Is Direct Mail Dead?

There has been an ongoing debate about if direct mail is dead. With the “hyper” hype about the internet and email marketing and how much less it costs to “send” virtual mail out….the jury is still out!

EMAIL
So, email is supposed to be the “saviour” of getting your advertising message out to the thousands, hundred thousands and millions of people on your list. It is supposed to be cheaper to execute, doesn’t irriate the recipient by the ugly “junk” mails in their real mailbox, more efficient because you can measure ROI metrics within minutes of doing an email blast.

DIRECT MAIL
Direct mail’s cost per thousand prospect names are, in reality, cheaper than buying, or shall I say renting a list of like quantity in the online world. Undeliverability is up 20% lately from these online lists for the internet marketing crowd. Reason is there is more spam filters, corporate firewalls are set even tighter to keep out even legitimate emails, and the higher frequency of the recipient to mass delete emails for fear of email overload. Direct mail, on the other hand gets almost a 95% deliverability rate because good list managers scrub their lists on a regular basis.

Finally, with email, you only get 2 seconds or less to get the attention of the receiver or it gets deleted. Direct mail gives you 5 seconds or more to catch the attention of the receiver. That is huge!

So when thinking “old school” direct mail, always know it has a useful function in your marketing arsenal!