Okay, at this point the posting challenging “The Return of Direct Mail� has 21 comments … so clearly it has resonated with MarcomBlog participants. But it might be creating some misleading conclusions that I feel need to be moderated with some good old-fashioned facts.
Let’s begin with the original challenge that snail mail delivery of marketing messages has been disappearing. And let’s put personal opinion as to whether we like to receive it or not to the side.
My advice to each of you as future communications consultants –
1. No legal medium should be ignored, nor should we as communications professionals ever knock a medium because there will come a time in your career where you will find that a medium you sacked one time will become vital at another time — and you will look stupid eating your words. All media are important as long as they are relevant and the message, offer and call to action are contextually relevant to the audience.
2. Use opt-in media as much as possible because it will have a higher percentage return, and is therefore very efficient. But also include “intrusive� direct mail sent to personal or business addresses because it can and does perform with very powerful results when done right, and especially when used in tandem with telemarketing.
Let’s just look at five facts:
FACT 1 — Direct mail has NEVER declined in the past 50 years. The Universal McCann Study confirms that by contrast, in the last half-century, radio has declined in just seven of those years. Daily newspapers experienced 8 years of decline or slow growth. Consumer magazines, 8 years. Business Magazines, 9 years. Broadcast TV (developed in the 1950’s) came closest to Direct Mail at just 3 years. So Direct Mail has never even slowed down, let along count it among the disappearing. Instead it has increased each year over the last 50 years!
FACT 2 – During the economic downturn of 1990-91 when the GDP grew by just 1.3%, direct mail grew by 1.5%. All other media declined: Daily newspapers -14.6%, Consumer magazines -11.6%, TV -8.5%.
FACT 3 – Not even price increases in postage and paper have slowed the growth of direct mail. In years of postal increases, DM increased an average of 4.4% and with paper increases, DM grew 4.6%.
FACT 4 – Direct mail’s share of total advertising expenditures in 1960 was 19.0%, in 1980 it was 17.5% and in 2000 it was 22.2%.
FACT 5 – The most recent decade compounded annual growth rate for direct mail when adjusted for inflation has been 1995-2000 at 6.4% and from 2001-2005 at 6.6%.
TV and online media get all the ballyhoo, but direct mail is the workhorse for marketing. This has been true in every year for 50 consecutive years, in good times, in bad times, against inherent cost increases, against new media, against old media. Direct mail is the most highly measureable of non-electronic media. The statistics show that it generates sales at a rate that causes marketers to continue using it.
Now consider this one last challenge from me. If direct mail has grown so well despite the fact that it generates on average a 2% response rate, imagine how it will perform for you if you use it more smartly than past marketers … if you are better at targeting precisely who you want to reach, if you are better at making your messages and offers relevant to these precisely targeted individuals, imagine what you can do with this powerful medium.
But whatever you do, do not count snail mail as dead or disappearing. Never has. Never will.
8 comments
4/29/2005 at 10:24 pm
BillFrench
Dale:
You had me sold until the very last sentence which should have just read…
Never has.
Never will - is an auflully long time. I think [eventually] you will be wrong about this. Why? Because transaction costs will eventually be disrupted (e.g., Unleashing the Killer App)
Anyway - loved the data - it’s very compelling, and if my own mailbox is any indication, this is a hot HOT medium. Oddly enough, I just went through 200 pieces of snail mail (about a week’s worth for me) looking for things that are important. It’s amazing how much “stuff” I get, but I actually do buy stuff that comes to me through the mail. Typically the mail piece makes me aware, and the transaction ultimately occurs online. I think it’s a great combination and I gather this is one aspect of snail mail you advise - i.e., using this medium better than any one has before. The integration possibilities with the Internet are unlimited.
One observation - when I hold a piece of mail in my hand, it commands (almost asserts) an attention that I do not feel when sitting at a keyboard or holding a PDA. In this regard, mail-marketing has a unique type of advantage over digital media. I’m not saying it has an advantage over other forms per-se, but it creates a unique type of advantage where you are physically connected with a product, service, or company; if only by proxy through a brochure.
Having established that there may be some significant advantages to actually holding a piece of paper and reading - does this also apply to the PR industry? Lots of journalists are reading press releases on the web and through RSS readers. Does this distance the corporate communicators from the journalists? Or is the net benefit of rapid, low cost distribution better than mailing info-packs and press releases?
One area that may disrupt mail-marketing is the nature of “opt-in”. It bothers me when a company says this is opt-in, but I never opted to *be* in in the first place. Most “opt-in” system require that I get permission from someone to “opt-out”. That’s what tends to irritate people the most, and why RSS has grown so rapidly - it’s a true opt-in model. With RSS, I don’t have to ask anyone to remove me from a list. I simply opt-out. To me, this is a *real* opt-in system.
Eventually, snail mail will work like RSS for the simple reason that technological advances will allow consumers to assert this model.
