Everyone is suffering from fatigue. U.S. marketers are starting to understand what their grandparents used to do over mail; direct mail marketing is working. The advertisements and marketing companies are starting to see response rates of over 9% in difference to the emails’ 1%. Why are marketers starting to use mail?
Psychology, ROI, and overcrowding. Your audience is receiving over 121 emails daily and 3-4 pieces of mail. Which is more memorable? It’s becoming more and more expensive to email everyone. Marketers are seeing the value in mail.
The Digital Burnout is Real
Americans suffer from digital noise more than anyone else. The average American is bombarded with 10,000 ads daily. The brain is quick to tune it out. 90% of direct mail marketing works. 20-30% of marketing emails are opened.
Neuroscience, not nostalgia, explains the resurgence of direct mail marketing services in the USA. Compared to digital ads, physical mail constitutes a greater cognitive investment. According to a study by Canada Post, direct mail is easier to process than digital ads, requiring 21% less cognitive effort.
Consequently, advertisers are more successfully recalled. Scrolling through a digital ad generates a lower cognitive investment than holding the advertised product.
Reasons Why Physical Mail Cuts Through the Clutter
Unlike digital marketing, direct mail marketing printing in the USA provides a multi-sensory experience that offers a number of brain-based advantages, including the following.
- Physical mail is more “real” and credible than digital mail, leading to greater trust.
- Mail recipients are more likely to spend time on physical mail. Research shows that people spend 30 minutes engaging with their mail, compared to a mere 2-3 seconds with digital advertisements.
- Advertised physical mail cannot be deleted, leading to exposure that is more likely to create lasting impressions.
- Physical mail is guaranteed to be delivered. Unlike digital ads, physical mail cannot be blocked by spam filters, ad blockers, or algorithms.
For businesses that have been impacted by declining organic reach and rising CPCs, a 29% ROI from direct mail marketing, as reported by the Data and Marketing Association, constitutes a positive advertising alternative in comparison to paid search, online display, or social media marketing.
Read More About: How to Choose Right Direct Mail Service
The ROI Case for Direct Mail in 2025
There are statistics that prove that companies that utilise direct mail in their marketing/advertising campaigns achieve a 28% higher conversion rate over companies that only use digital marketing strategies (The Association of National Advertisers’ 2024 study). There is a reason for this. Tangible mail generates impressions that digital marketing campaigns are unable to create.
For lead generation campaigns, mail advertising packages available in the USA provide results that are measurable. Insurance companies achieve 4-6% response rates (400% to 600% higher than email campaigns) from snap pack mailers targeted to Medicare-eligible audiences. Home warranty companies have the same response rate lift.
The economic side also makes a lot of sense. Digital advertising campaigns continue to increase in cost. An example is Google Ads, which increased their cost per click (CPC) rate by 15% from 2023 to 2024.
The cost of advertising through bulk mail is much lower. Companies that mail out 5,000 or more advertising pieces in a month are able to use Every Door Direct Mail. This gives them a rate for 2024 of 19.5 cents per mail piece. The result is extremely low cost per acquisition.
Fusion of Tradition and Innovation in Direct Mail
With new, innovative printing technologies, mass mail customer outreach efforts have transformed for the better through custom printing, targeted advertising, and tracking capabilities.
With cutting technologies in direct mail and variable data printing, marketers showcase a different offer and picture for every customer that is sent in the mail and that is synchronised to the address and data to drive personalised advertising to the highest level.
Advanced tracking technologies provided by QR codes and personalised URLs measure the success of each campaign through conversion tracking of every digital action.
Advertising automation means that potential customers will stay engaged with your product over time. In contrast to single outreach advertising efforts, marketers set behavioural, time-triggered sequences of several reminders. For example, if a salesperson sends a mailer offering a deal to a potential customer, and get no response, they will receive a different mailer with a different deal. This is personalised marketing to nurture a customer.
Do You Want To Gain The Benefits Of Direct Mail Campaigns?For assistance on printing, mailing, and tracking all in one place |
Integration Adds Even More Impact
The best marketers know that they don’t have to choose one over the other when it comes to digital space and direct mail. It can be done together. This is what researchers refer to as a “surround sound effect”.
Integrating digital marketing with direct mail processing improves the efficacy of a campaign by 118%. Prospects who receive a direct mail piece and see the accompanying digital ads are much more likely to convert than if they are marketed to through one of the mediums. The mailpiece allocated budget lends credibility, whereas the digital piece added the element of immediacy and convenience to the campaign.
Industries Leading the Direct Mail Resurgence
The insurance and financial service sectors are at the top of the list, with companies spending 30-40% of their marketing budget targeting the Mail Direct Service. One of the main reasons is because, with high-consideration purchases, trust is needed, and mail service is the best option.
Targeted neighbourhood mailers help HVAC and roofing home services get phenomenal ROI. In Chicago, a roofing business sent 2500 snap pack mailers to homes built before 1990 and brought in $180,000 in revenue, producing a 900% return. The service they provided, roofing, was tied to the physical postcard they sent.
Fundraising through the mail with digital requests defeats email asks by a factor of 10. One reason is the emotional connection people feel by pulling a letter with captivating graphics out of their mailbox.
In order to reach decision-making executives, marketers are sending dimensional mail plus high-impact items as a marketing strategy. Branded Lumpy mailers are proven to avoid gatekeepers and land straight on the desks of C-suite prospects with impressive 90% open rates. People ignore LinkedIn messages but Cash opens FedEx packages.
How to Defy the Myth That Direct Mail Marketing Is Dead!
For years the advocates of digital marketing claimed that direct mail was a dead dinosaur, marketing-wise, of course, but it has become a $62.8 billion dollar industry. How well have the digital evangelists prognosticated?
Marketers have finally grasped that their customers’ attention is the scarcest resource and that digital mailboxes get infinitely more marketing ads than physical mailboxes. Direct mail has become intergenerational. Many digital native millennials, and Gen Z Respond to mail positively, if only to feel ‘valuable’.
According to USPS, 77% of households sort their mail immediately. Recipients of political mailings, worth millions, hand-address the envelopes or refuse to respond to the marketing qualms that have become the opposite of modern marketing. Targeted mail that is personalised and contemporary isn’t a blast of millions of marketing messages but a savvy modern marketing technique.
Read more about: USPS vs UPS: which shipping method wins?
Making the Shift. What Marketers Need to Know
Integrating digital marketing with mail advertising:
This is marketed as a direct marketing campaign. Defining boundaries, or segments, of the target market makes direct mail marketing advertising campaigns more effective.
Quality is more important than quantity:
Sending to 5,000 high-quality targets is of more value than sending to 50,000 arbitrary names. Work with your mail partner to target lists based on actual purchasing propensity vs. just demographics.
Test creative to the max:
The beauty of direct mail is A/B testing based on real analytics. Experiment with different offers, even different envelope styles. A healthcare provider changing to a kraft paper envelope increased response by 34%.
Measure what matters:
Track response rates, cost per lead, customer acquisition cost, and more, rather than just focusing on the cost of mail. Make each version of the campaign traceable using different phone numbers, QR codes, or single-use landing pages so you can identify what’s working.
Conclusion
The facts are clear: direct mail earns attention, establishes credibility, and compels people to take action. The question isn’t whether direct mail marketing works; the question is when will you adopt the thinking of the most effective marketers?
Reach out to Snap Packs and Letters has combined state-of-the-art printing with bulk mailing to achieve a 96% open rate and dependable lead generation that keeps businesses profitable For over 25 years and targeting over 1 billion mailers,
