How does direct mail stack up to email marketing?

With technology improving daily, there is an ever-growing buzz about how direct mail and email marketing compare. The fact is that it is hard to be exact with which medium is better—it greatly depends on the nature of your message, your audience and your relationship to your recipients. We’ve outlined a few items below for you to consider.

Although email marketing can be cheap, the long-term standing of it is questionable due to spamming and the possibility of future regulations imposed by the government on email marketing tactics. Emails tend to be easily ignored and people often find them irritating—they are simply one more uninvited interruption in their overly busy day. It is this fact, paired with trying to wrestle your message through spam and junk mail filters, that makes the environment in which email marketing messages are received not very positive. Since most people don’t wish to receive unsolicited emails and it becomes all-too-easy for them to quickly press “delete” and your message is gone forever. Overall, email marketing doesn’t seem to be taken as seriously as direct mail because it has become so commonplace. Well, developed, reliable email lists can be tough to come by and, although open rates can be high, “opened” email is all-too-often given surprisingly little attention.

On the other hand, direct mail response rates generally fall between 1 and 3%, with those rates rising up to 5% and higher when a campaign is being resent to a previous recipient. Overall, direct mail list sources are much more developed and reliable, due to the fact that direct mail has been effectively used for so long. Although direct mail is also unsolicited, it is much less interruptive and people don’t seem to mind it. It has become widely accepted, which lends to its effectiveness. In fact, many people claim to enjoy receiving their mail and look forward to perusing it. This may be because postal mail is much more personal in nature. With direct mail, you can create a tangible connection with your brand, using formatting and paper choices that is just not possible with email. Direct mail is much harder to ignore, and much easier to hold onto for later—how often have you filed a catalog away to make a purchase later? The environment for direct mail is also much more positive than email, as people often make a specific time each day just for opening and reviewing their mail.

With email marketing, a more accepted practice is to use it to encourage current clientele to make a repeat or additional purchase. Additionally, if you can entice them to request to receive your emails voluntarily, much of the negativity can be removed from the medium.

However, with minimal struggle, direct mail marketing holds strong. There are very few drawbacks to a good direct mail campaign. With the ever-increasing amount of advertising messages that are pressed upon us everyday, direct mail seems to be more welcomed than ever, as the control is awarded to the prospect to choose how and when to accept and focus on the message being delivered.