Going digital has had a revolutionary impact on the marketing world. No doubt, it has helped businesses deliver valuable results and attain maximum return on investment.

Implementing digital marketing strategies is an effective way of reaching out to a broader customer base in a short time. And it is seen as a powerful tool for cost-effectively maximizing conversion rates.

So, in no way, we’re here to say that digital marketing has lost its value. Yet, some traditional marketing forms are making their way back by delivering better response rates and helping businesses, especially small ones, garner a loyal customer base. But that’s not all. It’s also helping businesses across various industries grow at scale.

With the amount of time people are spending online, it is natural to think that the offline mode of communication, like direct mail, is no longer used, and direct mail marketing is considered dead and buried.

We’ve heard people saying, “Who in today’s world would wait to receive anything in the mailbox?”

But, let us assure you that direct mail is far from dead, and, if anything, it has evolved. It can complement digital marketing strategies in ways more than one.

Let’s start with the basics.

One of the oldest, and up until now, considered ineffective direct mail is a form of marketing where prospective customers are sent promotional materials in various mailer pieces like postcards, letters, brochures, flyers, and more.

Now, considering the efforts they require, you might say, direct mail is not engaging anymore.

But over the last few years, marketers have come up with remarkably innovative ways to get the most out of this traditional practice. 

So why was it considered an ineffective marketing technique?

• It took much time
• It was exhaustive
• It was not instantaneous

But, by courtesy of technology, direct mail marketing is back, and what a recovery, we would say. In today’s blog post, we will talk about direct mail marketing’s effectiveness, focusing on what the statistics have to say.

But before we begin with it, let us talk about the impact the new-age direct mail marketing has on boosting your business.

It can not be tested and measured

It could not be far from the truth. The direct mail campaign performance can be tested and measured.

When integrated with digital campaigns, on an automated platform like PostGrid, direct mail can be easily tested and measured for the response rate. And you can strategize your future campaigns accordingly.

It is labor-intensive

We are living in a world where everything gets done with a click. Earlier, you had to coordinate with the designer printer to get excellent quality mail, which led to workforce exhaustion with the repetitive task. But now, with technology and an automated platform like PostGrid, sending direct mail is as easy as sending an email. The only difference is that you will get a better response with direct mail compared to emails.

Big companies, like Google, never use a tacky form of marketing

So why should you? Right?

What if we say, Google is one of the largest direct mailers globally? Yes, it uses direct mail in abundance to attract clients and generate revenue. Google understands how direct mail makes sales more efficient than its digital contemporaries. Google sends out direct mail in high magnitude to current and prospective advertisers.

It can not engage the target audience

We have been hearing this for a long time since digital marketing worked its charm. But this is not the case. A study done by Marketing Sherpa revealed that an astonishingly 76% of the audience trusts direct mail when purchasing. So there is no doubt that direct mail works wonders when it comes to engaging its audience.

Having cleared some prevalent myths out of your way, let’s elaborate on direct mail’s ability to generate a higher response rate compared to its digital contemporaries.

• Marketers were apprehensive of investing in direct mail, fearing they can never get the desired response rate with this method. But a study published in DMA response rate 2018 revealed that when compared to email, paid search, and social media, household mail has a higher response rate at 9%, with the former being only at 1%.
• Direct mails are sent out to two lists – the household and the prospects list. Your current customers are on the household list, and your potential customers — who seem interested in your product or service — come under the prospect list. The report also revealed that direct mail’s average response rate has increased from 2.9 to 4.9% for prospects and 5.1 to 9% for the household list in one year — 2017-2018.
• Furthermore, the response rate for direct mail is increasing exponentially every year. Tax Marketing HQ reiterated the same direct mail statement of gaining a higher response rate than digital marketing. However, 46% of people are more likely to respond to an advertisement from a familiar company. You can use this to your advantage by launching a direct mail campaign to introduce your company to prospective customers and then implementing a digital marketing strategy to retain them and build long-term relationships.
• When it comes to direct mail, the size of the package matters to a significant extent. According to the data and marketing association, postcards receive the highest response rate of 4.25%, and letters get the lowest response at 3.5%. Hence, it’s essential to make sure that you launch your campaign in a package that accommodates everything you plan to advertise and gain a higher response rate.
• Direct mail has a 29% median ROI compared to 23% for Paid Search and 16% for online display.
• If we look further into the omnichannel marketing strategy, reports suggest that combined direct and digital marketing can increase the response rate by 63%, with a massive 60% increase in the return on the investment. 
• Looking at the B2B side, reports by the B2B marketing mix state that marketers still heavily invest in direct mail campaigns. It continues to be one of the most important and effective marketing tools taking a total of 35% among other digital and traditional marketing techniques. 
• When it came to making a purchase decision, 31% of the baby boomers preferred direct mail over other marketing channels, recommendations from friends and family, or online reviews. This technique says a lot about the profound impact of direct mail in this digital time and age. 
• A common misconception about Gen-Z’s people is that millennials prefer being reached out to through digital media, as they hardly have time to spare for direct mail or never check their mailboxes. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth, as the Gallup report states that 41% of Americans of all ages check their mailbox every day.

