The world of marketing is truly changing - and at an astonishing pace. We often write here about the steady decline of the 30 second ad on TV, but its slightly more dodgy, less glamorous and decidedly more wasteful, second cousin, Direct Mail is undergoing a huge paradigm shift of its own.
In the UK (according to Associated Newspapers) 3.4 billion pieces of direct mail (aka junk mail) are sent every year, which equates to 60 per annum for every man, woman and child. 22% of these are simply binned without being opened. Very roughly, this equates to over a billion pounds ($1.8 billion) of money completely wasted, not even taking into account the environmental impact. With charity mailing, it’s even worse, ironically, with over 30% thrown away unopened.
Convenently, there are no stats to say how many of the rest are opened, glanced at and discarded, but if we take a response rate of about 1% (very, very high for a cold mailing) you can see that the industry has turned into the equivalent of an assassin wanting to eliminate one man, by nuking a whole city.
The marketing world is gradually turning to digital media and it was interesting to browse through the offerings at Ad:Tech here in London yesterday, which seems incredibly vibrant. Digital media is exploding as anyone who is involved in marketing realises. It takes the best of direct mail - targeted, accountable and measurable - but overlays an instant execution and response, lower cost, better metrics and low environmental impact. In other words, it’s simply a smarter way to operate.
What did quite surprise me though was that among all these established players, there was barely a mention of mobile. From the perspective of a few years hence, this will seem as extraordinary as the ideas of putting billions of bits of tree fragments, via an incredibly expensive and lengthy delivery mechanism through the doors of peoples’ houses, who just put them straight in the waste bin.
Can Internet advertising be considered inexpensive (relatively speaking) compared to other means for advertising, if counting the effectivity (however that’s measured)?
Yet, when it comes to ringtones clearly TV ads have been very effective for some.
Direct Mail seems more like a paper recycling ecosystem.
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Wot a rubbish!
Was this article written 10 ears ago?
Because this is where the industry was in the 90`s. In the meantime direct mail (not junk mail) is highly targeted to a responsive audience.
The mistake here is to confuse junk mail with direct mail.
For all that don`t know the difference:
Direct Mail is properly addressed with the name and address details and in most cases delivered to a certain target market.
Junk mail is just a piece of paper ddropped or mailed to as many letterboxes as possible.
Direct mail is far more expensive to produce, so it is in the interest of the mailer to keep costs down and response up.
Junk mail is cheap and therefore used to blanket certain areas, just look at your local supermarkt as the main culprit.
Which one works better? Hard to say, especially since junk mail has no real way of monitoring results.
In the end the customer decides, if enough people react to it, it will go on forever.
Bernard - thanks for the comment, but you have a serious case of denial, my friend. You clearly have a vested interest in defending this industry, but I’m sorry to tell you it’s going to implode in the next 5 years.
I’m well aware of how the direct marketing industry works. The fact is to MOST recipients, it’s ALL junk mail most of the time - spam and junk mail is but a matter of perception. So no matter how targeted your list and how relevant you think your message is to your audience, if it gets binned unopened, it’s still junk mail.
Russell
I experienced this when i was in the US last 3 years! 60% of my snail mails were junk and I considered myself lucky!
I came back to India and guess what - we thankfully haven’t taken up that legacy. Its just too expensive - that medium financiallY!