Direct Marketing - Direct Mail Vs. Email Blasts
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Direct mail and email blasts are two popular direct marketing and advertising techniques. Email blasts send out digital advertisements to massive groups of consumers who have “opted-in” at some point, while direct mail marketing does essentially the same thing with print material via the traditional postal system. The choice between direct mail and email blasts depends largely on your organization’s particular goals. However, each of these marketing strategies boasts some inherent advantages over the other.
Audience
The target audience is one of the most important factors in determining the direction of your marketing campaign. For instance, email blasts would reach a target audience of young adults much more effectively than it would a target audience of senior citizens; in the United States, 95 percent of people between the ages of 18 to 29 use the Internet, compared to only 42 percent of seniors over the age of 65, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. If you’re a local business owner, you can advertise through the United States Postal Service’s direct mail program and get your ads delivered to every single local household. Then again, if you run an online business, email blasting would inherently appeal more to an online audience; many people who opt-in for email advertising have already expressed interest in whatever is being advertised.
Visibility
When you send out an advertisement, it is in the hopes that the target recipient will actually look at that ad. A letter, pamphlet or postcard in someone’s mailbox gets mixed in with the rest of that person’s mail, and he has to actually handle it while sorting mail. Even if the ad gets tossed in the trash, the target recipient has to look at it first to determine that it is “junk mail.” It is much easier for an email recipient to simply delete your digital advertisement, along with every other unwanted email, after merely scanning over the sender name and, possibly, the subject line.
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Cost
When it comes to cost, email blasting always wins against direct mailing. Most of the cost involved in an email campaign comes from purchasing leads. Mailing paper advertisements, on the other hand, involves expensive printing and shipping costs. According to The Web Shoppe, once you combine the total price of production and shipping, a 50,000-ad campaign costs around $48,000 for direct mail and only $650 for email blasts.
Return
If you are creating a marketing campaign for business purposes, the projected return on investment may hold more weight than the actual cost. Email blasting beats direct mailing when it comes to ROI. In 2009, email advertising averaged a return of $43.62 per $1 spent, while non-catalog direct mail advertising averaged a return of only $15.22 per $1 spent, according to "Direct Magazine."
Speed
It is impossible for direct mail to compete with the speed of email blasts. Even across the globe, an email arrives at the target recipient’s inbox just moments after it is sent. Depending on the chosen mail service, class of mail, destination and any extenuating circumstances, direct mail can take days to weeks to arrive at the target address. In addition, it takes much less time to compose an email advertisement than it does to create and print a direct mail ad.
Tags:
Direct Marketing, Marketing
Audience
The target audience is one of the most important factors in determining the direction of your marketing campaign. For instance, email blasts would reach a target audience of young adults much more effectively than it would a target audience of senior citizens; in the United States, 95 percent of people between the ages of 18 to 29 use the Internet, compared to only 42 percent of seniors over the age of 65, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. If you’re a local business owner, you can advertise through the United States Postal Service’s direct mail program and get your ads delivered to every single local household. Then again, if you run an online business, email blasting would inherently appeal more to an online audience; many people who opt-in for email advertising have already expressed interest in whatever is being advertised.
Visibility
When you send out an advertisement, it is in the hopes that the target recipient will actually look at that ad. A letter, pamphlet or postcard in someone’s mailbox gets mixed in with the rest of that person’s mail, and he has to actually handle it while sorting mail. Even if the ad gets tossed in the trash, the target recipient has to look at it first to determine that it is “junk mail.” It is much easier for an email recipient to simply delete your digital advertisement, along with every other unwanted email, after merely scanning over the sender name and, possibly, the subject line.
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Cost
When it comes to cost, email blasting always wins against direct mailing. Most of the cost involved in an email campaign comes from purchasing leads. Mailing paper advertisements, on the other hand, involves expensive printing and shipping costs. According to The Web Shoppe, once you combine the total price of production and shipping, a 50,000-ad campaign costs around $48,000 for direct mail and only $650 for email blasts.
Return
If you are creating a marketing campaign for business purposes, the projected return on investment may hold more weight than the actual cost. Email blasting beats direct mailing when it comes to ROI. In 2009, email advertising averaged a return of $43.62 per $1 spent, while non-catalog direct mail advertising averaged a return of only $15.22 per $1 spent, according to "Direct Magazine."
Speed
It is impossible for direct mail to compete with the speed of email blasts. Even across the globe, an email arrives at the target recipient’s inbox just moments after it is sent. Depending on the chosen mail service, class of mail, destination and any extenuating circumstances, direct mail can take days to weeks to arrive at the target address. In addition, it takes much less time to compose an email advertisement than it does to create and print a direct mail ad.