After elaborating on how good the response rate the direct mail generates, let’s discuss its utilization status in terms of numbers.

• As per the Web Intermix “Media Kit” published in 2018, direct mail makes for 52.7% of the national marketing budget. And here’s how they spend it: when it comes to advertising expenditure, direct mail cost covers the largest share in the United States with $38.5 billion.
• Direct mail statistical reports by small business trends reported that a US advertiser spends $167 per person on direct mail campaigns on average. These stats alone speaks volumes about the trust advertisers have in direct mail in helping their business grow.
• Furthermore, the same report also revealed that on average direct mail marketing brings a 1300% of return on investment i.e., $2095 in revenue per person. Considering the investment in the advertisement, the ROI is significantly higher – suggesting directly that direct mail marketing is worth the investment.
• If we talk about the average money spent on acquiring one customer, the cost per acquisition, then the Statistical Fact Book by DMA reported that the CPA amounts to $26.4 per house and $31.1 per prospect. It can be brought down further by incorporating a direct mail automation software like PostGrid, with which you can create, print, and mail customized pieces by USPS first class mail, which will assure that the mailer reaches in one to three business days.

As mentioned above, we humans make our decisions on our instincts. And direct mail has an exceptional quality of engaging all our senses, touch to feel, and sight to explore creativity and influence our purchasing decisions.

Direct mail’s impact is visible on the psychological level of the human body. In the section below, we are going to discuss this impact further.

• As per the Royal Mail Marketreach, useful direct mail can generate positive emotional responses from the respondents. 66% of the audience reported it was the right way of informing, and 48% understood what was relevant to them and what was not.
• Canada Post reported in its bias for action posts that it takes consumers 21% less cognitive thinking into processing direct mail pieces than its digital counterparts. It’s also an excellent marketing channel to promote brand awareness because it creates a higher brand call. 
• Direct mail is straightforward and is easy to consume without any confusing long-form text. It makes it more acceptable as the audience doesn’t have the time to sit and read through pages of volumes of text online. So we can say that with direct mail, consumers don’t have to waste time trying to understand what the content wants to convey. Hence, it converts relatively higher in number.
• The tangible marketing pieces leave a long-lasting impression on the human brain, ultimately affecting the decision-making process. The response generated for direct mail pieces is from the emotional customer touchpoints. A case study by Millward Brown – using neuroscience to understand the role of direct mail – links traditional marketing to an efficient component of advertisement and brand associations.  

Having discussed the psychological impact of direct mail, let’s move on to how this traditional methodology is perceived in 2023.

• As mentioned before, direct mail marketing’s usage and effectiveness are not limited only to the baby boomers or the greatest generations. While they are more attracted to this physical form of marketing, they can open and read as, and when they want, the millennials are equally if not more inclined towards it.
• A 2015 Gallup Poll revealed that 41% of people of all ages check their mail every day and an impressive 36% of Americans constitute this category. Marketing Charts reported that the ones whose purchasing decision is most influenced by direct mail are the baby boomers. 

We have already established in the beginning how direct mail generates a higher response rate compared to emails. Now, let’s take a look at what the statistics have to say about these traditional and digital forms of marketing

Statistics About the Traditional and Digital Forms of Marketing

• With direct mail being less common, you don’t have to fight for attention. All you need to do is pour your creativity and use the right marketing tools to get the message across and grab the target audience’s attention.
• When asked which form of marketing encourages people to take action, 30% of millennials went with direct and 24% with email, even about the unwelcomed offers of companies.

Unlike email which can only be customized to an extent with graphic design or content, direct mail has a plethora of unique and diverse mailing and packaging options, which makes it easy for the target audience to spot first thereby driving more traffic and better engagement.

• • Unlike email, which you can customize only to an extent with graphic design or content, direct mail has many unique and diverse mailing and packaging options. Taking advantage of these characteristics, you can outperform your competitors, steal your audience’s attention with the right offers, and gain more engaged traffic.
  • If we talk about the response rate in numbers, direct mail leads the emails with 3.7%.

• When it comes to the open rate and click-through rate, direct mail leads the charts by 80-90% while email lags at 20-30%. One of the reasons could be that emails get spammed a lot. There is no such thing as spamming or getting attacked by a virus with direct mail. 

In the section above, we mentioned how postcards have the highest response rate and are among the most preferred direct mail pieces, with 52.5% of the target audience claiming to read them.

In the following section, we will help you leverage postcard statistics for your business’s benefit.