![]() Marketing guru John Jantsch does not provide statistical figures for an average direct mail response rate in his highly praised best-seller, “Duct Tape Marketing.” However, he does emphasize the importance of the wording of your letter. Letters are also more expensive to print and mail. Marketing industry leaders generally agree that personalized letters get a higher response rate than postcards. While keeping in mind that Debelak was usually working with industrial suppliers (and therefore generally expensive products), this is very useful information. That’s one-tenth of one percent at the high end, down to about eight one-hundredths of a percent at the lower end. In his book “Marketing Magic,” industry veteran Don Debelak states that he typically received anywhere between 70 and 400 responses from a “card pack” mailing sent to a list of 80,000 to 100,000 recipients, with a high of 49 leads from a 40,000 piece mailer (Debelak, 1994). If your industry is business-to-business, you might have a lower response rate, unless you combine your mailing with another marketing channel, as described below. If you are selling to consumers, this is the number to beat. Put it all together, and the response rate for credit card mailings is just six tenths of a percent. Most credit card companies are well-known, and enjoy substantial brand recognition with the target recipient. Financial services are at the low end of the curve for response rates among mailings to consumers. And in 2012, all those mailings earned the credit card industry a response rate of 0.6% (DMA, 2013).Ĭredit cards are a consumer staple, so they presumably enjoy a higher response rate than business to business mailings. The credit card industry was in second place, with nearly 5.3 billion mailings sent in 2012 (DMA, 2013). The DMA found that of all business types, the insurance industry is the most reliant on direct mail, with more than 6.9 billion (with a “b”) mailings sent in 2012 alone (DMA, 2013). Keeping in mind that intended response rates are almost certainly much higher than actual response rates, these are good indicators of general trends in the effectiveness of direct mail. Intended response rates ranged from a low of 4.4% for financial services, to a high of 18.4% for consumer goods (DMA, 2013). When surveyed by the Direct Marketing Association, consumers stated that their intent to respond to a piece of direct mail varied dramatically depending on the type of offer. ![]() The numbers cited here are for postcards and letters they do not include catalog mailings. The Direct Marketing Association provides useful information about direct mail, including its cost and response rates. So it’s worthwhile to find out what might be the typical response rate for your mailer. When you are planning your marketing strategy, you want to be able to compare the estimated ROI of different marketing channels, so you can determine which one is most worthy of pursuit. Still, it’s useful to have a ballpark number to use as a target or benchmark. For this reason, direct-to-consumer mailings are likely to have a much higher response rate than business-to-business mailings. For example, even if all the other factors are aligned perfectly, a campaign promoting a $5 item is likely to have a much higher response rate than a campaign promoting a $50,000 item. Factors that influence response rates might include your industry the quality of your mailing list the type of mailer you choose to send the quality of your graphic design your choice of wording the perceived value of your offer and the strength of your call to action. As with any marketing strategy, the response rate for direct mail may vary tremendously.
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