Direct Mail/Direct Email

Direct mail has long been a popular form of communicating with audiences and is today going increasingly online as direct email. It is reported that Benjamin Franklin used direct mail as early as 1744 to inform potential buyers of books he had for sale. Public relations practitioners use direct mail methods to reach not only existing and potential customers but also to communicate with donors, volunteers, voters, investors, and myriad other audiences. For example, practitioners may want to distribute newsletters to consumers of specific products; provide notices of public government or school meetings; solicit donations for civic, health, and humanitarian causes; send financial reports to potential investors; enlist support for a political issue, cause, or candidate; or contact consumers about a special promotion or product recall. Many direct mail pieces employ emotional appeals to help engage audiences and keep them reading.

Whether disseminated via the postal system, email, statement stuffers, “take-one” display racks, or as newspaper, magazine, or package inserts, direct mail is the most prevalent form of direct marketing communications. However, according to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), which has been monitoring response rates for direct marketing campaigns since 2003 and now includes transactional data related to email and online display ads, response rates to direct mail campaigns have dropped nearly 25% during the past decade. Although their 2012 Response Rate Report noted a higher response rate for traditional direct mail than email, the low costs associated with email gave it the highest return on investment (ROI).

Direct mail's advantage is that it gives communicators a way to tailor and personalize messages in mass and deliver them directly to the specific audiences they want to reach. Typically, internally produced, or “house” lists of names, tend to be the most effective at securing responses, as these people have already been engaged with the organization. “Response” lists include people who have interacted with organizations similar to yours, while “compiled” lists, typically the least effective type, are put together by third-party vendors. Research is critical for identifying the target audiences an organization wants to reach, for compiled lists can be made up of people with very specific demographics, psychographics, income levels, zip codes, hobbies, past purchases, Internet search histories, professional associations, health problems, reading preferences, household type, voter registration, credit history, charitable contributions, pet ownership, and nearly any other documented characteristic or combination thereof. Lists are typically priced on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis, with an average rental list of 1,000 names priced around $50 for one-time use. However, prices can be much cheaper or more expensive depending on the desired audience.

The mailing list industry includes list owners, list brokers, list managers, list compilers, and service bureaus, which support the maintenance and exchange of lists and related databases. Some online direct mail service providers can offer everything from list creation derived from tens of thousands of mailing lists, to message dissemination, to invoice creation for responders, to response tracking over time. Other companies can develop specific automatic electronic mailing list servers that can be used by organizations for longer term use with designated audiences.

...