marketing professionals today are under tremendous pressure. They have less time, less money and greater demands placed upon them. Yet, they all have one thing in common. They are looking for effective ways to grow their business.
We all know that in order to reach a consumer you must be in the right place at the right time with the right message and in the right medium. This is why marketers are using a combination of methods to grow their business. Yet research shows that, if you’re going to hang your hat on one particular method of reaching current and potential clients, you must include direct mail.
Now, I know you are reading this on a blog post. You may have found this on our website with a push from Facebook. Or perhaps you ran across this post on LinkedIn. I understand that social and online marketing methods work. But according to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) direct mail has a response rate of up to 10 to 30 times that of email and even higher when compared to online display.
In fact, direct mail outperforms all digital channels combined by nearly 600%. Direct mail achieves a 3.7% while all digital channels combined only achieve a 0.62% response rate.
- Mobile 0.2%
- Email 0.1%
- Social Media 0.1%
- Paid Search 0.1%
- Display Advertising 0.02%
Perhaps there’s an underlying, emotional, touchy-feely kind of process going on here. Take a look at the direct mail pieces that have the highest response rates.
- Oversized envelopes 5.0%
- Postcards 4.25%
- Dimensional 4.0%
- Catalogs 3.9%
- Letter-sized envelopes 3.5%
What do all of these marketing pieces have in common? Each must be touched and manipulated. You must open, turn, flip or in some other way interact with the marketing materials.
A number of studies in Europe and the United States have shown that, when viewing physical ads, participants had a stronger emotional response and remembered them better. Physical ads also leave a longer lasting impact for easy recall when making a purchase decision. And, most importantly, physical ads triggered activity in the area of the brain that is responsible for value and desirability for featured products, which can signal a greater intent to purchase.
At Westamerica Communications we know that direct mail works. For years we have provided direct mail services to numerous Southern California companies. For one of our clients, a major Lasik Surgery provider, we provided creative services, list purchasing, data appending and file updates. And, because we understand that direct mail works well with other marketing mediums, we integrated with all additional media involved in the campaign to ensure proper timing and consistent messaging across all channels. Combining direct mail with additional media resulted in a very successful campaign.
According to Harris Diamond, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at McCann Worldwide, the average American spends 25 minutes a day with mail. He presented this research at the 2016 National Postal Forum. Diamond called it, “The Mail Moment.” He said, “…In a world in which people are endlessly bombarded with electronic messages, direct mail is now the most welcome house guest.” These are some impressive words coming from the CEO of an agency that represents companies such as Coca-Cola, General Mills, and MasterCard.
The data shows that direct mail works. It is an effective marketing channel. That’s why we use it in our marketing efforts and we use it in our client’s marketing efforts.