Are you looking for customer response? Direct Mail is your best bet. Even though response rates have dropped nearly 25% over the past nine years, direct mail still is among the best media for generating response.
According to the 2012 edition of the Direct Marketing Association’s Response Rate Report, mail campaigns draw a better overall response than digital channels. The report includes email, display ads, and paid search, as well as history trends. DMA’s report was conducted through a survey that was emailed in April 2012.
While direct mail remains a significant tool, email is cheap. The DMA report shows its ROI to be substantially higher (28.5 vs. 7.0).
“What we don’t know is whether there is a direct comparison”, says Heidi Tolliver-Walker. “For example, ROI on direct mail might be lower overall, but if you use them in entirely different markets (selling automobiles vs. Canadian pharmaceuticals), the comparison is completely irrelevant.”
Other findings in the report:
- Transactional data show that only 6% of the actions following an online display advertisement occur immediately following a click, which indicates that click-through rate greatly underestimates the impact of online display.
- Transactional data show that financial services emails had open rates above 30%, which ranked the highest among industries. Retail (apparel) had open rates averaging 14.7%, which narrowly was lower than Publishing & Media (14.9%). In contrast, data showed Publishing & Media as having the highest action rates per impression (0.013%).
- For emails, the highest click rate to open rate is for CPG (46.5%).
- Cost per order or lead for acquisition campaigns were roughly equivalent for direct mail ($51.40), postcard ($54.10), email ($55.24), and paid search ($52.58).
- Email performance went up slightly from the 2010 Edition of the Response Rate Report.
- The highest response rates—nearly 13% to a house list—was produced by telephone marketing.
- Telephone marketing also had the highest costs: nearly $78 per order or lead for a house list, and $190 for a prospect list.
- Costs were generally higher for B-to-B campaigns than for B-to-C campaigns.
When planning your next marketing campaign, be sure to consider direct mail. For generating response, direct mail is still a market powerhouse.