With new technologies being created every day, is direct mail still relevant?

According to a recent study by Lob and Comperemedia, without a doubt. The study, which includes data gleaned from more than 200 marketing industry leaders, concludes that marketers view direct mail as their strongest performing channel and actually plan to increase the amount of mail they distribute in the future.

“These results validate a lot of what we hear from our customers,” said Leore Avidar, CEO and co-founder of Lob in a press release. “Marketers know that direct mail is an effective channel, and they want to utilize technologies that allow them to fully integrate it with other touch points in their customer campaigns. As email unsubscribe rates skyrocket, marketers are looking for similar tools to replicate traditional digital strategies with physical mail. Our customers see impressive results when they deeply personalize direct mail for re-marketing or customer retention.”

There’s this belief out there that direct mail is “old school” marketing, which is why some question its relevance and effectiveness.

However, even with its reputation, 64% of respondents said direct mail delivers the highest response rate of any marketing channel they use (5% or greater compared with an average email response rate of less than 1 percent) and 60% indicated that direct mail provides the highest ROI of any of the channels they currently use.

In a nutshell:

• Direct mail remains an effective channel for marketers across all types of campaigns. A majority of respondents indicated that it is currently their highest performing channel.
• Customer acquisition is no longer the primary use case for direct mail marketing. Direct mail volume is now spread relatively evenly across the customer life-cycle.
• Technology has a growing influence on direct mail. Companies are increasingly using software platforms to manage and execute their campaigns, and many expect to see a closer integration between their offline and online campaigns

To read the full survey results, see the report here.