International Address Validation: Direct Mail Response Rate

Direct Mail Response Rate

Marketing can be powerful when you apply all the right strategies and use the right channel. It is all about reaching out to an audience and making an impact. This impact is measured in the form of responses, engagements, and sales. Every marketing channel has its own way of capturing a market and measuring performance.

Today, direct mail marketing is one of the strongest offline marketing channels. It is effective, engaging, and has the power to build a brand. Direct mail response rates can help measure campaign performance and further calculate conversion rates and ROI.

Using a direct mail response rate calculator, businesses can estimate their response rates beforehand and make the necessary adjustments in their mail campaigns to get the desired response rate. The campaign size, mail lists, offer included, and many other factors play their roles in getting a good response rate.

What Is a Good Direct Mail Response Rate?

Direct mail response rates are different for every company in every industry. The business size and popularity also decide response rates. For some companies, a low response rate is acceptable, and they can still achieve a positive ROI. However, it’s not the same for all. Other companies may not do well, even after getting a higher number of responses. It majorly depends on the campaign size as input and ROI as output.

In general, response rates can vary between 0.5% to 4%. However, a lot of well-performing campaigns have managed to record much higher numbers. As compared to email campaigns whose response rate is a mere 0.12%, direct mail marketing campaigns can achieve a response rate of about 4.4%. Another DMA report says that the direct mail response rate is 5.3% for house lists and 2.9% for mail sent to prospects.

However, please note that even a response rate of 1% is excellent when your mail does not include a free offer and requires people to buy. Moreover, 1% can also be considered great when you mail on rented mailing lists rather than your in-house mailing list, whom you have already contacted earlier. But, a company is likely to require a much higher response rate even to start generating a positive ROI while giving away free offers and coupons and mailing on an in-house list.

Different industries receive different response rates, and they can differ drastically. For example, direct mail response rates for financial services might be higher than real-estate direct mail response rates. But, in the end, everything from your mail creativity to your offer can bring about a huge change.

Whether a B2C or B2B direct mail response rate is good or not is dependent on the campaign ROI. Direct mail is known to have a high rate of return on investment. It is creative and highly persuasive.

Direct Mail Can Fetch a High ROI

Though response rates are a good way to measure campaign effectiveness, the ultimate result can only be known through direct mail ROI. The average ROI from direct mail marketing is 29%, leaving behind paid search and online display.

Just like the direct mail response rate, the ROI is also dependent on a number of things. Along with factors like campaign size and offers, it hugely depends on the type of product and services you sell. Low-ticket products can get a high percentage of ROI and still be behind a company selling high-ticket products with a very low percentage of ROI.

Direct Mail Response Rates Top the List

An article by Forbes has stated that direct mail has a response rate of about 3.7%, which is way more than all the marketing channels. The response rates for email, social media marketing, internet display, and mobile marketing are 1%, 1%, 0.2%, and 2%, respectively. Today’s generation is hooked on their phones, especially on social media, and yet social media and mobile marketing are performing at mediocre levels. Hence, it is clear that direct mail is highly inducing, and the tangibility can get people to pay attention and respond.

Further, a recent study stated that 93% of people agreed to use direct mail coupons. Hence, the response rates are likely to increase, thereby increasing conversions and ROI simultaneously.

Email and direct mail have been compared quite often. Apparently, as said earlier, email has a response rate of only 0.12% as compared to the direct mail response rate of 4.4%. It isn’t difficult to admit that direct mail is not annoying, like social media ads and commercials asking you for your name and email address. Direct mail forms an emotional bond between a business and its audience, hence resulting in a high response rate.

82% Of Australians Sort Their Mail Daily

Open rates matter a lot. They form the base for response and conversion rates. Perhaps, direct mail is the only channel that gets the complete attention of people first-hand. The open rate of direct mail is 66%, and 82% of Australians check their mail every day. People are often curious to know about the contents of the mail they receive, which is definitely not the case with other marketing channels.

Emails are ignored, social media posts are scrolled by, and text messages are deleted. Even if people happen to read emails, the majority of them are either on their way to work or while visiting a friend. Hence, these online marketing channels don’t get as much attention as direct mail.

Below are some more noteworthy statistics:

83% of people read their mail on the day of delivery itself.
The average time to open and read a mail is 2.9 minutes.
99% of Australian mail recipients open their mail, from which 66% of them read it carefully, and 54% store the mail for future reference.

Best Practices to Increase Direct Mail Response Rates

Use Targeted Mailing Lists

Sending personalised mail items to the right people can help improve your response rates. People are more likely to respond when the mail they receive is relevant to them in some way. Companies must cleanse and update their mailing lists regularly and sort them to target the right audience.

Add Value to Your Mail

Make sure to provide value in your mail items. The offer and CTA are two main elements to be included in direct mail. The CTA guides people to move further in their customer journey, and the offer makes them complete the CTA. Hence, adding an impressive offer can boost responses.

Stand Out From the Crowd

Get creative and allow your mailers to stand out from the crowd. Your intended recipients might have already received a lot of junk mail. When your mailer is mixed in the mailbox with such mail, you have to beat the competition and get noticed. Creativity and innovation can get you there.

The Conclusion

Direct mail can help spread brand awareness and drive conversions. With the right marketing message, you can convince a lot of people to try out your brand. It is a less known fact that the direct mail industry is worth billions of dollars. It is because more and more companies are starting to understand the value of direct mail marketing. The response rates for both house and prospect lists are significant.

Nonprofit organizations can get more donations through direct mail marketing. Nonprofit direct mail response rates are higher than email and social media response rates. Since people see direct mail as trustworthy, they are convinced to donate.

Similarly, all companies from different industries can make use of direct mail marketing and achieve high response rates, which can be tracked by pURLS, coupon codes, and other such trackable features. Direct mail automation solutions like PostGrid can help you with these things and enable you to create print, and mail efficiently.