In today’s digital world, we are constantly being bombarded with information and data from every angle. How many emails do you receive every day? How many tweets, how many FB posts? How many of these do you really read every day? While email and social media have definitely changed how companies market, inbox overload IS a real thing for most people! I’m one of those people guilty of multiple select and delete when my email box is overflowing.
While todays new SM marketing environment is here to stay, direct mail should not be overlooked, or considered old school. Email is a 2 step process. With email you get one line of text to attract attention. You must compose a subject line not only interesting enough to get someone to click in order to view what you have to say, but also worded in such a way to keep it from landing in a spam folder. Personalized direct mail however offers the opportunity to immediately engage the consumer in any number of interesting ways. USPS data has shown that 98% of people check their mail box every day with 77% sorting through their mail as soon as they get it. Those statistics speak volumes. With direct mail you have consumer’s immediate and undivided attention to speak to them in much more impressive and interesting ways. You have color, different shapes and sizes, you can include promotional items, you have any number of ways to make your piece intriguing and stand out!
The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General partnered with the Center for Neural Decision Making at Temple University’s Fox School of Business to study the power of print and digital advertisements. Together, they found participants spent more time with physical advertisements, showed more desire for a product seen in print and were more stimulated by physical ads than by their digital counterparts. You can read the article here, it is worth the read!
