Response rates still higher for direct mail than digital marketing
For many marketers, response rates are the most important thing, no matter the investment. Recent research from the Direct Marketing Association, which appeared in Ad Age, shows this is good news for the direct mail industry.
According to the survey, direct mail is 10 to 30 times more effective than email, given that email marketing efforts elicit a much lower response rate. Direct mail response rates have dropped over the last decade, the source noted, but have stabilized in recent years, holding at roughly 3.4 percent since 2010.
"The future of direct mail lies in that [data], but the quality of the response for direct mail also indicates that direct mail is not disappearing," Yory Wurmser, director of marketing and media insights at the DMA, told Ad Age. "It's not the situation you had with newspaper advertising where it just fell off a cliff. It's probably stabilizing instead of continuing a steep decline."
Marketers are still seeing responses to direct mail in part because they are able to target campaigns at certain demographics. In order to be more efficient when targeting potential customers, marketers can use postal mailing software to verify that mailing lists are up to date and that addresses actually exist.