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If there's one thing every marketer loves, it's data. Data drives our decisions when it comes to creating or optimizing marketing campaigns and calculating what channels provide the best ROI. While the emotional journey is critical for your customers, when it comes to persuading your teammates and bosses about a campaign's efficacy, few things compare to facts and figures.
If your marketing team has figured out that it's time to add a new channel to your omnichannel marketing mix the following stats should convince everyone that it needs to be intelligent direct mail. And since it's 7/7 today, we thought it would be fun to share the top 7 direct mail stats every marketer needs to know.
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The most crucial aspect of any marketing channel is whether or not your customers engage with it. Email rose to rapid popularity over the last few years because of a conception that email inboxes were more direct and less cluttered than physical mailboxes.
In 2022, the opposite is true—email inboxes are filled with spam and junk, while home mailboxes have a greater opportunity to stand out visually from other senders. Because of this, direct mail has a 130% higher response rate than email. What's even more impressive? That figure triples when a customer has previously interacted with your brand.
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When it comes to receiving important communication, most consumers vastly prefer to read paper statements than digital ones. In fact, more consumers believe they gain a deeper understanding of the story when read from print over online sources. What's even more impressive? Studies show that 46% of consumers would be more likely to take action after seeing an advertisement in a printed newspaper or magazine than they would if they saw the same ad online.
Because of this draw to the printed word to improve both the importance and memorability of a message in a consumer's mind, direct mail becomes a natural fit to place those messages directly in the hands of your customers.
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If your email inbox is anything like the average consumer's, you probably have dozens, if not hundreds, of unread emails—many of which come from brands and marketers like yourself. In fact, the average consumer receives 88 emails a day, and when you think about personal inboxes and work inboxes, those numbers just stack up.
By comparison, the average American household only receives about 17 or 18 pieces of physical mail a week. That gives your brand ample opportunity to stand out in a customer's mailbox among a much smaller crowd. If you use personalization and integrate that direct mail piece into your overall customer journey, you're far more likely to have an effective marketing program.
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Customers make mistakes, typos happen, and data entry doesn't always occur accurately—humans are human and incorrect addresses occur. But this mistake costs money. With 5% of mail being undeliverable, that costs the USPS about $1.3 billion each year to process. What's more? It costs your business roughly double in postage when mail is returned undeliverable.
Lob's address verification API takes the work out of data validation and correction, leaving no room for human error in your direct mail campaigns. This technology corrects addresses in real-time, virtually eliminating mistakes and minimizing potential waste from undeliverable mail.
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As the digital age progresses, it's easy for customers to feel like they're lost in a sea of information. Because they are constantly inundated with marketing messages from all angles, it's easy to understand why consumers crave personalization. In fact, an overwhelming 90% of consumers find marketing personalization appealing, yet 93% of internet users report receiving marketing messages that aren't relevant to them.
By its very nature, direct mail is a physical, tangible piece that puts a message directly into a reader's hands, either in their home or office. It can't help but feel personal. And with enhanced personalization capabilities, direct mail from Lob ensures that the message each recipient reads is tailored to their specific needs at the appropriate moment in their individual journey.
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If statistics from consumers aren't enough to persuade your stakeholders and decision-makers that direct mail is an effective marketing channel, perhaps the opinions of other marketing leaders might help move the needle.
Each year, we fund research on marketing programs, including a survey of hundreds of marketing leaders, and report the results in our State of Direct Mail report. In the results, 67% of respondents indicated that direct mail provides the highest ROI of any of the channels they currently use, and 68% of the respondents saw a measurable return on investment when using Lob to deploy their direct mail.
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None of the misconceptions about direct mail are as false as the misnomer "snail mail." Direct mail with Lob is explicitly designed to be an expedient, efficient, and effective means of communicating directly to an eligible list. In fact, typically takes only 5-7 days to create and send a direct mail campaign with Lob, and from there, you can track your deployments, optimize your creativity, and reap the results.
A campaign isn't necessarily a standard bulk deployment, either—factoring in elements of personalization and detail-oriented design helps direct mail fit into your overarching marketing campaign as naturally as possible, with minimal effort to deploy on your end. You'll also have access to real-time reporting on production, tracking, and delivery, giving you a constant picture of when your customers receive the messages you're sending, enabling you to track and attribute behaviors as accurately as possible.
If you do need a bulk deployment to deploy a custom message to your entire customer base, Lob's campaigns can be developed quickly, personalized as necessary, and deployed in a completely secure manner that meets the highest compliance standards, ensuring that your customers get sensitive information exactly when they need to.
The most impressive and important statistic of all? Lob customers experience as much as a 200% - 300% ROI from their integrated direct mail campaigns. Because we carefully consider the customer journey, full integration into marketing campaigns and technologies, and measurement of campaign results, it's easy to see why major brands trust Lob with their direct mail deployments.
Curious about what Lob can do for you? Request a demo today to discuss your brand's specific needs and see our platform in action.
