Choosing Email or Direct Mail?
In the current economic climate it’s no surprise that Email marketing is riding a wave of popularity. The greater accessibility to Email campaign tools and contact data has meant SME’s have actively adopted this style of Direct Marketing. In fact people are so taken with Email as the panacea for business growth that Emails older cousin Direct Mail has taken a back seat.
Some people no longer view Direct Mail as a viable option. The general lack of understanding about the effectiveness of Direct Mail has resulted in its relegation to the marketer’s closet.
Should we retire Direct Mail as a thing of the past?
Research shows that Email and Direct Mail are actually effective in quite different ways, complementing each other when deployed together. Even though many businesses are starting to rely completely on Email as their preferred direct marketing tool, Direct Mail is still unbeatable for certain types of communication.
We tend to forget that Direct Mail still provides a direct route to the customer’s home or work place. When other media types are suffering from a proliferation of channel choice/saturation, fatigue and a lower share of customer attention there is still only one letter box.
Comparing Direct Mail and Email
The results above indicate that your communication effectiveness may be reduced by using only one channel in isolation. Combining both channels together seems to have obvious advantages. Royal Mail has spent considerable effort looking at the use of Direct Mail with other media types and has some great research available.
Are you looking to develop an effective Direct Marketing capability to engage new customers or maintain existing customer relationships? For a tailored made solution contact us.
Tags: campaign delivery management, Direct Mail, effective communication, effective marketing, Email
This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Direct Marketing, Marketing Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
2 Responses to “Choosing Email or Direct Mail?”
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January 18th, 2010 at 10:45 am
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