The rise of digital and social channels has forced brands and institutions to rethink their marketing strategies. As marketers strive to perfect the use of ever-changing digital tools, audiences are exposed to a growing volume of content, making it harder and harder to make your message stand out from the noise.
Overwhelmed by digital content, consumers are growing more responsive to “old school” marketing. Direct mail has the tactile experience, the pacing of analogue, combined with the powerful metrics of digital. It resonates across every age group, and response rates are high across the board:
A variety of studies have shown that millennials enjoy receiving direct mail. They’re more likely than any other generation to read their mail. In fact 25% of them consider reading direct mail a leisure activity. The US Postal Service or USPS found that 47% of millennials look forward to checking their mailbox each day. Harris Diamond, CEO of the global advertising network McCann, affectionately refers to this as “The Mail Moment.” It’s important that companies attempting to target millennials effectively tap into this.
“47% of millennials look forward to checking their mail”
Not only do millennials like to read their mail, but they also pay closer attention to it than any other age demographic. In 2016, the USPS found that 40% of millennials read direct mail thoroughly, compared to only 18% of non-millennials. They also discovered that millennials spend more time reading mail compared to other generations: an average of 9.7 minutes each day, compared to 7.9 minutes for Generation X and just 8 minutes for Baby Boomers. These reports illustrate that millennials are extremely likely to engage with direct mail marketing material.
“40% of millennials read direct mail thoroughly”
Direct mail is coming back. But traditional direct mail companies are still using the same sources of information they relied on in the 20th century. We’ve got a better plan, one that can accurately target the people you need using insights from the ongoing digital revolution in data.
So this is our journey… we want to bring more modern data resources into this traditional arena.
