The average person receives around 605 e-mails and 16.8 piece of mail per week—many of these are from companies and businesses that use email and direct mail as channels of communication.1 Driving marketing efforts through both channels can generate more leads, build relationships with consumers, and increase business sales. This success starts with the right data.
Trustworthy email and address data are essential to competitive email and direct mail marketing campaigns. Without it, there’s a chance you could be sending email or mail to invalid mailboxes, costing you unnecessary mailing fees, risking your status as a unreputable sender, and even impacting the customer experience.
Now, we know direct mail sounds old fashion. In our digital world, it would be easy for companies to assume that direct mail is an outdated form of marketing that is being replaced by e-mail marketing. In reality, both direct mail and email are still being used in today’s marketing landscape, and they each are a unique form of marketing with different benefits and costs.
Let’s take a look at what direct mail and email could mean for you—and where data quality fits in.
Direct mail definition
Direct mail is when a company connects with its customers by sending them content through the mail. Direct mail can come in the form of:
- Flyers
- Brochures
- Catalogs
These are delivered to a potential customer’s home. The goal is to identify a need the customer may have and show how your company can satisfy that need. Direct mail can help:
- Educate customers
- Build customer relationships
- Offer sales promotions to incentivize purchases.
Email definition
E-mail is a form of direct marketing where companies can connect with customers through electronic mail. These e-mails can include:
- Newsletters
- Information about products
- Sales promotions
E-mail is a less intrusive form of marketing that can help build customer relationships in a quick and easy manner.
Differences between direct mail and email
Direct mail pros
With direct mail, you can create targeted mailing lists to reach your key demographics and make them aware of your brand. By being able to reach these potential customers in such a personal way, you increase the chances of making a sale. Along with this, you can easily find the response rate of direct mail by tracking how many of the recipients used the coupon or promo code that was offered.
To get the most out of your direct mail marketing and ensure high ROI, consider integrating an
address verification solution into your tech stack. Not only will you know if your brochure is going to a commercial or residential address, but you will feel confident that it’s landing on the right doorstep.
Direct mail cons
While direct mail is very personal, it can be costly, and the response rates could be low. If you have the wrong address for a target consumer, and you accidentally send their direct mail to someone else, you have lost an opportunity to connect with that customer. On top of this, if you correct their address after sending it, you can incur an address correction fee.
This is where contact data validation software can help. These unnecessary costs can add up overtime for your business. A way to avoid this issue is by integrating an address validation software, just like the one we mentioned above. This tool can validate customer addresses to help prevent spelling errors, inaccurate formatting, and mismatched city and postal code data.
Email pros
Email marketing is a cheap and easy way to reach your target customers. Email marketing has a quick turnaround time, with the first responses occurring around 48 hours after the email is sent. These responses can also be easily tracked by tracing how many recipients opened it, clicked on the links, or sent it to someone else. This kind of feedback can help you understand how to reach your audience better.
Similar to direct mail, you want to make sure you are getting the most out of your email marketing campaign, and to do so, you want to validate your email list with an email verification software. That way, you know you are reaching the right customer and you remain a reputable sender.
Email cons
One issue with email marketing is that customers can feel annoyed with the sheer volume of emails they are receiving, and they may ignore many of these brand emails. There can also be issues if you don’t have the right email address.
If your company sends too many emails to wrong or inactive email inboxes, you may be placed on a list of unreputable senders, which can prevent you from being able to send e-mails. To avoid this, integrate an email verification solution. This will validate customer emails to make sure you are reaching the correct inboxes.
Response rates in direct mail vs email
Direct mail vs email statistics
Research from 2019 shows that direct mail had an average response rate of 4.4 percent, and email had an average response rate of 0.12 percent. But, despite its low response rate, email marketing had an ROI of $28.50 while direct mail had an ROI of $7. This is due to the low costs of email marketing.2
Using direct mail and email together
Nowadays, using a single channel to reach customers isn’t good enough. Many companies are now taking a multi-channel approach to marketing, where they use several channels to reach target consumers. Having several channels, like email and direct mail, can help spread awareness for your brand and allows for more personalized selling.
Multi-channel marketing allows your company to reach a single customer several times. You can track the customers behavior at the first touchpoint, and then customize the message at the second touch point to match their behavior. This creates a customized experience for your consumer, which can improve their experience with your brand and increase the chance of closing a deal with them.
With around 72 percent of consumers preferring this kind of integrated marketing approach, having a multiple channels can help you build and retain a loyal consumer base.3 With the correct customer contact data, like email, address, and phone data, you can ensure you are effectively reaching your customers while seeing high return on investment on your multi-channel marketing campaigns.
Looking to revamp your email and direct mail marketing campaigns. Make sure you start with high-quality contact data.
Sources:
1 25 Direct Marketing Statistics for 2020. (2020, February 12). Compu-Mail. https://www.compu-mail.com/statistics/25-direct-marketing-statistics-for-2020
2 Bozeman, R. (2019, July 25). Direct Mail vs Email - Optimize Both Through The Customer Journey. Postalytics. https://www.postalytics.com/blog/direct-mail-vs-email/
3 Gardner, J. (2012, March 12). 5 Huge Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Afford to Ignore. Mashable. https://mashable.com/2012/03/05/future-digital-marketing-trends/?europe=true
