Consumers are tired of digital media. COVID drove consumer interaction with digital ads and other content. But we’ve all gotten pretty tired of it after almost three years. On top of it all, every marketer and their mother are investing a ton of their marketing budget into digital ads. The way for your client’s ads to stand out in today’s market is to invest in traditional marketing; specifically, direct mail solutions.

How Direct Mail Solutions Can Improve ROI

Direct Mail Ads Get Noticed

Using direct mail solutions may seem old fashioned but think about it. When you get your physical mail, you look through all of it, right? After all, important things that require your attention usually come via direct mail: Bills, letters from family, etc.

Additionally, not too many of your client’s competitors, or marketers in general, are bothering to invest in direct mail solutions. So, there’s not much competition for recipients’ attention. According to research from Nielsen, direct mail is an ad category that not many marketers will be increasing their budget for.

They Also Inspire Consumer Action

According to a previous SalesFuel blog post, based on research from Lob, not only do 85% of direct mail solutions’ recipients open their mail at some point, these ads also inspire them to take action. Action is taken in multiple forms:

• “43% of consumers who took action based on mail ads visited the advertised brand’s website
• 31% bought an advertised product or signed up for an advertised service
• 31% visited one of the advertised brand’s retail locations to check out one of their products
• 28% were prompted to conduct a search on the advertised brand, product or service online
• 26% looked up reviews about the advertised brand, product or service”

Direct Mail’s Return-​On-​Investment (ROI)

According to research from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) , overlooking the effectiveness of direct mail solutions is a big mistake. The ANA’s research shows that direct mail ads (specifically letter-​sized envelopes) generate the highest ROI of all direct response media types. That’s more than SMS mobile ads, email ads, paid search, social media ads AND digital display ads. On average, when marketers include letter-​sized envelope direct mail ads in their campaigns, they see an average ROI of 112%. Other types of direct mail ads work as well, but with slightly lower ROIs:

• Dimensional: 92.3% ROI
• Oversized Envelopes: 92.2% ROI
• Postcards: 85% ROI

And yet, the ANA also reports that only 38% of marketers utilize direct mail solutions in their direct marketing campaigns. Again, this means big opportunity for your client!

Brands Can’t Do It Alone

According to an article from MarketingCharts, 71% of marketers say that they partner with agencies to manage their direct mail solutions. 68% of marketers divide responsibilities between an agency and their in-​house team, while 3% solely rely on agencies. Only 29% trust their in-​house team to handle direct mail programs by themselves.

So, there are probably a plethora of reasons why your client hasn’t invested in direct mail solutions yet. They could have been nervous about handling it alone in the past before partnering with your agency. Like their competitors, they may believe digital ads are king and direct mail ads are old fashioned and not worth the investment. All they need is someone *nudge nudge* to pitch the idea to them with research that shows it could be worth their while.

Further Research

If your client needs further proof that direct mail solutions will resonate with their current and potential customers, you can find it on AdMall by SalesFuel. There, you’ll see what percentage of their target audience was motivated to take action by ads they received in the mail within the last year.

Photo by Chris Blonk