In business, there is a lot of debate on what’s better. Direct mail or, email marketing?  Both have their own positives and negatives. It’s just matter of choosing which you like best and what works best for you. So, let’s talk about both. I’ll go over email marketing first because I use it the most.

Benefits of email marketing

• Free to send as many emails as you want
• Instant. No waiting
• Results are determined faster
• Easier to connect your audience with your other platforms
• Doesn’t waste paper and ink
• Less likely to be tossed as “junk mail”

With email marketing – you can send out a broadcast to as many people as you want and it doesn’t cost you anything. With direct mail, you have to wait longer to see if you got good results from what you sent out. With email marketing, it only takes about half the time. You can see who opened the email and clicked on the links inside.

If you have other platforms such as social media or a website (which you always should – if not let us know and we’ll set you up) It’s a lot easier to send people to these platforms using email marketing. Because they can simply follow a link. They don’t need to do any extra work. And paper and ink can get expensive – not to mention that we use enough paper as it is.

Benefits of Direct Mailing

• You can get creative with packages
• People like to see and hold thing
• Easier to customise
• Flexible

Direct mail can be fun if you’re creative enough. I’m creative but it seems like Jeremy knows more about direct mailing than I do. So, I look forward to trying it out. Let’s say you want to host a live event and you choose to use direct mail as one of your marketing strategies. You can customise the mail you send to fit your live event – so for example, if it will be a Star Wars event – you could send out Star Wars themed ads and a Chewbacca keychain. Maybe that’s a bad example – but you get the idea.

A lot of people like to have things they can see and hold. Some feel like it makes it more real and personal. Especially if it is customised to fit something they are going to like.

As far as direct mail being flexible – you can choose what days the mail is going go out – therefore you can judge the time it will arrive. I will have to test this myself.

So, as you can see – there are pros to each one. But, let’s get down to the cons…

Cons of  Email Marketing

• Deliverability can be spotty
• Spam

These are the only major things about email marketing that come to mind. If you don’t have a good autoresponder – your deliverability won’t be good all the time. I highly recommend using Aweber.com  I have used them for well over a year now and I like them better than any others so far.

Spam can be tricky if you’re brand new to email marketing. You need to choose subject lines and even previews that don’t look spammy. Even the email you send from plays a big part of it. But even more importantly is the way you write the email itself. So, if you’re new – I suggest you work with us and we’ll make sure you get the hang of it. You can check out our beginner’s guide here .

If you would like some one on one help – we would be more than happy to assist you. Just shoot us an email or Facebook message.

Cons of Direct Mailing

• Results are slower
• Harder to determine results
• “Junk mail”

Getting results back from direct mailing takes longer and often you really don’t know if it worked. You can’t see who opened the mail or not. It’s harder to know the impact and the real ROI from direct mail.

Junk mail is a big issue these days. I get ads all the time for things I don’t even buy – like cigarettes.  I don’t smoke. Why should I be getting those? It’s because of things like this that people often toss anything they get that isn’t a bill or something requested.

As you can see – they both have pros and cons. If you’d like help determining which one to use – we’d love to hear about your business and see if there is anything we can do. You can always try both and see what results you get from each.

We hope you found this helpful. Speak soon!