It was not too long ago that many people had no internet, much less an e-mail address. But the internet brought in a new era that is full of unlimited information. The internet gave birth to electronic mail, more popularly known as e-mail. E-mail opened new avenues to the world of communication. In the beginning e-mail was only used as another means of communicating with other people for personal or business related matters.

Now people of every age group have an e-mail address. But, since the past few years have gone by, its potential for marketing has been exploited to its maximum both in good and bad ways. At the same time, who can disregard the services of direct mail which have been operating for nearly two centuries? It is still the preferred method of communication for many people.

E-mail is the cheapest method of communicating in mass quantities available as of this date. The advantage with email is that you can send email to many people at the same time just with the click of a mouse, where as in the case of direct mails one has to go through putting letters in envelopes for each and every person, make different address labels, mail it and also have to bear the cost of mailing. Time is money and e-mail marketing saves a lot of time.

While e-mail marketing might look easy, if you compare the net result, the story is totally different. When you are marketing through e-mail you want to make sure that you are e-mailing the right person, otherwise the e-mail would end up going to a junk folder. Also you got to be careful that you don’t miss the subject or the body of the e-mail, otherwise the net result would be same. In this age of spamming, spammers use a variety of subjects. Studies show that direct mail is more efficient and has better success than e-mail. First, it is not as easy to block direct mail as junk e-mail and secondly the process of blocking mails itself is not automated like e-mail. The other reason why people hate e-mail marketing is due to constant bombarding of e-mails from spammers and illegal marketers from Nigerian money scams to porn to online prescription drugs to stock quotes to what not. In addition to that, you also get promotional offers from big companies and who can ignore phishing these days.

Many people have developed a negative perception about e-mail marketing and they simply delete or spam the e-mail if they do not identify it as their regular e-mail. In contrast direct mail is seen with respect and people pick their mail as a daily routine and open them with a priority.

Direct mail has a personal feel attached to it, one of the reasons why people prefer mail greetings over an electronic greeting. It takes time to personalize a direct mail where as an e-mail is instant and the fate of e-mail is also instant i.e. immediate deletion. Researchers are constantly puzzled by the mystery surrounding why people are so enthusiastic about direct mail.

But no worries, this is only good news for the marketers that they have something in their tool kit that works. So marketers have the mailing list of potential customers handy and send some nicely composed letters to them about your company and its products.

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