Email,
phone, and direct mail continue to do the best job of capturing sales,
according to the latest edition of the Direct Marketing Association's Response
Rate Report.
The
report is based on a survey of 485 marketers conducted in December 2014 and
January 2015, and also shows that spending on online display ads, or banner
ads, is falling dramatically.
"Email,
while eliciting one of the lowest response rates among channels, continues to
be the leader in ROI," Direct Marketing News reported.
"Campaigns
conducted with house lists achieved an average of 30 to 32 percent ROI. Those
done using prospect lists achieved 15 to 17 percent.
"Conversion
rates among digital media types were best in emails sent to prospect lists (5
to 5.9 percent). Mobile came next with 5 percent."
Spending
on online display advertising in the coming year will decline by a shocking 17
percent, the report states, noting that display came in last among digital
devices for CTR, at between 1.1 and 1.5 percent.
Phone
and direct mail still offer strong response rates. But marketers are hampered
by "do not call" rules for telephone marketing. And direct mail is
still powerful, but can be extremely costly and time consuming.
Nothing
beats email marketing in terms of cost efficiency, responsiveness and the near
immediacy of campaign results!