Last night I was looking forward to settling down in front of the TV to watch a rather interesting debate on the subject of direct mail.  I was expecting a well balanced argument from respected Panorama reporter Tom Heap looking at the pros and cons of the industry.  What I got was anything but balanced.  I haven’t seen such a one-sided fight since, well it was Saturday night actually….  broken toe?  Come off it David Haye, you can do better than that.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised given the title “Why hate junk mail?” but Mr Heap’s argument was not only unbalanced but incredibly naive, not to mention inaccurate.  I also found it incredibly distasteful and dis-respectful to the direct mail industry to tackle the subject of ‘Scam mail’ in the same programme.

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Direct mail may still hold a slender lead as the most dominant form of Direct Marketing, but things are definitely changing. Recent technological developments are giving marketers more and more opportunities to get their message directly to their audience. In years to come both mobile marketing and social networking may be the most effective forms of Direct Marketing, but right now the biggest rival to the DM pack is undoubtedly email marketing.

The practice of contacting customers and prospects through email has really taken off in recent years. In fact, The Direct Marketing Association estimated that US firms alone spent over $400 million on email marketing in 2006 – and the technique has only grown in popularity since. The reason for this is simple… email marketing has a number of benefits over traditional DM and door drops. Read more…