Linda CaseyNew reporting from Business Insider found that Apple’s privacy changes have made it harder for direct-to-consumer companies to attract new customers on platforms such as Facebook. As a result, some of these brands, Insider reports, are shifting their Facebook budgets to old-school marketing vehicles such as direct mail. Could this be the right time to return to optichannel marketing, especially when the vehicle is print?
Some brands think so. Jason Nickel, VP of marketing at men’s fitness clothing company Ten Thousand, told Insider, “We’re actively looking for and testing new platforms. And what’s old is new again. Print is most certainly not dead.”
In January 2020, programmatic direct mail company Pebblepost and market research consultancy Alter Agents partnered on a quantitative research study to understand how shoppers make purchase decisions. This study, “The Shopping Shift,” gathered data from more than 3,000 U.S. consumers aged 18-plus to understand the factors used when determining their purchases, including what they purchased, where, and how they make their purchase decisions.
The study found that direct mail broke through the digital clutter, with 80% of respondents attentive to direct mail but 50% reporting that they ignore digital ads. In addition, the research showed that direct mail speeds up the purchase timeframe, with more than a quarter of direct mail recipients purchasing on the day of receipt.
Overall, the findings showed that direct mail maintains significant advantages over other traditional sources of purchasing information and generates more response than digital efforts like email, social, and paid search.
