Know those folks who they think they can speak Portuguese because they listened to “The Girl From Ipanema” or AI because they asked Google Gemini where to find snickerdoodle ice cream in Perth Amboy?
Some marketers are like that about direct mail because they once got a key in the mail that was supposed to unlock a new car but instead unlocked an interminable visit to a used-car dealer.
A lot of marketing conceptions about direct mail are actually misconceptions. And none is bigger than this: digital marketing gets noticed more.
Actually, the average person receives 121 emails per day while the average household receives just four pieces of direct mail daily – and opens 90% of it.
Sometimes old-school wins. Here’s the top five scenarios when direct mail beats digital.
When You’re Targeting High-Value Customers
Digital appears cheap. That’s its blessing … but also its curse.
When Lloyds Banking Group wanted to convert cold prospects in the small-and-medium-business market, it faced a challenge: How do you convince business owners to switch banks? For businesses of this size, it’s a move fraught with tremendous anxiety.
Lloyds addressed this challenge by building a direct-mail campaign around a powerful truth: For 11 consecutive years, CFOs had voted Lloyds as the “Best Bank for Service.” The campaign used formats like interactive quiz mailers that asked business owners to evaluate their current bank against Lloyds.
The result? Lloyds convinced 707 prospects to switch – a staggering 280% above its target of 250 switchers. The first mailing alone delivered 176 switchers, which was 352% above the mailing target and 70% of Lloyds’ annual goal.
Why did it work? Because when you’re asking a business to switch something as fundamental as their banking relationship, a 47-cent email feels … well, cheap. And common. A thoughtfully designed mail piece that clearly cost $15 to produce signals that you’re serious – and that you value them.
According to Focus Digital, financial-services direct mail is opened almost half the time and responded to at a rate of 3.95% – positioning financial services among the top-performing industries for direct-mail engagement.
The lesson? The more valuable the customer, the more you should invest in reaching them. Digital is democracy; direct mail is diplomacy.
When Your Audience Is Over 55 (Or Under 25)
Here’s a fun fact: Millennials and Gen Z respond to direct mail at least as well as Boomers do.
According to USPS, 62% of Millennials had visited a store in the past month based on mail they received – higher than Gen X (55%) or Boomers (52%). And more than half of Millennials are more likely to buy from a company that markets to them via direct mail and digital.
For older audiences? Baby Boomers have cited direct mail as the single most important influencer on their purchase decisions, ranking it even higher than word-of-mouth recommendations.
Why? Older audiences simply prefer mail. They’re more likely to have established routines around checking their mailbox, reading mail at the kitchen table with their morning coffee or afternoon tea, and responding to offers.
But what about Gen Z?
According to the Data & Marketing Association, the direct-mail response rate for 18-21-year-olds is 12.4% compared to just 0.12% for digital ads. And 91% of 18-24-year-olds bought something because they’d received marketing mail in the previous six months.
In case you haven’t noticed, young folks are drowning in digital noise but starved for tangible experiences. According to multiple 2023-2024 studies, 82% of 18-24-year-olds like marketing mail, with 59% finding it personalized to them. More striking: Three-quarters of Gen Zers think real-life experiences are more important than digital ones.
And consider this: Those studies took place before the AI tsunami hit. Right now the desire for things that are real and tangible is even greater among Gen Zers – and the more AI slop they’re exposed to, the stronger those feelings will get.
This is important, so let’s emphasize it. When you print something you make it real. Gen Z buys and reads actual books – millions of them. Why? Because the printed word is indelible. It can’t be erased with a keystroke.
As AI takes over real experiences increase in value. Direct mail is a real experience.
When You’re Selling Something Complex
Try explaining a variable annuity in a Facebook ad. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
Some products simply don’t work in a 15-second TikTok video or a 280-character tweet.
PostcardMania documented the case of a dermatologist who mailed 12,000 postcards explaining their services and special offers. Maybe those services could be described in a series of podcasts or TikToks or YouTube videos, but they were most efficiently described via direct mail.
The dermatologist’s campaign generated $22,500 profit and a 239% ROI. Compare that to typical digital-ad performance, where the average ROI for paid search is 88% and social-media advertising is 81%.
Here’s another. Real-estate investors using the REsimpli platform generated $26.7 million from direct-mail campaigns in 2024, with direct-mail leads generating six times more revenue per lead than digital leads.
Why does complexity favor direct mail? Because direct mail isn’t deleted with a click. Direct mail hangs around a recipient’s home an average of 17 days. It sits on the counter. It gets picked up multiple times. It guides the reader through a journey.
So when you hear that individuals spend 108% more time reading content in direct mail than digital marketing materials … that’s why.
When You Need to Break Through In A Local Market
When everyone zigs, the smart money zags.
It’s understandable for new, smaller, local businesses to try to break through on social because it’s “free.” (It’s not, of course. Even organic social requires your time – and more time than you think.)
The result is that particularly in local markets, businesses have oversaturated digital channels at the expense of direct mail. But did you know that direct mail is the reason why 39% of consumers try a business for the first time?
And for those of you who think that digital advertising is still dirt-cheap, have you looked at your Facebook and Google ad spends lately?
While the digital kings change higher admission prices for their walled gardens, the average price to mail a postcard only increased 1.57% – a 14-fold difference.
The more this trend continues, the better direct mail looks.
It’s fine to chase clicks. But don’t forget the importance of showing up in the mailbox … which leads to the final point.
When You Integrate Your Campaigns
The best results don’t come from choosing between direct mail and digital – they come from a combination of the two, chocolate and peanut butter.
The data is overwhelming:
- 89% of consumers prefer campaigns with a mixture of physical and digital elements.
- 97% of marketers report that multichannel integration improves campaign performance.
- When direct mail is included in a multichannel mix, marketers report an ROI lift of 12%, and a 27% boost in overall response rate with a direct-mail/email mix.
- After receiving direct mail, 55% of consumers visit the sender’s website.
SG360° case studies demonstrate this power across industries. For instance:
- A financial-services company’s integrated retargeting program delivered a 10.9% response rate.
- An e-commerce retailer’s retargeted postcards, run over the top of digital ads, produced a 3.7 return on ad spend – more during the holidays.
- An automotive company’s personalized self-mailers to digitally qualified customers increased customer loyalty 5.2%.
Whether you use direct mail to open the door or seal the deal, the digital/direct-mail combo platter crushes single-channel approaches.
When You’re None Of These Things
Even marketers who weren’t working with high-dollar customers or complex products or working in a local market or mixing their chocolate and their peanut butter still saw great performance from their direct-mail campaigns.
In fact, two-thirds of all marketers achieved direct-mail response rates of more than 3%, while one-third saw response rates of 5% or better.
Considering that typical digital-ad click-through rates hover around 0.1%-0.5%, that’s so much better.
The Bottom Line: Direct Mail Is On Top
Direct mail is thriving. It delivers an average 161% ROI to house lists – the highest of any paid marketing channel. Letter-sized-envelope campaigns produce a 112% ROI, trouncing text (102%) and email (93%).
That sort of performance gets the bucks. In 2024, 82% of enterprise marketers increased their direct-mail budgets, up from 58% in 2023.
If you’re not seeing these results and/or you’re not increasing the amount you spend on direct mail, what’s going on? Maybe you’re outside one of these optimal use cases – or maybe you need a little help crafting a memorable direct-mail campaign.
That’s where we come in. We have decades of experience working with marketers to produce their direct-mail campaigns so they hit the right people with the right message the right way.
Give us a call and let’s talk. And let’s get you blowing through your revenue goals.
Dan Topel 11/6/25