Digital marketing may be cost effective and popular, but here’s why it may not be time to put direct mail to rest.
Low conversion rates
Digital marketing may be cost effective and popular, but here’s why it may not be time to put direct mail to rest for businesses with only low conversion rates to show for their efforts.
Take a look at these digital conversion rates for B2B marketing:
- SEO and blogging—3.82%
- Paid digital advertising—2.98%
- Social media—1.95%
(Source: Marketo)
Direct mail’s high conversion rate
In contrast, direct mail’s conversion rate is startlingly high. In its response rate report, the Direct Marketing Association reported that direct mail achieves a 4.4% response rate, compared to 0.12% for email. Overall, direct mail’s response rates are actually 10 to 30 times higher than that of digital.
Advances in direct mail highlight direct mail’s sweet spot: digitally reactive tools that customize immediate, direct mail to consumers based on their Web browsing activity. Lewis Gersh of Pebble Post states that in B2C marketing, a typical digital advertising conversion rate is 0.01%, whereas digitally reactive mail can average 8%.
Millennials and direct mail
Contrary to what many businesses may intuitively believe, businesses can also capture the elusive millennial generation’s attention with direct mail. The 2016 USPS Customer & Market Insights report found that millennials spend, on average, more than nine minutes per day sorting mail—more than any other generation. They’re also more likely to show it to others than older consumers.
Additionally, 54% of millennials believe businesses in their neighborhoods need to do better job of using direct mail to keep them informed.
Direct mail has a place
Direct mail can still have a place in your business’ marketing efforts. It’s effective to help capture millennial attention, to reach neighborhood consumers in B2C marketing, and to recapture customers’ interest.