In his report, Gruber points out that nearly one third of all mail delivered anywhere in the world is U.S. direct mail. While that volume has decreased in 2008, the figure is still staggering. According to the U.S. Postal Service, nearly 100 billion pieces of advertising mail were delivered to U.S. households last year.

Direct Mail Supporters and Detractors

Direct mail has its supporters and its detractors. William Craven works for an environmental group called ForestEthics. He says direct mail is a “pointless waste of natural resources.” Craven says, “Direct mail’s impact on the environment is enormous, especial considering that it’s something that most Americans don’t want and have no user for.” Craven points out that for direct mail there are 100 million trees are logged every year for something people largely don’t want and don’t use. Aside from the logging issue,  he also points out that the carbon footprint for the production and distribution of direct mail equates to that of some 6 million cars on U.S. highways.

But a strong case can be made for direct mail. One of direct mail’s supporters is Matthew Broder from Pitney Bowes, whose company represents the interests of direct mailers. He says that direct mail is recyclable and emits the same amount of carbon as that consumed by Americans when brewing their morning coffee. Broder says that the benefits of direct mail far outweigh the costs. He points out that direct mail very much stimulates economic activity. He says that study after study shows that consumers respond to direct mail. He points out that Pitney Bowes did a study showing that almost half of Americans have started a relationship with a business because of a direct mail piece they received.

According to the Direct Mail Association, the industry generates some two trillion dollars of sales and charitable contributions annually. Gruber points out in his report that although opinions on direct mail vary, most people are not ambivalent. They either love it or hate it.

As one woman being interviewed in the Reuters video report says, “If it can bring attention to a particular product or service, we need to stimulate the economy. We need to have people go out and purchase and buy and so the best thing I think to do is to find really creative, good ways to recycle those papers and to be creative as far as using it best for the environment.”

According to Broder, one thing is for certain – direct mail is not going anywhere, anytime soon. Broder also points out that there are several ways for consumers to decrease and have a say in the type of direct mail they receive. One such online service is dmachoice.org  that has 4 million registered users. Ironically, the association is seriously considering using direct mail to increase their membership.

Mailing Lists Direct is a full service mailing list company where you can find consumer lists, business lists and specialty lists at competitive prices. Mailing Lists Direct provides first rate customer support. No matter what your business needs in the way of an address list or managing your mailing list campaigns, our mailing lists will be able to satisfy all your needs. Call toll free at 800-741-0116.

Direct Mail Forecast

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – A comprehensive forecast of the use of digital printing in the direct mail market has been undertaken and published by INTERQUEST, a market research and consulting firm that serves the digital printing and publishing industry. The document is entitled Digital Printing in Direct Mail: Market Analysis & Forecast (2008-2013) – 260 pages.

The study contains 155 tables and charts and also provides an assessment of the impact of the financial crisis on the direct mail printing business. It was published in January 2009 and complements a previous study from June, 2008 entitled North American Transactional Printing: Market Analysis & Forecast.

This new study is based on in-depth surveys of 40 leading North American direct mail printers and large mailers. The collective volume of the survey participants interviewed for the report account for about 20% of the total digital direct mail impressions produced in North America.

INTERQUEST President, Gilles Biscos, pointed out that direct mail printing has generally been a bright spot in the printing industry for a some years, now. He has seen some dramatic advancements in recent years – the latest generation of equipment in particular – so he and his company felt that the time was right to take a serious look at how digital printing technology was being used in direct mail.

The study is aimed at industry professionals involved in sales and marketing, product management, engineering and product development, application and technical support, market research and strategic planning, sales and technical training, selection and purchase of printing solutions and printing and publishing operations.

Among the topics undertaken in the study are:

• The state of the direct mail market – both current and future
• The use of digital printing in direct mail – including technologies and applications for black-and-white and color
• Important business issues to consider – such as postage, the environment and legislative matters
• The use of laser and ink jet printing in direct mail
• The impact of promotional transactional applications on direct mail inserts
• The impact on direct mail by the current financial downturn

Business who use marketing lists for their direct mail campaigns will certainly be affected by the conclusions arrived by this new study. The study findings suggest that digital providers should be in a stronger position than non-digital providers and should stand a much better chance to weather the current economic downturn. Providers of direct mail lists who use the new digital printing technology will be on the bleeding edge.

