New Marketing Response Rate Study Published by DMA
December 30th, 2005
The Direct Marketing Association recently published its findings with IntelliSurvey for response rates in traditional marketing efforts for 2005. (Tip of the hat to the good people at Church of the Customer.) The leading trade association for businesses and organizations interested in direct, interactive and database marketing, the DMA claims that these methods resulted in $1.85 trillion in US spending last year. Wow.
Here’s a breakdown of what they found out about average response rates:
Direct Mail: 2.77%
Dimensional Mail: 3.67%
Postcards: 2.19%
Catalogs: 3.67%
E-mail: 2.48%
Telephone: 8.55%
Package Inserts: 1.74%
Statement Stuffers: Less than 1%
Coupons: 4.29%
Banner/Rich Media Ads: 3.52%
Search Engine Marketing: 1.07%
Newspaper – Space Advertising: 0.5%
Magazine – Space Advertising: 0.17%
DRTV: 8.14%
Radio: 0.31%
It needs to be said that the sample size of some of the industries was not particularly huge and the numbers may be skewed either way as a result. So take them however you wish.
The folks over at DMA talk about how some of these numbers are “impressive.” Maybe for them. But when a marketing manager hands over his/her budget to you, are they going to be happy with numbers like the ones above? Well, I guess they’ve been doing it for years, so why change now?
I don’t have my calculator handy (plus I’m no good at math), but if people in the US spent $1.85 trillion as a result of the above methods, what was the original amount spent on developing them, printing and sending them out?
Other posts by Spike.
Olivier Blanchard says:
Grim. I can’t believe telephone did so well.
February 21st, 2006 at 8:36 amThe Power Of The White Envelope » Small Business Marketing And Branding - by Yaro Starak says:
[...] Even for your target audience, they cannot help but open a plain white envelope. It’s too intriguing. According to the DMA, direct mail has an average response rate of 2.77. I’ve seen response rates of at least 5% with the plain white envelope. And the best part is that it’s cheap and authentic. [...]
August 17th, 2006 at 4:27 pmViral Marketing Widget says:
For friend referred marketing with an address book importer via yahoo, hotmail, gmail and aol, I get an average 2.8% response. This matches closely with the DMA’s E-mail: 2.48%
November 21st, 2008 at 8:29 pm