Brooks Litho News

There has been a lot of speculation lately about which form of marketing is most effective. For years, some have been championing e-mail marketing as the new frontier of marketing to consumers. While it does have its advantages- low initial cost, ability to instantly respond, ability to track opens, responses and more- it also has an abysmally low response ratio. While it may be cheap and quick to send 40,000 people an e-mail from a list, only a couple hundred may ever see it due to spam filters, and even fewer will open or read the e-mail once they realize it’s spam.

Direct mail marketing is often seen as outdated or old technology in comparison to e-mail marketing. Ironically, this flood of businesses to e-mail and online marketing has made direct mail an even better investment. With everyone trying out e-mail marketing, there are fewer direct mailers in consumer’s mailboxes every day. The historically higher ROI of a direct mail campaign is even higher now that much of the competition has left.

So what is the best method of marketing today?

Picture this scenario: you just came home from work and grab your mail on the way into your house. There’s a thank-you note from your cousin’s wedding, a magazine your spouse likes to read, and an ad for a company you’ve never heard of. Normally, you’d just throw it out with the other junk mail, but this is different. You see your name in the heading, with big promises to fix that one problem you just can’t stop thinking about lately.

The internet has revolutionized the way we all live and interact with each other. The marketing and advertising world is no different. As we evolve with technology, it seems only natural that industries based on appealing to our interests do too. As a result, many people see e-mail marketing as the final frontier of direct advertising, but is that accurate? Not exactly, because:

In their enthusiasm for expansion, many companies focus entirely on acquiring new customers. While this ambition can lead to innovation and growth, it often also excludes the most profitable group of customers for a company, their existing customers. Studies have estimated that it is 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire new customers than to keep a current customer.

The marketing world changes constantly to keep up with a rapidly evolving culture and world. As a result, there are new trends every year in marketing to keep up with technology and culture. Direct mail marketing is no different. These are some of the trends we believe will come to the direct mail market in 2014.

Since the introduction of the printing press in 1440, Direct Mail Marketing has been an increasingly popular choice for advertisers and business owners hoping to connect with new markets and customers. For a very long time, it operated on a simple principle- send out a ton of advertisements in the hope that a portion will open them and want that product or service. This method has been depended on for centuries, mainly because it worked so well. Even if more than half of the recipients threw them out, the amount of positive responses and increased business usually more than covered the initial cost and brought in plenty of profit.

In every industry there has to be a standard of excellence set so that those striving to succeed are able to measure themselves against their competition. That is why in 2012, we at Brooks Litho, were overjoyed to learn and later announce that we had won the nationally recognized printing industry award known as the Benny.

On November 29, 2013, the US Postal Service formally announced that they would delay the requirement for Full Service Intelligent Mail Requirements for Automation prices. The implementation requirement was originally scheduled to take effect January 26, 2014.

In today’s world advertising has adopted a multitude of platforms and techniques in order to reach consumers. Time and time again it has been proven that by being available to your consumer in a variety of ways and experiences, helps to ultimately drive business back into your company. This technique is known as cross media marketing.

For decades, marketers have used direct mail to capture attention and generate sales. But once the Internet revolution hit, dozens of new marketing channels emerged, and left many wondering about the relevance of direct mail marketing. Does it still work?

Consider this. Studies show about 98 percent of consumers pick up mail on the same day of delivery – and 77 percent open and sort the mail immediately. This means that direct mail is still getting read. But what about email marketing? How does it stack up?

Unlike direct marketing, email marketing runs into trouble getting through servers and spam blockers. If the message gets through, it has a 10 percent average open rate. In contrast, variable data printing used in conjunction with direct mail has the ability to increase your ROI even higher. But this isn’t the only advantage of direct mail marketing.