The first thing I do when I get home is pull into the garage and walk across the street and get my mail. Statistics tell me that other folks do much the same thing. 79% of consumers find that reading mail is more convenient that going online. 42% of age group 25-34 said that they read mail immediately and find it useful. 58% of households with incomes over 65k purchased from direct mail in a given year. We all get dozens of emails trying to sell us something. Most of mine go into my spam folder before I even see them. I scan my spam folder to see if one of my customers emails accidentally got sent to spam and then I delete the entire folder. Mail is not intrusive and it can be put aside to be read at the recipients convenience. I often put something aside that I am interested in, such as coupons, a promotional or sales (I do love a good sale). I get lots of those offers by email as well but I usually don’t remember them or I have deleted them by the time I want to use them.
This is the time of year when businesses and non-profits, who are going to have fall campaigns, start to put together their plan for the fall. I am sending out a post card today to remind all the non-profit organizations to start early on their fall appeals and avoid missing the dates that they want their appeals to mail. That also applies to businesses who mail catalogs. We are already working on a catalog for an online retailer so that his catalog mails in order to get the Christmas orders. If you are planning a direct mail campaign for this fall…get busy.