Is Direct Mail An Old School And Out Of Date Marketing Method?

February 18th, 2013 by Diane Conklin under Uncategorized. 2 Comments.

Without a doubt, advancements to technology have certainly opened the doors to new methods of marketing.  With so many options in the way of digital marketing some of us may find ourselves asking if direct mail is an old, outdated marketing method.

The answer is no.  Absolutely not!

Using good direct response marketing techniques and strategies is a tried and true way to market your business.  Direct mail, if done properly, will never be out of date.  After all, look how long it’s been working as an effective marketing strategy already.

Of course, you’ll run into those who say things like “but everyone’s on the internet” or “sending email is quicker and less expensive.”

Believe it or not, everyone is not on the internet.

But everyone with an address has a mailbox.  A physical mailbox they walk up to on a regular basis and get things out of.   Everyone has one of those!

And sure, sending an email takes about five minutes.  But does it get delivered?  Does it get opened?  You just don’t know.  It could be bouncing around in cyber space.  It could be immediately deleted by the recipient.  They could open it, not read it, and think they’ll come back to it later, then forget about it and never come back and read it.  Everyone’s done that with email.  It’s easy to do because it’s not a physical piece of mail sitting around requiring attention.  And, as long as your mail piece isn’t coming back to you, you can be pretty sure that it got through.

What happens when people go to their mailboxes?  Most of the time they bring the mail into the house and they sort it into piles.  Pile ‘A’ is stuff they go through immediately.  There’s usually a ‘B’ pile for the bills.  And then there’s pile ‘C’ and pile ‘C’ is full of the advertisements, postcards and all the other marketing material that they’re pretty sure they don’t want.  That pile gets set down on the counter or in a basket, but basically the person has to eventually come back to the pile.  They come back to the pile to make sure nothing important got added to it and to be sure it’s garbage.  What ends up happening if they didn’t open your mail the first time is your mail piece gets a second chance.  They’ll pick it up one more time.  This time giving it a good look over and maybe they decide at that point they should keep it.

Are you still convinced that direct mail is old school?  If you’re not convinced, then you might want to look at some of the Fortune 500 companies like American Express, Hewlett Packard and so many more.  Every one of them uses direct mail as part of their marketing plan and strategy.

Shouldn’t you be using direct mail too?

A very inspirational and intelligent marketing coach, Dan Kennedy says this about direct mail, “Having a direct mail campaign that works, the only way to have sustainability and stability in your business.”

That’s a big statement, and he’s absolutely right.

If you’re not using direct mail in your marketing right now, you should consider adding it to the mix.