What is Direct Mail?

Direct Mail is a direct marketing method which is the process of delivering physical printed material to prospective mailboxes throughout the United Kingdom via a Postal Service or Royal Mail. Postcards, flyers, leaflets, newspapers and catalogues are common examples of delivery media.

As appose to a blanket door to door distribution campaign, Direct Mail normally involves preselected addresses based on a set of parameters. These include but not limited to:

1. Businesses based on industry
2. Households based on income
3. Customer or Client List
4. Marketing Data
5. Customer behaviour

Benefit of direct mail?

Direct mail can be an excellent strategy to acquire new business, build brand authority or communicate with existing clients. The advantages are many, however most beneficial for target driven campaigns.

All that your direct mailers need to have is something identifying you or your business, a call to action (CTA), and a way for your customers to contact you. The rest is up to you.

Why does direct mail marketing still work?

Neil Patel, an entrepreneur, marketer, and best-selling author, wrote about recent research that investigated the median return on investment (ROI) per marketing medium. A survey showed that direct mail campaigns had a higher ROI than both paid search and online display ads. In fact, direct mail was only 1 percentage point behind social media, the second highest ROI medium.

Other recent results also showed that direct mail’s response rate of 5.3% is higher than the 0.6% response rate for email. So why is direct mail, something considered by many to be on the decline, still so effective?

Direct mail is Tangible.

Customers physically handle mail and usually observe it before deciding disregard it, therefore impressions of your advertising medium is almost guaranteed compared to online search or display campaigns which aren’t as interactive. Direct mail can certainly get more eyes on your printed promotional media.

When Direct Mail is most Suitable?

Direct mail offers marketers several advantages over other advertising media. It provides a high degree of measurability, for example, which in turn allows for extensive testing. Of course, for direct mail to work well the direct marketer must be able to identify the target audience and create or rent the appropriate mailing lists to reach them. Direct mail also gives marketers control over the sales message and allows them to present a great deal of information about a product or service in the sales letter and brochure. Repeat mailings can be done to take advantage of the product’s or service’s potential for repeat sales as well as to sell related goods and services to the same lists. While direct marketing has grown over the years to employ a variety of advertising media as they became available, such as the telephone, broadcast media, and print media, it is direct mail that remains the most heavily used medium in direct marketing today.