In the era of instantaneous, nearly-free electronic messages, why would anyone still use direct mail to communicate with their customers and prospects? Direct mail may be more expensive and more time consuming than e-mail and social media, but it also provides a much higher return on investment, and there are many good reasons why.

Higher Purchase Rates
Global interactive marketing company ExactTarget reported a survey that showed 65%of respondents had purchased a product or service thanks to direct mail. That’s nearly three times the percentage who purchased after receiving marketing messages delivered by social media or mobile messaging.

Higher Message Acceptance
That same survey showed that Direct Mail is the preferred message type (beating email, telephone, text messaging and social media) for promotional messages. This includes promotional messages from companies they already do business with and companies they have never purchased from. If direct mail is your customer’s preferred method of communication, shouldn’t you be using it?

Lower Message Avoidance
It’s estimated that there are over 200 billion spam messages sent every day.According to the Message Anti-Abuse Working Group, the amount of spam email is between 88% and 92% of all email messages sent. Your email marketing is competing with this daily and likely going unread the majority of the time.Using direct mail ensures a much higher likelihood of being noticed by recipients.

Exceptional Targeting
The direct mail medium has one great advantage over nearly every other form of marketing and that is the ability to narrowly target your audience. Narrow your mailing to a single neighborhood or even a single block. Mail only to people of certain income or age range. Target empty nesters, newlyweds, new parents or nearly any other demographic. Combine that with the ability to target your message and offers specifically to the recipient and you have a powerful marketing tool.

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