Direct Mail: Dinosaur in the Digital Age

Direct mail is a dinosaur in today’s digital world. Whether or not it’s ready for a place in the New York Museum of Natural History next to T Rex depends on its ability to evolve. We live in the “Age of Digital Darwinism. Businesses, advertising agencies and advertising media need to adapt and evolve in order to survive.

It’s going to be an uphill battle to survive. Direct mail has a lot working against it.

First and foremost is cost. Of all the media available to advertisers, direct mail has the highest cost per thousand customers reached. When the “CPM” or “cost per thousand of direct mail is compared with television, radio, print, outdoor or online media, it is clearly the highest, and has been for many years. Even with advances made in digital printing and attempts the postal service has made at automating their operations, direct mail remains an inefficient way to get an advertising message across.

Creating and producing a direct mail campaign is also a very time consuming and cumbersome venture involving many people and processes. This only adds to its inefficiency.

There’s a lot involved in executing a direct mail campaign. A “short list” of production steps includes mailing list selection and cleaning … printing … inserting letters, brochures and other contents into the envelope … addressing … getting post office approval for 3rd class bulk mailings and complying with other requirements for rate discounts … transporting … mailing … processing undeliverable mail and fulfillment.

Unless you’re a small retailer doing a small preprinted post card mailing, it can take weeks or even months to get a direct mail message into the hands of the target audience. In today’s electronic world, time is a precious commodity and speed is essential to many marketers..

Another thing direct mail has going against its survival is it’s “junk mail” image. Direct mail is “mother spam”. Unsolicited 3rd class bulk mailings have been plaguing America for generations. Even with “do not mail lists” and other attempts to regulate direct mail advertisers, it seems almost impossible to keep “junk mail” from clogging up people’s mail boxes.

The majority of direct mail is poorly designed and produced. Some of it is created that way intentionally. In their quest to be “hard-hitting” and “offer-driven, direct marketers have come up with formats resembling telegrams, invoices, bank checks with envelopes announcing “Free Money”, “Your Check Is Enclosed” or “Important News About Your Mortgage”. They do this for one reason – it appeals to the basic human greed factor, and experience shows it works.