According to the Direct Marketing Association in the recently released 2012 Response Rate Report, direct mail response rates have dropped nearly 25% over the past nine years. Even so, mail
campaigns draw a better overall response than digital channels. For instance, response rates for direct mail to an existing customer average 3.40%, compared with 0.12% for email, which is
roughly a 30-fold difference. Costs are also higher, which translates to roughly equivalent costs-per-sale/lead for direct mail, email, and paid search.
Response By Selected Media |
Media | House List | Prospect or Total |
Direct
mail (letter size) | 3.40% | 1.28% |
Oversized | 3.95 | 1.44 |
Postcard | 2.47 | 1.12 |
Catalog | 4.26 | 0.94 |
Email | 0.12 | 0.03 |
Telephone | 12.95 | 8.21 |
Display | - | 0.04 |
Paid search | - | 0.22 |
Source: DMA Response Rate Report, July
2012 |
Yory Wurmser, DMA’s director of marketing and media insights, says “... even though direct mail is less effective in driving response
than... a decade ago... still is among the best media for generating overall response... likely continued... in the marketing mix, even as... digital channels... gain budget
share...”
Other important findings include:
- Transactional data show that only 6% of the actions following an online display advertisement occur
immediately following a click, which indicates that click-through rate greatly underestimates the impact of online display
- Transactional data show that financial services emails had open
rates above 30%, which ranked the highest among industries. Apparel had open rates averaging 14.7%, which narrowly was lower than Publishing & Media (14.9%). In contrast, data showed
Publishing & Media as having the highest action rates per impression (0.013%)
- For emails, the highest click rate to open rate is for CPG at 46.5%
- Cost per order or lead for
acquisition campaigns were roughly equivalent for direct mail ($51.40), post card ($54.10), email ($55.24), and paid search ($52.58)
- Email had the highest ROI (28.5), compared with 7.00 for
direct mail
- Email performance went up slightly from the 2010 Edition of the Response Rate Report
- The highest response rates, nearly 13% to a house list, was produced by telephone
marketing. Telephone marketing also had the highest costs: nearly $78 per order or lead for a house list, and $190 for a prospect list.
- Costs were generally higher for B-to-B campaigns
than for B-to-C campaigns.
For additional information from the DMA Response Rate Report, please visit here.