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Direct Mail – It’s Alive and Well in the Digital Age

Direct Mail – It’s Alive and Well in the Digital Age!

Inbound digital marketing is the ticket to success and direct mail is dead and gone, right?
Well, not so fast…

Online we are bombarded with PPC ads, video and digital content at every click and search. We are literally buried in email. Remarketing or retargeting tools allow marketers to make their ads follow us around the web. Some of this is off-putting and some is just scary. How much of that digital content regardless of how clever, entertaining or personalized gets you to click or call? The answer is: less and less of it. If it does interest us, we look at it for only a few seconds on average. We abandon online shopping carts at higher rates than ever as we are distracted by more shiny ads, images, words…

Meanwhile, in your mailbox (that metal thing the postal carrier uses) the number of direct mail pieces is declining about 2% per year since 2005.  According to the DMA we still open or review 70 to 80% of what comes to us in the mail and the USPS says that 98% of people check their mail daily. Personalized direct mail pieces still stand out. More of us will act on it immediately if we are interested.

Seeing a pattern? So, are we advocating (gasp!) a return to outbound direct marketing?

Not exclusively, but yes.

Your customers are clearly buying online and usually won’t buy unless they can find you online (or you find them) and they encounter enough positive information (content) about your products from sources they trust – which often isn’t you.

So, we do believe a combination digital and direct approach is more effective than either alone. When a customer shows interest online (or abandons a shopping cart), they are often impressed and surprised to receive something “real” and responsive in the mail. On the flip side, a direct mail piece without online, targeted content is near useless for most of us who aren’t called Apple or Amazon.

In some cases, as marketers we should make new friends but keep the old.

For more great info and stats on the current status of direct mail, check out this data from the USPS. Once you’re convinced of the important role direct mail can play in your marketing strategy, give us a call. We’ll design an effective, attention-grabbing mail piece for your brand!

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