Does direct mail marketing still work? It sure does. By 2027, experts expect this form of advertising to grow to over $84 billion.

It’s not a surprise since the ROI businesses get from direct mail is, on average, $4.09 for every $1.30 spent. People across all age demographics, from Gen Z to baby boomers, are receptive to direct mail marketing.

If you’re thinking about using direct mail in your business’s marketing strategy, here are a few pros and cons to consider.

The Pros of Direct Mail Marketing

It feels great when you open your mailbox and see a well-designed piece of mail that looks like a lot of thought went into it. You think it’s from someone you know, but discover it’s actually from a company you’ve bought from before, and they have an offer just for you.

And your opinion of the business has gone up a few notches, and you’re more likely to buy from them again because of the effort put into this correspondence.

The power of direct mail lies in the ability to deliver (no pun intended) tangible experiences connecting your business to future and existing customers.

It also has a few other benefits since direct mail marketing:

• – Allows businesses to personalize their communications, designs, etc.
• – Generally, it has a high engagement because physical mail is challenging to ignore, unlike other tactics.
• – Targets a more specific audience based on demographic and geographical areas with localized offers.

Direct mail allows for creativity
Oversized postcards or unusual direct mailers can get a higher response rate because they stand out against standard envelopes. As an example of how it pays to be unique, D&AD, a non-profit advertising and design association, wanted to reach decision-makers interested in their Masterclass training programs.

Instead of sending a simple postcard, the organization known for promoting creative agencies shredded its Annual Best Work guide and mailed it to previous winners. It was an unorthodox way to get people to notice them.

People feel more positively about direct mail
Like the online world, you still compete for people’s attention with direct mail. One small study showed that people responded more negatively to receiving an unprompted email than physical mail. They felt that it was intrusive and annoying compared to direct mail.

Measuring direct mail campaigns leads to higher ROI
Direct mail can be a powerhouse marketing medium for businesses. In a report from ANA, they discovered that direct mail yielded the highest ROI for marketers at 112%, followed by SMS (102%), email (93%), and paid search (88%).

Businesses can efficiently measure their campaign’s effectiveness when using conversion tracking techniques like QR codes and URLs.

In Driving Effectiveness with Direct Mail, WARC noted that 70% of people cited in their case studies engaged in an online activity after getting a direct mail piece. But even better, 35% of people bought a product after getting sales correspondence from a business.

Since millennials and Gen Z are more likely to go to a website after getting a direct mail piece, it makes sense to put more effort into designing a mailer that gets—and keeps—their attention.

The Cons of Direct Mail Marketing

There are plenty of pros that come with direct mail marketing, and there are a few cons as well. Compared to email, the expenditures associated with direct mail are higher, with the acquisition costs ranging between $100-$500 per person.

Where does this expense come from?

Printing, postage, and materials all contribute to the higher costs associated with direct mail. Working with a company familiar with the ins and outs of print design can not only help you produce something great while saving money.

But cost isn’t the only con that comes with direct mail marketing.

Direct mail has a slower response time
Emails and digital ads provide near-instant insights showing how and when your audience responds. Every click is immediate.

But because of the time it takes to get a piece of mail into the hands of a recipient, the response time is inherently slower.

A study from JICMAIL showed that once that piece of mail arrived, it got 108 seconds of attention over nearly a month. This time increased to 150 seconds with business mail.

To keep those eyes on your mail, consider incorporating special offers into your mailers with redeemable points, coupons, or limited-time deals.

More natural resources are involved with direct mail
People, especially younger demographics, are paying close attention to climate change and its current and future effects on society. A generational study conducted by USPS found that 70% of Gen Z believe it’s important for the mail they receive to list recycling information.

Direct mail isn’t solely responsible for the current state of affairs, but it takes up a part of the 11% of trees used by the paper industry, even if it’s only a tiny amount.

If your business uses recycled paper and works with printers with sustainable production practices, it should be labeled on mailers sent to recipients.

It’s harder to track data with direct mail
With special links or QR codes going back to a landing page, a specific phone number to call, or a coupon code, it’s easier to see the response rate for your direct mail campaign.

Without them, life gets a lot harder. You’re blindly sending out mailers without understanding how well they work, leading to wasted time and money.

Make direct mail part of a wholistic marketing strategy

Depending on your industry and market, a direct mail marketing strategy can be a powerful tool for weaving print into your digital plan. And while the ROI is high for direct mail, you still have to remember that it has some limitations with how quickly you’ll see that return.

With the wide availability of tracking for businesses, it’s much easier to see people’s path toward offer-specific landing pages and other online platforms.

You can overcome the medium’s constraints by creating a direct mail marketing campaign to attract customers using distinctively unique, out-of-the-box methods. Because, unlike email, with physical mail, you can create and deliver a tangible experience that recipients can’t easily ignore.