Research Claims Direct Mail Is Staggeringly Unpopular
As advertisers increase the amount of money they spend on direct mail, new research claims that the marketing method is “staggeringly unpopular” with British consumers.
The amount that advertisers invested in direct mail rose by 2.6% last year to almost £2,400 million and the volume of mailings increased by 5.9% to 5,233 million items (see Direct Mail Shows Modest Growth During Q4 2002).
However, a poll conducted by MORI on behalf of The REaD Group suggests that marketers could be wasting their money, as 29% of consumers want direct mail banned completely and 36% claim to throw away all promotional mailings.
Also worrying for advertisers is the fact that consumers believe that the problem of junk mail is worse than it actually is, with 42% thinking they receive more than double the amount of promotional mail they actually do.
According to the survey, the image of the medium is being damaged by the large amount of direct mail being sent to deceased friends or relatives. A third of those who received promotional mail for deceased acquaintances say that they have never even considered purchasing from the offending company, with a further 350,000 people claiming to have actively encouraged family and friends not to purchase from that company either.
Financial services companies were perceived as the worst offenders in this area, followed by catalogue companies, mail order clubs and utilities.
Commenting on the findings, Mark Roy, group managing director of The REaD Group, said: “Responsible direct mailers have made great strides towards improving their targeting through greater use of increasingly sophisticated database cleaning products and services. However, our previous industry research indicated that the direct mailers still wasted almost £15 million mailing the deceased last year and this new report shows there’s more yet to be done in order to reduce this wastage.”
Last year the Direct Mail Information Service released a study showing that UK consumers purchase over £25 billion worth of goods through direct mail each year (see Research Shows Direct Mail Defies Ad Downturn).
MORI: 0207 347 3000 www.mori.co.uk
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