4 Reasons to Use Direct Mailing This Holiday Season

In fact, direct mail has the highest rate for gaining new customers: 34%, leading email at 25% and search engine marketing at 10% success, according to Target's Marketing Media Usage Forecast. If the numbers aren't enough, read on to discover why direct mail marketing is a great option for your business.

10 Direct Mail Secrets

For the past decade, many business owners have regarded direct mail as the ugly stepsister of print or broadcast advertising. Loud, misleading and cluttered pieces mailed anonymously to millions of prospects only served to reinforce this perception.

Strategy: Direct Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

Many business owners (or mid-sized business marketers) are always aghast at the budget required to market their products/services. In direct marketing in particular, ever-rising postal costs, printing and even data management sticker shock can stop a project in its tracks.

The question is: How can you best use your precious marketing budget to accomplish the most? The answer is to work smarter, not harder:

5 Roles Making Waves in Direct Marketing

The evolution of direct marketing over the past several years has led to an emergence of new roles and new expectations for current ones. “Marketers have never had to know so much,” says Jerry Bernhart, founder of Bernhart Associates Executive Search, which specializes in marketing, e-commerce, and CRM. “There are just so many moving pieces to modern marketing. You need someone who is data savvy [and] analytic; someone who has a proven track record of growing a business; someone who's a financial steward; and someone who's a marketing technologist. It's the land of a thousand niches.”

Direct Mail Has a Greater Effect on Purchase Than Digital Ads

An in-depth neuroscientific study sponsored by the Postal Service Inspector General's office (OIG) found direct mail ads to be superior to those viewed online in eight out of nine categories. Digital ads seized the attention of consumers quicker, but physical ads held that attention longer, elicited a greater emotional reaction, and played a more direct role in ultimate purchase decisions.

12 Steps to an Effective Direct Mail Campaign

Direct mail campaigns still remain a key tool in the overall marketing plans of many businesses. When planned, executed and refined correctly, they can be a very effective way of gaining visibility with tangible and measurable results.

Here are 12 strategies for optimizing your efforts:

Is Direct Mail Dying? 3 Effects on Marketing

Multi-channel marketers have been debating the lifespan of direct mail ever since the United States Postal Service revealed an accelerated drop in mail volume back in the early days of the recession. The debate is more relevant than it’s ever been today as cheaper, more efficient options spring up seemingly overnight.