Telephone Marketing Pulls the Best, Pays Off the Best The 2004 Response Rate Report, recently released by the Direct Marketing Association, concludes that telephone marketing has the
highest ROI index, with 18.2, for marketers driving direct-order purchases. It is followed by e-mail, dimensional mail, and direct mail. In terms of response rates, telephone is the leader this year
as it was last year at 5.73 percent.
John A. Greco, Jr., president & CEO, The DMA, says "Changes in the marketplace, coupled with database technology..., have led to a broadening of the overall
multimedia usage and direct marketing techniques."
According to the report on 1,406 campaigns from 25 industries using 12 different media:
| Media | $Rev/ Contact | Promo Cost/Contact | Avg Resp Rates | ROI Index |
| Telephone | $45.37 | $2.50
| 5.78 | 18.2 |
| E-Mail | $1.60 | $0.10 | 1.12 | 16.0 |
| Dimensional Mail | $14.16 | $0.91 | 2.30 | 15.3 |
| Direct Mail | $11.36 | $0.56 | 1.88 | 14.9 |
| Newspaper | $0.45 | $0.05 | 0.09 | 8.80 |
| Coupons | $1.50 | $0.23 | 1.65 | 6.50 |
| Catalog | $1.48 | $0.69 | 2.18 | 6.40 |
| Inserts | $0.49 | $0.14 | 0.45 | 3.50 |
| Magazine | $0.22 | $0.11 | 0.13 | 2.00 |
| FSIs | $0.12 | $0.07 | 0.13 | 1.60 |
| Radio | $0.08 | $0.07 | 0.10 | 1.20 |
| DRTV | $0.02 | $0.03 | 0.04 | 0.70 |
Source: Direct Marketing Association, 2004
- Telephone, dimensional mail, e-mail, and coupons provided the best response rate
results for generating leads.
- Dimensional mail pulled the highest average response rate for store traffic, followed by telephone and catalog at about half as good.
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