ent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.

E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.

In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for le

Companies and organizations have spent many billions on e-mail and other Internet message delivery mechanisms over the past decade, often at the expense of more traditional marketing methods, like direct mail. But in some respects e-mail has failed to live up to its initial promise. And marketers who are turning back to tried-and-true methods like “snail mail” report excellent results, often better than e-mail.

According to a 2005 Direct Marketing Association (DMA) comprehensive study of marketing tools, e-mail produces the best return on investment and is the cheapest and fastest direct marketing tool. But only a fraction of the average company’s prospective customers opt in to most rentable lists. And it can be against federal law to send commercial e-mails to people who have asked not to receive them. It’s spam. If companies play by the new rules, they cannot get their marketing messages to the vast majority of their prospective customers using e-mail.

So marketers are going “back to the future” by reinvigorating their marketing campaigns with renewed investments in printed and mailed materials to complement or substitute for e-marketing methods.

Why Direct Mail Works

In a recent article in B2B Marketing Newsletter, a publication of the Business Marketing Association, consultant Eric Gagnon described direct mail as the “workhorse” of every business-to-business marketing program. “While the buzz these days is all about Internet-based marketing—Google AdWords and e-mail marketing programs—direct mail is still the mainstay of most business-to-business marketing and lead-generation programs: where there’s a readily-identifiable mailing list of plausible prospects, and a mailing piece to send to them, there’s a profitable marketing project waiting to happen.”

Direct mail is effective at focusing marketing strategies on vertical markets that can be reached by renting targeted mailing lists. Says Gagnon, “The most important element of any direct mail project is the mailing list.”

Increasingly, marketers are finding that postal-mailed printed materials are better for prospecting new business because marketers can have access to entire lists, such as subscribers to a trade magazine or members of an association. Rarely more than a fraction of publication subscribers or association members opt in to a permission-based e-mail list. And the more “selects” required, such as job function, industry or number of employees, to carve out the best segment of the list to reach a particular target, the fewer names remain. Marketers who want to reach almost everyone who can be a customer must use direct mail in their multimedia mix. For instance, only 31% of the subscribers to InformationWeek magazine agreed to receive e-mail, only 55% of Chain Store Age, and 65% of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. To reach all of the subscribers of these influential industry publications, you must rent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.

E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.

In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for le

eral law to send commercial e-mails to people who have asked not to receive them. It’s spam. If companies play by the new rules, they cannot get their marketing messages to the vast majority of their prospective customers using e-mail.

So marketers are going “back to the future” by reinvigorating their marketing campaigns with renewed investments in printed and mailed materials to complement or substitute for e-marketing methods.

Why Direct Mail Works

In a recent article in B2B Marketing Newsletter, a publication of the Business Marketing Association, consultant Eric Gagnon described direct mail as the “workhorse” of every business-to-business marketing program. “While the buzz these days is all about Internet-based marketing—Google AdWords and e-mail marketing programs—direct mail is still the mainstay of most business-to-business marketing and lead-generation programs: where there’s a readily-identifiable mailing list of plausible prospects, and a mailing piece to send to them, there’s a profitable marketing project waiting to happen.”

Direct mail is effective at focusing marketing strategies on vertical markets that can be reached by renting targeted mailing lists. Says Gagnon, “The most important element of any direct mail project is the mailing list.”

Increasingly, marketers are finding that postal-mailed printed materials are better for prospecting new business because marketers can have access to entire lists, such as subscribers to a trade magazine or members of an association. Rarely more than a fraction of publication subscribers or association members opt in to a permission-based e-mail list. And the more “selects” required, such as job function, industry or number of employees, to carve out the best segment of the list to reach a particular target, the fewer names remain. Marketers who want to reach almost everyone who can be a customer must use direct mail in their multimedia mix. For instance, only 31% of the subscribers to InformationWeek magazine agreed to receive e-mail, only 55% of Chain Store Age, and 65% of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. To reach all of the subscribers of these influential industry publications, you must rent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.

E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.

In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for le

sed marketing—Google AdWords and e-mail marketing programs—direct mail is still the mainstay of most business-to-business marketing and lead-generation programs: where there’s a readily-identifiable mailing list of plausible prospects, and a mailing piece to send to them, there’s a profitable marketing project waiting to happen.”

