Direct Mail

Direct mail is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. It forms a significant subdiscipline of direct marketing. Some organizations attempt to help people opt-out of receiving advertising mail, in many cases motivated by a concern over its negative environmental impact.

Direct mail includes advertising circulars, catalogs, CDs, “pre-approved” credit card applications, and other commercial merchandising materials delivered to both homes and businesses. It may be addressed to pre-selected individuals, or unaddressed and delivered on a neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood basis.

Advantages for marketers include the following:

• Targeting - Historically, the most important aspect of direct mail was its ability to precisely target previous customers. If a suitable list was available, it could do a good job of targeting prospects.
• Personalization - Direct mail can address the customer personally and be tailored to their needs based on previous transactions and gathered data.
• Optimization - Because of its direct accountability, direct mail can be tested to find the best list; the best offer; the best timing (and many other factors). Then the winning tests can be rolled out to a wider audience for optimal results.
• Analysis - The bulk mailing is large enough to allow statistical analyses. For example the results can be analysed to see in detail the performance of individual offers in say a squinch report which shows sales per square inch. With suitable media or source codes, the performance of lists can be captured. These enable better selection of offers and lists for future mailings.
• Accumulation - Responses (and non-responses) can be added to the database, allowing future mailings to be better targeted.