Don’t Believe What You Hear– Direct Mail is Alive and Well!
Online Media Daily recently ran an article titled “Direct Mail Doomed, Long Live Email,” predicting the death of direct mail at the merciless hands of the Internet. Citing a new report from research firm Borrell Associates, the article noted that spending on direct mail is expected to decline 39% over the next five years, which would dethrone it as the top placeholder for ad revenue, dropping it to fourth behind Web, broadcast TV and newspapers. The decline, which has already begun, is being blamed on the worsening economics for printing, the never-ending increase in postage costs, and the improving economics and popularity of the Internet. Borrell predicts email marketing will fill the voice left by direct mail.
At The EGC Group, we’re not so sure about this theory. After all—not too long ago the premature demise of newspaper as an entire medium was predicted. In response, many newspapers have risen to this challenge and started changing the ways they do business, finding new ways to make newspapers relevant again. We believe the same will happen for direct mail.
Yes, many businesses that have used direct mail with success in the past will and should shift those dollars to email marketing to achieve cost savings. But in some instances, direct mail will still be the more appropriate, impactful choice, and will be something EGC will continue to recommend to our clients.
EGC runs successful Customer Relationship Management programs for a number of clients. The intent of these programs is to keep in touch with past customers, through direct mail and email, keeping them engaged with the client’s brand and providing incentive-based reasons for them to remain a loyal and frequent customer. One program run for Site for Sore Eyes, an EGC client with 38 locations located in Northern California, calls for a Thank You letter with a $25 gift card for use on a future purchase, signed by the store owner, to be mailed to all customers within a month of their shopping experience. While this could be done in an email, we at EGC believe the impact would be lost. There is just something personal about getting a signed letter and a card you can tuck away in your wallet that is lost in an email. The same holds true for another aspect of the program—cards sent to customers during their birthday month that deliver a special savings. How impersonal would it be to get a birthday email, rather than a card? And who wants to print out a savings certificate, cut it out, and carry that around, vs. a compact little gift card?
To keep direct mail alive, marketers and their advertising agencies need to be smarter about their use of the medium. Dollars spent on large, untargeted mass mailings hoping to reach anyone need to shift to email, saving mail for customers that most deserve your investment—proven customers and highly targeted customers that have been identified as needing your product, and those using your competitors product. At EGC we have several methods that we use to achieve this finite targeting, including use of PRIZM, a software that allows us to profile a brand’s customers based on a range of demographics, categorize them in one of 66 different classifications, and then find similar potential customers in other areas. Using PRIZM, we’ve helped the New York Islanders find new season ticketholders, Brother International find new areas where dealers will most likely prosper and several colleges and universities identify their best prospects. We’ve seen this strategy of uber-targeting work well for many clients in the past, and will continue to use it and refine it in the future. While direct mail may never return to the volumes it once had, we don’t believe it’s dying—just growing more graceful with age.
May 28th, 2009, posted by kimrussell

As we enter the new year, many marketers are looking for ways to do more with less. EGC has compiled the Top 10 best practices that will make a marketing budget go further.