Email Marketing Spending Predicted to Eclipse Postal

By Craig Swerdloff
VP and GM of Customer Acquisition Solutions

Email marketing for acquisition has often been treated like Rodney Dangerfield - it just gets no respect. Well, for those of us who know how great email is at establishing and building relationships with customers and prospects, it is time to celebrate: new data from the DMA shows that email acquisition is about to explode. And for those of you coming late to the party, welcome!

We are talking, of course, about the DMA 2007 Postal and Email List Report which found that marketers are increasingly turning to email, both in addition to and instead of, postal lists, for prospecting. (See the full story in DMNews).

The DMA found that while postal still represents a larger share of budget than email, it might not stay that way. In fact, more than half of the respondents report increasing their postal circulation, but a greater percentage of respondents report growing their e-mail volumes and at a higher rate. Marketers are also more likely to report growth in their email spending than in their postal spending.

As we've been saying for a long time, email offers completely distinct advantages when prospecting. These include:

1. Consumers love email: Numerous studies have proved this point. Consumers live in email and they like to get offers, sales notices and more through email.
   
2. Email allows for a quick response to current events: Smart marketers can deploy a professional email marketing offer in a matter of days. This allows them to take advantage of news and market trends.
   
3. Email is easier, and more cost effective, to segment: Sending many different versions of an offer based on demographic data is possible with both email and direct mail, but with email it is much less costly.
   

As we've written before, the message here is not that email is the only direct marketing channel to use or that you should dump your direct mail efforts. The point is that investing now in testing and implementing effective email acquisition strategies is going to enhance your marketing strategy. So, yes, if you have to borrow some budget from postal, then so be it. It's clearly the way the industry is moving.