Direct mail is effective at focusing marketing strategies on vertical markets that can be reached by renting targeted mailing lists. Says Gagnon, “The most important element of any direct mail project is the mailing list.”

Increasingly, marketers are finding that postal-mailed printed materials are better for prospecting new business because marketers can have access to entire lists, such as subscribers to a trade magazine or members of an association. Rarely more than a fraction of publication subscribers or association members opt in to a permission-based e-mail list. And the more “selects” required, such as job function, industry or number of employees, to carve out the best segment of the list to reach a particular target, the fewer names remain. Marketers who want to reach almost everyone who can be a customer must use direct mail in their multimedia mix. For instance, only 31% of the subscribers to InformationWeek magazine agreed to receive e-mail, only 55% of Chain Store Age, and 65% of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. To reach all of the subscribers of these influential industry publications, you must rent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.

E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.

In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for le

ubscribers to a trade magazine or members of an association. Rarely more than a fraction of publication subscribers or association members opt in to a permission-based e-mail list. And the more “selects” required, such as job function, industry or number of employees, to carve out the best segment of the list to reach a particular target, the fewer names remain. Marketers who want to reach almost everyone who can be a customer must use direct mail in their multimedia mix. For instance, only 31% of the subscribers to InformationWeek magazine agreed to receive e-mail, only 55% of Chain Store Age, and 65% of Sales & Marketing Management Magazine. To reach all of the subscribers of these influential industry publications, you must rent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.

E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.

In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for le

ent these lists and send them a direct-mail piece.

E-mail’s second major limitation as a cold-call leads-generator is deliverability. Spam filters, frequently changed e-mail addresses, multiple e-mail addresses for the same person, list churning and unreliability in e-mail dissemination mean that a substantial minority of e-mails that are sent don’t get delivered.

In an environment where success or failure is measured in tenths of a percentage point, every e-mail message that fails to get through to its intended recipient is a lost opportunity. Industry estimates indicate that the proliferation of spam filters has created a virtual spam filter minefield, which traps as much as 14-25% of e-mail messages broadcast for legitimate marketing purposes. And marketers rarely know who didn’t get their message.

Messages trapped by spam filters are shown as delivered on e-mail transmission reports. That is, recipient e-mail servers do not reply back to the senders to notify them that the message was trapped by the spam filter. There are tactics that can be used to substantially increase the likelihood that the e-mail will avoid spam filters, but there is no guarantee.

Not every printed piece gets to a prospective customer either. Many direct marketing professionals acknowledge that direct mail can’t reach everyone on a list. But there is no such thing as a spam filter in the direct-mail universe and at least there are postal mechanisms for reporting which pieces cannot be delivered.

Ninety percent is the standard guaranteed delivery rate of a direct-mail list, but e-mail delivery rates are usually high, too, and you only pay for the quantity delivered. The problem is that you don’t know how many are trapped by spam filters.

Rich Carango, vice president of marketing agency Schubert Communications in Downington, PA, was quoted recently by DM News as saying flatly, “There is a souring about the feeling of how well e-mailing is working, mostly because of spam filters.” His agency also guides their clients more toward direct-mail tools like newsletters and postcards.

Direct mail “is kicking butt,” Laurie Beasley, president of Beasley Direct, recently told a Silicon Valley audience of mostly technology marketers. She strongly recommended its use along with effective e-marketing methods, which she says can be made more deliverable employing certain techniques her company uses.

Reports B-to-B magazine in its July 10 issue, "In a bright spot for traditional media, (forecaster Robert) Coen said, despite the postal rate increase in January, direct-mail advertising in the first quarter grew 3.5% over the year-earlier period to 20.6 billion pieces." He said marketers’ renewed interest in gaining better ROI is driving them to use direct-response marketing methods.

Many young people who grew up on the Internet enjoy communicating by e-mail or instant messaging and have never learned the mechanics—and benefits--of direct mail. They have little experience with the complexities of list acquisition, distribution, printing and the strategies and tactics of direct-mail creative. This generational predisposition toward e-marketing tools often means that companies are not taking advantage of all the direct-marketing methods that are available to them. But the trend is changing.

The DMA, representing mail, phone and online direct marketers, in its 2005 response rate study demonstrated a noticeable growth in corporate use of direct mail, after some years of decline. In its review of 21 industries, from computers to agriculture, the DMA documented direct mail edging out e-mail response rates by 2.77% to 2.48%.