John Jay Daly - Family Photo

LONDON – A PR man from Washington, John Jay Daly, who was credited as the inventor of the concept that consumers could opt out of direct mail, has died of heart disease at the age of 80.

The US Congress was considering legislation in 1970 that would have restricted direct mail by requiring companies to get an explicit opt-in for each household.

Daly, who was then the deputy chairman of the US Direct Marketing Association, came up with a plan that would allow companies to continue to send direct mailings to consumers and allow them the choice of opting out of direct mailings by sending a postcard to a central address and have their names removed from mailing lists.

His idea was later used when establishing the national ‘do-not call’ lists and when applying the ‘unsubscribe’ option for email lists.

According to his obituary in the Washington Post, some of his contemporaries were concerned that the policy would kill the direct-mail industry, but they actually discovered that many people really wanted to receive direct mail advertisements. The result was that marketers could focus their campaigns on people who were actually interested in their products and could avoid wasting postage and printing on people who did not want to be on a mailing list.

Daly made a living representing clients before Congress and referred to himself as  a “postalologist” because of his thorough knowledge of postal regulations and postal commissions.

Mailing Lists Direct is a full service direct mail list company where you can find consumer lists, business lists and specialty lists at competitive prices. Mailing Lists Direct provides first rate customer support. No matter what your business needs in the way of an address list or managing your mailing list campaigns, Mailing Lists Direct will be able to satisfy all your needs. Call toll free at 800-741-0116.

Does Your Business Keep An Invoice Ledger?

Every business should have an invoice ledger. If you have carefully kept track of the lead sources from your various marketing campaigns, then you will be able to identify the most profitable and productive sources of advertising. You can tell a great deal about the workability of your promotions and marketing by doing this very simple analysis. This example uses lead categories for repeat sales plus new sales from trade shows, direct mail, referrals, field sales, phone sales, ad sales and sales from new businesses (plus unidentified new sales). Simply prepare a spreadsheet and tabulate your sales invoices for a given period of time into the various lead categories:

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Next, tabulate the sales from the same period into the number of sales invoices. The number of sales invoices will be needed to calculate the average sales for the various lead categories:

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Next, you can summarize the data:

Graph Your Results

Finally, you can graph the results. You will be able tell at a glance which promotional activities are producing the most. The following graph shows the volume of sales for repeat customers vs. new customers and how the new customers break down into the various lead categories:

Repeat Customer Sales vs. New Customer Sales

In this example only 12.33% of the total sales volume is for repeat customers. This looks like a business that constantly must go after new customers because it has to make 87.67% of its income from new customers. This is a perfect example of why the business must analyze very carefully where to put its promotion and marketing efforts because getting new customers requires a lot of advertising and marketing. This example is very typical of a business that uses a variety of advertising sources to generate sales leads. In fact, it makes about 24 cents out of every dollar from phone sales and about 23 cents out of every dollar from field sales.

Referral Sales

Notice that one of the categories is referral sales. One of the most important ways a business can make income is from referral sales. There is no better advertising than word of mouth. In this example, about one out of every five dollars of revenue comes from referral sales. This means that the business must make up the remaining revenue from contact other than from existing customers. That involves the effective use of advertising and promotions.

A Typical Business Can Benefit From Direct Mail Marketing

This example also illustrates that sales revenue from direct mail campaigns amounts to one dollar out of every ten dollars – not bad considering that this is a typical “brick and mortar” business. In other words it is not what you would call a direct mail business because it does phone calls, field calls and trade shows, but it does make a little over 10% of its income from new customers from direct mail marketing. How would you like to make another 10% in sales revenue? You should be using direct mail marketing in addition to your other promotion and advertising efforts.

Mailing Lists Direct is a full service direct mail list company where you can find consumer mailing lists, business lists and specialty lists at competitive prices. Mailing Lists Direct provides first rate customer support. No matter what your business needs in the way of an address list or managing your mailing list campaigns, Mailing Lists Direct will be able to satisfy all your needs. Call toll free at 800-741-0116.

Mike Doughty is a small business owner and entrepreneur with a background in direct mail marketing, manufacturing and distributon. During his career, he produced a mail order catalog and worked on many successful direct mail campaigns.