A very long time ago when I worked in print, colleagues were concerned that the proliferation of computers would sound the death knell for the printing industry. It was assumed that books and manuals, for example, would all be saved to servers and floppy disks (ha! remember those?), and no one would want to buy or store printed material. Boy, were they wrong.
The same holds true for direct mail: at one time, it was assumed that mailings were going to go the way of the dodo – that nobody was interested in receiving mailings from charities. If you’ve read our Direct Mail Benchmarks Report, however, you’ll discover this isn’t the case at all; in fact, direct mail is growing!
Here are three reasons to remind yourself why direct mail needs to be part of your fundraising strategy:
DIRECT MAIL IS TACTILE
You need to sort through what’s arrived in your mailbox and, if it looks interesting, it’ll get opened. According to the Canadian government’s most recent census, only 62% of adults aged 70-74 use the internet. That’s a big chunk of the population that gets its information from other sources like TV and radio – and the mail.
How often do you find yourself unsubscribing from emails? Chances are, your inbox is pretty full and you’re pretty quick with the delete button if the cause doesn’t speak to you. With email and the internet readily available, Canadians are sending less physical mail than ever so there’s plenty of mailbox real estate to jump into and be noticed.
