Direct Mail vs. Email

A lot of people have been asking us recently if they should stop using direct mail pieces, such as postcards and brochures, and start relying on email marketing. There are a lot of variables that you need to consider when deciding what is the best way to deliver your message.

What is the average age and education of your target audience?
20 percent of Americans don’t use email or the Internet. Most of that group is made up of people over 65 or people who haven’t continued education past high school.1 If you are trying to reach people of all ages and education levels, email is not the best way to go.

How comfortable is your audience with computers?
People who aren’t as comfortable with computers are going to be more wary of opening an email that is not from someone they personally know, because they are afraid of getting a virus. They might not know how to protect their computer from viruses, so they avoid any risks. Alternately, if your audience is pretty tech-savvy, email marketing has been shown to be very effective, especially HTML emails.

What type of action do you want the recipient to take after getting your message?
Do you want them to go to your website and purchase or fill out something? If you use email marketing it is very easy to provide links to other online materials. The recipient can simply click in the email to go to your website. If you put a web address on a direct mail piece, like a postcard, the recipient is less likely to take the effort or remember to take the postcard to the computer and type in the web address themselves. Do you want them to make a physical action, like call someone or go into a store with a coupon you provided? If that is the case it would be better for them to have the information on a direct mail piece that they can take with them.

Would your message be better communicated on the screen or on paper?
Never overlook the importance of touch. People often respond more to something they can hold in their hand and take with them. People will probably take more time with a direct mail piece since there isn’t an option to immediately delete it. You also have less competition for attention in a physical mail box, compared to the amount of emails people get in their inbox. On the other hand, if your message is about something related to computers or technology, it might be better translated on screen.

What is your budget and timeline?
The cost of getting an email list, developing the email, and sending it out is less than the cost of getting a mailing list, designing a postcard, printing, and mailing out a direct mail piece. It also takes less time to complete an email campaign and get responses back. If you are on a tight budget or timeline, email marketing might be a good solution for you.

Where are your addresses coming from?
When Secretary of State, Sam Reed, and Joyce Willms, owner of WMS, were discussing the use of email marketing in campaigns they both agreed that compiling your own mailing list by letting people volunteer their email addresses was the best way to get responses. Since people change their email addresses more often than their physical address it requires a lot of time spent checking and updating the list. Sam Reed said, “I use email marketing for my campaigns and it has been very successful, because we spend five hours a week maintaining the email list.” Even though it takes some work, compiling your own list is better than buying one. If you buy an email list it doesn’t guarantee that the emails are still current and checked regularly or that the recipient has any interest in what you are sending them. If you compile the list yourself you know that their email is current and they are interested. It also means that they will be more comfortable opening your email since they will recognize who it is from.

Is your company green?
Email marketing is a much more green strategy. It doesn’t use the paper or gas for delivery that direct mail requires. If this is important to you and your audience you should consider email marketing.

As you can see, there are many pros and cons to email and direct mail. If you have a highly targeted audience it might be easy to decide between email and direct mail, but most of the time it’s not that easy. There are too many variables to rely on one method. In order to have a complete campaign you should consider using both direct mail and email pieces. This answer is the same as the one you get when asking yourself, “should I take my ads out of the phone book and only list in an online directory?” or “should I stop using radio advertising and only go with TV commercials?” The answer is no. Don’t limit your advertising. The more ways you get your message out there, the more people you will reach, and the more likely you are to get a response.

1 Steven Musil, Survey: One-fifth of Americans have never used e-mail, http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9946706-7.html