Email or Snail Mail:
Why not Both?
by Steven Roberts
E-mail marketing has become widely accepted as a highly responsive direct marketing medium. Some wonder if they should choose e-mail marketing in lieu of postal marketing. The fact is that each method provides marketers with different advantages, and by combining the two marketers can realize outstanding results. Postal mail pieces affect the buying process differently than e-mail. The former, in the form of catalogs and brochures, tends to stay on the desk for a while. People can hold it, view it, refer it, file it and, hopefully, respond to it. E-mail is immediate. It appeals to our impulsive nature. Either the recipient will respond to it or they won’t. By following up your direct mail campaign with e-mail, you can influence the person who is holding on to your brochure and is as yet undecided. Always provide your audience more than one way to respond. Targeting with both a postal and e-mail campaign gives your prospect or client multiple ways to respond. What’s more, sending your offer twice presents an opportunity to raise the visibility of your company and reinforce its message, making it more likely that prospects will respond. Other added benefits are timeliness, lower costs and the ability to do one-to-one personalization.
(Taken
from the DM News .)