As consumers communicate more via e-mail, the US Postal Service is considering cutting Saturday home delivery altogether. Is direct mail dead? Our experts debate the topic.
Yes. Despite direct mail's reputation as a marketing standard, its effectiveness has always suffered from a number of practical limitations. Essentially, marketers are in the dark regarding the efficiency and ROI of direct mail, even though its cost - in terms of time, money and labor - is significant.
Through transaction marketing within banking, as well as other emerging channels, direct mail has finally met its match as users are deriving tangible benefit from reduced expenses, improved targeting and tracking capabilities and ease of redemption.
Launching a direct mail campaign requires significant up-front expenditures for design, mailing lists and printed materials. Marketers hope to recover these investments over time. Besides being expensive, lists and databases quickly become obsolete, have significant duplication and are prone to error.
Additionally, direct mail does not provide marketers realistic means of tracking who receives the offers - let alone who actually "opens the envelopes."
In today's digital age, direct mail is archaic, especially in the ways in which customers must redeem incentives. Mailed offers generally include physical coupons or promotional codes that need to be printed or remembered, a difficult scenario for a busy, digital consumer.
Many efficiencies presented by emerging channels far outweigh direct mail in terms of giving marketers and customers what they want.
Read the ArticleBack to Menu