5/1/2005 at 1:30 pm
Nicole
Thanks for the post! I am definitely one of the people who didn’t realize how lucretive this type of marketing still is. I appreciate you posting all the statistics and facts you have gathered on the subject … it definitely makes me realize I am a bit mistaken. I do tend to agree with Bill’s reply, though. There just has to be a point where it is just going to become too inexpensive and uncomplicated to NOT just use technology - as opposed to pieces of paper and stamps and envelopes - to communicate and market to consumers. I like having everything on my computer anyways … I’m counting the days!
5/1/2005 at 9:45 pm
Karen
Thanks for the post. I never would have thought that snail mail is one of the few mediums that has not decreased through the years. The facts and stats were very eye opening.
I think one reason why your other post had comments about how snail mail was declining is because us as students do not receive as much snail mail as compared to professionals. Especially Bill’s 200 a week! I know I don’t receive many marketing ploys via snail mail. But my email box is always full. As I get into the workforce I am sure this will change.
5/1/2005 at 11:40 pm
Lindsay_J
Thanks for this eye opening and powerful post! You did your research! my favorite part: “TV and online media get all the ballyhoo, but direct mail is the workhorse for marketing. This has been true in every year for 50 consecutive years, in good times, in bad times, against inherent cost increases, against new media, against old media. Direct mail is the most highly measureable of non-electronic media. The statistics show that it generates sales at a rate that causes marketers to continue using it.” It does seem that TV and the world wide web get all the glory… I can’t wait to see how direct mail will hold onto its perch at the top in the future!
5/11/2005 at 5:22 am
David
I just found this, this was a great piece, thank you for doing the research.
I’m not sure that I would go so far as BillFrench to say that DM is now “hot� again, what appears ‘hot� is how blogging will do away will every Marcom tool that’s been used over the last 100 years, a piece of nonsense which is irritating me.
For new entrants and start ups in the business software sector DM continues to be the workhorse and if you can get 2% response and you can control your costs then it’s a predictable and therefore measurable tactic. If you can integrate your overall campaigns and efforts by creating relevant and issue based PR to provide a point to the DM campaign, then provide a compelling and attractive DM piece the response rates can go up to as high as 6%, it goes without saying that this is provided your initial targeting is effective.
The point that we can learn from this is that if this is the case with DM, surely we should look at all the techniques we have and constantly re-appraise them for the target markets we address. I recently learned the lesson from a local marketing manager who insisted that Tradeshows would work in the UK despite my own advice based on ya-di ya-di years of experience. She went ahead anyway, having the authority to do so and lo and behold we received a number of good leads far outstripping the costs. My lesson was that market behaviour changes and we have to notice it.
5/15/2005 at 11:29 pm
BillFrench
David:
Disclaimer - I don’t employe this marketing technique, nor am I an expert in it. I just get a lot of it.
In my comment [about direct mail], my measure of “DM hotness” was based purely on my mailbox volume. The data speaks to the hotness of the industry. Given this data, it *appears* to be a hot segment and companies generally stop doing things that are ineffective. So, all indications suggest DM is hot.
I *do* believe that the subtle thing most have missed is the way DM has transformed itselt to reflect on, and tie back to a virtual marketing presence (i.e., the online side of the equation).
If you carefully examine the new ways that comapnies are using direct mail, you begin to realize that it’s very well coordinated - connecting the physical world of products with the virtual world of services, support, etc. Again - just an observation…
… what appears ‘hotâ€? is how blogging will do away will every Marcom tool that’s been used over the last 100 years, a piece of nonsense which is irritating me.
This looks like it slipped in from another thread - but I’ll comment anyway.
I’m not sure where you got this impression but I would say that you’re in for more dissappointment. Blogging (and blog-like/blog-related things) will disrupt marcom processes in many ways, but not likely in *every* way.
Blog technologies are in their infancy but when they mature, many things that we used to believe could only be done a certain way, will have changed.
It’s important that we understand that with every new idea a portion of the adoption is based on hype that typically focuses on how one technology will replace something. Blogs are good for many things, but like so many under-estimated technologies, they cause people to work differently. This is the basic tennant of disruption and it’s the one thing that causes people and companies to be blind-sided.
Blogs may be both non-disruptive, and disriptive depending on the use case. Authoring a press release in a blog tool versus Microsoft Word is non-disruptive. How it gets distributed (RSS) is disruptive.
RSS: Disruptive Technology Hiding in Plain Sight
8/10/2005 at 1:49 pm
Brian Turner
Just to point out, you’ve got a nasty PHP error on your WordPress plugin at present:
“Warning: Unknown modifier ‘a’ in /htdocs/www/wp-content/plugins/google-hilite.php on line 107″
8/10/2005 at 2:46 pm
Robert
Thank you, Brian. I deleted that plugin and have tried to make it re-occur, but can’t. Please let me know if you - or anyone else - sees the error.
I appreciate the heads up.